Making a home phone
Part 0: The problem
Our home phone broke last year and after the second tech dispatch to try and fix it, we gave up. The voicemail was still active on the number and at two or three robocalls per day, dialing into the Verizon voicemail was a dreaded and terrifying activity.
After a friend suggested that you can access your voicemail in the Fios app, I logged in with my parent’s username and password and found that for our 75/75 internet and home phone, we were paying almost $100/month. That’s what they advertise as their price for the new Gigabit connection. The best part — the phone service was costing $30/month.
One might ask why we don’t get rid of the phone number — occasionally, older family members and old friends still call the phone and we want to remind them to use our cell phones.
Part 1: Exploring solutions
- Google Voice: the good: free, not a lot of work, can just link to my mom’s Gmail; the bad: the voicemails still happen, google changes how their services work and tends to discontinue products without much notice, too easy and not enough fun
- Home VoIP Provider (think Vonage, Magic Jack): the good: it works the way you want it; the bad: the phone calls still happen, incredibly expensive, no fun
- Twilio: the good: super cheap, full API, no more phone calls; the bad: it requires effort
Part 2: The plan
The goal is something like this:
“You’ve reached the Green family. Our home phone is no longer active. Please use our cell phone numbers or press one to be connected with $parent1 or two to be connected with $parent2” “Please state your name after the tone and press the pound key to be connected.” “Please hold.” Hold Music “The party you have dialed could not be reached. Please leave a message after the tone.”
