there are many deals out there for voip, but viatalk seems to be a reasonable option.

Depending on what telephone company you are with, one could get free LD for 10-15$ a month added. Or, a voip solutoin for 15-24$ a month added.

Viatalk offers many pricing plans, and also has an offer for SR customers, buy their 199$ plan for a year, and get your remainder from SR ported. Which is BASICALLY the BOGO offer they had on this AM. Bas...rdo! Nothing like jacking up the price of the lifeboat once people are IN THE WATER!!

VT also has some reasonable month to month options, for 12$ or so, so it could be a stop gap.

Porting is another issue. Some companies, won't port from level 3. So, it might be hard to get it hooked up with ATT or Verizon even IF one is signing up with their VOIP service.

At the moment, I say wait it out. I'm heading to their local office here in Palo Alto tomorrow and will report back tomorrow.

It is a bummer though. I personally, had NO problems with the service save for about 1-2 outages a year of 1-2 hours each, that I didn't really even know about. As well, I have four phones around the world that are in use. Last one was for my dad, to call his GF in Japan all the time. She has one too, so she can call HOME all the time and her family in the US. For 99$ a year, that just could NOT be beat. So, I don't plan on seeing a deal of this value for a while.