VoIP
I have been using VOIP phone in my house for more than 2 months now. There have been no issues yet. I'm using the service from Lingo. This is very nice. I get all the great features of normal phone including Caller-ID, Call-Waiting, Simultaneous Ring, Call forwarding, Voice Mail and many more which can only be offered in a VoIP phone. For example I can set rules that allow me to forward calls to my cell phone when I'm not home (or only during certain time etc.). My voice mail can be automatically forwarded as an mp3 attachment to my email. I will never have to change my phone number again. All I really need is Internet connection. With broadband becoming ubiquitus this should not be a problem in the future.
There are many new things that can be thought when your phone service is delivered over the net: For example why should it not be possible to have a 'Universal Internet Phone Book' that I can synchronize with my Outlook Contacts list? With so many portable devices why should I have to manually maintain multiple copies of my Contacts? I have a cell phone and a PDA. Both have synchronization capability so they can be automatically synced. Why not have similar thing for my VOIP phone?
I'm sure there are many such ideas in the making and we'll see them coming out as the VoIP usage increases.
VOIP might not work for me
I am glad that VOIP based solution works for you.
But despite having evaluated the VOIP based solutions, I found the basic problem with VIOP: the voice data goes over the internet.
I believe I won't be able to use VOIP effectively becasue both my DSL connections remain fully chocked up at all times (due to my other internet "activities"), and I was afraid I will never be able to make clear calls without drops etc.
The other alternative while using VOIP would be that I would have to interrupt all my other internet "activities" whenever a phonecall comes, which doesn't sound like a viable option.
-Rajesh