Planning on getting digital voice? You can save a lot of dough on your calls and get plenty of features too. There are lots of choices these days, and more confusion than ever. The three basic types of service providers include the local cable company, a specialty digital voice provider (like Sun Rocket, Vonage, Packet8, AT&T’s CallVantage and Verizon’s VoiceWing), or something that works with the Skype software division of eBay. Let’s go through some of the decisions about what kind of digital voice service to get.

Decision #1: Are you a cable TV customer?

The first choice you will have to make is whether to go with the cable TV company for your phone needs. If you are a current customer, they offer discounts for adding a digital voice line. You will need to replace your current cable box with something that supports the digital voice, and a cable technician can also wire this into your phone wiring as well.

Most of the cable companies only offer a single digital voice plan, so depending on what your calling patterns are you might do better elsewhere. For example, if you don’t make many long distance calls but make lots of international calls, or if you want multiple local numbers. But, you have a single bill to pay for both cable and phone communications, so that is appealing for some people.

If you want additional calling features that aren’t part of the cable digital voice plans. Then you should consider one of the digital voice specialty providers, such as Vonage and AT&T CallVantage.

Decision #2: Do you make many international calls?

All of the providers offer tremendous discounts on international calls, that is, calls outside of North America. These calls can cost just pennies per minute.
Some of the providers, such as Packet8, offer unlimited international calling if you subscribe to their higher monthly service plan. Others have higher per-month plans that include a certain allotment of minutes for international calls, or unlimited minutes but just to particular countries. It pays to do some comparison shopping.

Decision #3: Do you want to make calls from your existing home phone(s)?

The cable digital voice plans and the voice specialty providers like Vonage all work with your existing home phones. Sometimes you have to purchase this adapter box, sometimes there are rebates on it for signing up for an annual service plan. The adapter box also needs to be connected to your high-speed Internet modem, usually via an Ethernet cable.

If keeping your existing telephones isn’t important, or if you are planning on keeping your existing landline home phone and want to supplement it with a digital voice as a second or third line, then you can consider one of two other possibilities that work with the Skype software network.

There are two broad categories of Skype-related digital phone products. One is software that runs on your computer (ether Macintosh or Windows computers are supported) and for this to work your computer needs a separate headset that has both earpiece and microphone. While you can use these products and play the audio through your PC’s speakers, the microphone will pick up the sound and the call quality will suffer. Headsets can be purchased for about $50 at many retail stores.

The downside of this method is that your computer must be on to receive calls. You can make use of Skype’s forwarding service if you still use your existing landline, and Skype does include voice mail as part of its calling plan.

Calls to other Skype users are free, and Skype sells service to all North American phones for $15 a year if you sign up in the next couple of weeks.

If you don’t want to use your computer and want something that resembles a phone to make Skype calls, you have a variety of choices, with more vendors announcing products all the time. These work in several different ways: some are phones that work off your wireless home network, or any wireless network that you can pick up with the phone. Belkin makes one of these phones as an example for about $175. You will need to purchase service from Skype.

Another choice is to buy Netgear’s SPH200h phone. This is a cordless phone (working off its own wireless network and base station similar to other cordless phones) and  works with both landline and Skype calls, and is reviewed here.

If you go this route, you have to balance the monthly savings with the initial purchase price of the hardware. They are all cheaper to operate but cost more up front, and may take some work to configure.

Other computer software vendors are jumping into the digital phone arena, and some such as Yahoo and Microsoft are adding digital voice features to their instant messaging products. Expect to see lots of products in this area.

Decision #4: Do you need more than one digital voice line?

If you like digital voice so much that you want more than one line, or if you have chatty teens that still like to talk on the phone and not use Instant Messaging, then you might want to consider one of the higher-priced plans from Verizon VoiceWing and AT&T CallVantage that offer a second line as part of their monthly service package.

I have been a Vonage customer for several years now, and use it for my business line. This is one of the reasons why I still have a 310 area code even though I live in St. Louis. I have been generally happy with the service and recommend digital voice for anyone that wants to take control over their phone calls.