Hi Richard

That sounds to be a good thing for Penny to have and may solve her problems. My son uses something similar to that... he does not have a landlíne, and has a jack and just buys time as he needs it. He wíll put $30 on it and it lasts him a while. I have read that many complaints from different people about Verizon over the years on the internet.

We had a similar problem with Telstra over here and decided after more than 30 years with them to kick them... I wíll never go back to them either. Then we tried other phone and ISPs and were equally annoyed with them.... so now the current one we are happy with, and we each got a Smartphone when we signed up...one was free and the second one cost $19. They cost over $100 in the shops and at the time we got ours they were around $200 in the shops, but when they first came out they were much more than that. These we chose because they do not send their service calls overseas. Our problems began with scammers after joining a phone and ISP that sent their service calls overseas.

Pen

Raf wrote:
We had Comcast for years. Just got rid of them finally last week. Went to AT&T U-Verse. Less expensive too. Could you keep your internet service if you didn't have to pay for a phone? That is what this device allows you to do.

That said TA...my Mom swears by this product

http://www.magicjack.com/plus-v05/

magicJack is a device that plugs into a USB (Not USB3) port on the user's computer and that has a standard RJ-11 phone jack into which any standard phone can be plugged. This allows the user to make unlimited phone calls to almost any phone in the U.S. and Canada. It is a computer peripheral that, in combination with telephony service from the related YMAX Corporation, provides Internet-based telephone service (VoIP) to the United States and Canada. In 2011 the company introduced magicJack Plus, which no longer requires a computer.

The magicJack device works exclusively with the company's captive landlíne supplier and CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier), YMAX. Voicemail is stored on the magicJack servers and is delívered via email. Downloadable feature upgrades for the magicJack USB dongle are available from third-party software companies.


I've never used it, but my folks do all the time.

Raf