Katkin, they had a package deal for high speed internet, up to 3 computers I think, at $45 per month and it does not block your phone line, it lets you call out and receive calls when on the internet. We are getting the first 6 months for like $20. This offer was made to us because we also have Comcast cable in 4 rooms. As for the nextels, those seem to be the phones of choice wherever all 3 of us work, so we added my phone that is not company paid and we are pleased with the service.

Hi to Ravencajun...thanks for the warnings. I looked at the links and did a google search and while it may be a hit or miss kind of thing and I may get "burned" by wildblue....I can not tell you how fed up I am with dial up. Willing to try anything!!! I looked into aircards too but not available in my area. At least not that I could find. My tech knowledge is very limited (read 33rpm in an I=pod world) and I generally rely on my children to guide me along. All I can say is hopefully the satellite thing will work out for me. It seems to be only option other than dial up at this point. I will try to post again and let you know how it works out for me. Please wish me luck. Murphy

The only thing I've heard about Magic Jack is that their support is pretty bad. If you get the thing up and running, it works fine. Remember that you need to have a computer up and running for Magic Jack to work. Computer goes down, no phone. There's another service like Vonage that supposed to be pretty good. Can't think of the name, something with an O. Lots of people are ditching land lines. Depends on your calling habits. Most telephone companies offer a very basic, inexpensive plan if you want to have a backup. Generally, they don't advertise them you have to ask and you'll only get a few local calls per month.

I've used Vonage for years for my business phone, with no complaints. If the internet is down, yes, the phone goes out, but it will send calls to voicemail, or you can set it up to forward to another number, like your cell phone. The internet isn't down much where I live. The quality is directly related to how much bandwidth you allow Vonage to use. The adapters come with a setting that uses a medium amount of bandwidth, which can sound garbled at times. If you change the setting to allow it to use the maximum amount of bandwidth (not *your* maximum, just the maximum the phone could need), it sounds good. At times, it's not quite as good as a phone with a cord, but I'm never embarrassed to make business calls on it. However, Vonage is a voice-over-internet protocol service, and I'll bet your cable phone is also VoiP. If you don't like the cable phone, you may not like Vonage. Or maybe there are settings you could change on your cable phone, to allow it to use more bandwidth. Vonage has terrific features. My favorite is SimulRing. It allows you to set up to five alternate phone numbers, and when a call comes in on your phone line, Vonage will ring all the numbers, including your original phone line. When I had a phone line, I used to set my cell phone as an alternate number, and the cell phone would become, in effect, an extension of the home phone for incoming calls. Another Vonage feature that I use on my business line is Virtual Voicemail. All my voicemail is run through a machine that transcribes it and then the transcript is emailed (or texted) to me. Very cool.