Do you have cable service in your area? Get cable-based high-speed internet and then sign up with Vonage or other VoIP provider. Then tell Sprint to kiss you ass.

I'll be doing this with Bell Canada. Dropping their DSL and local phone service completely. The "Phone Company" is going to be in a world of hurt in most of Canada over the next few years.

Bruno

You guys all totally rock! This is why I love this place so much.

dbrashear: I'm very very sorry, I wasn't clear. Only Verizon Wireless is good, the rest is horrible! I've known techs on the inside at Verizon and the can attest to just how horrible their phone and DSL service is.

PaulWay: Amen!

hybrid8: That is totally my Plan B. Vonage seems great, but I'm not entirely comfortable with having a set number of minutes on my "land line". That, and my neighborhood (and entire state; NJ, the most densly populated state) is, well, densly populated. I worry that cable speeds would be slow compaired to the steadfast "guaranteed" DSL rates.

I'm also considering replacing my fax system with a computer containing a modem. Let the computer take the fax, turn it into PDF, and e-mail it (via home network) to everyone that needs it. Send faxes by e-mailing them to the machine, or something. I haven't looked TOO hard, but that software must exist somewhere. And it saves trees too! If the fax # wasn't printed on business cards, I'd ditch the phone line and get some kind of eFax (but security issues worry me there).

andy: Yes, text messages are the epitome of "sell phone" technology. Why would someone take minutes to type out a sentence (or unreadable acronyms) using 9 buttons when they can take half the time to just CALL. And "push to talk" "walkie talkie" is even worse. Why would you carry on a half duplex conversation when you could have full duplex if you just CALL. Oh, then there's ring tones, games, camera phones, and all those other sales tricks. Forget it; StarTac 7868W forever!

Yes, phone companies in America are dying too. They are just outdated. VoIP, wireless, chat, e-mail, etc have taken over. But, those internet services are prone to security problems. However, there's those convenient government regulations that allow all phone lines to be tapped. Pah, I'm going back to smoke signals.

Vonage has unlimited service for either 25 or 30 dollars a month including long distance.(can't remember which)

I currently have Vonage and I think it works fine but I have been thinking of dumping it and just getting a cell phone.

My housemate has Packet8. It seems to work really well and is only $20/month for unlimited calling to US and Canada. He chose that over Vonage because the monthly fee is obviously cheaper and you don't have to pay for the "device." They also sent it overnight and from what I remember there was no shipping fee.

.................. I think I figured out who the caller is.

While eating dinner with my sister and her boyfriend, my rattling off the list of possibilities finally clicked something in both of their minds.

Now I just have to get to Verizon before the police get to the owner of the phone. I potentially have a DEEP hole to dig out of.............. about $435 dollars deep.

Come on, Spill the beans.

Call forwarding from somewhere?

Is it your bookie?

Or should we give up on the idea of getting transparent buttons from a now very angry caster?

Last time I checked out packet8 they didn't have local numbers in my area but it looks like they do now. I have the 25.00 unlimited plan from Vonage and I got it a while ago before they were selling it in stores and I can't remember if I had to pay for hardware or not.

What I would really like is a cell phone with the device they showed on techtv that let you use a land line phone to call out on a cell phone. The bad part is they only had it for some motorola phones.

Okay, we're DYING to know what this is about.

Over dinner with my sister and her boyfriend, I was rattling off all the information that I had pieced together about these calls. It suddenly clicked with all of us that we should have thought of it WAY sooner than we did, since each of us was familiar with the responsible party.

It was a phone-enabled alarm notification from a water pumping station that my sister manages. We didn't know about this one, there were no alarms at the pump to indicate that it should be calling, it didn't speak a message indicating a problem like the other phone-enabled alarms do, and it continued to call after the alarm condition had been resolved. So, it suffered multiple failures and we're trying to track that down now.

So, now there's a $900 bill pending (according to my calculations). It's going to take some doing to resolve this peacefully, but I think it's possible.

Thanks so much for all your tips. I honestly wouldn't have gotten to the bottom of this without them! Ah, finally, silence in the house (except for the damn telemarketers, which finally pushed me to sign up for the Do Not Call list).