VoIP services have been improved a lot and you can find more and more companies coming out with cheap local and long distance calling plans.

VoIP providers are slowly taking business from landline providers, which forced those companies to offer cheap VoIP services, to the home and business users.

Magic Jack is a new VoIP service, which is going to challenge VoIP and landline providers. It is actually a little USB jack, just connect it to your computer’s USB port and connect any phone to the RJ11 port to make and receive calls. When you connect your Magic Jack to your computer, it will automatically install the software and softphone and take you through the registration and phone number selection. The whole process takes 10 minutes only. You can use any phone or softphone.  

 They are offering phone numbers from almost all the states and cities, and adding more cities on regular basis. It’s features include call forwarding, caller ID, call waiting, and E911.   All you have to do is buy the MagicJack for $39.95, which includes first year free US and Canada local and long distance calling; yes $ 39.95 for whole year!  Which I believe is not a bad deal at all, as per their website “never pay bill again”. They are offering 2^nd year service for $19.95 only.

I got my MagicJack in August of this year, when it was still in Beta and their service was a little flaky. Now the service has improved tremendously.

It is an excellent product for people who travel frequently or have friends and families outside of USA. Just buy the MagicJack, register it, send it to your overseas friends, and they will be able to make calls to USA and Canada without paying a penny. You can also call them whenever you want to because it will be a local call.

This MagicJack is not quite magical yet because you need to leave your computer turned on in order to make or receive phone calls. It would really be magical if it was pluggable in the RJ45 port on the router eliminating the need of having the computer on.

It also has issues with certain softwares, for example, it stops working if you are using CD/DVD burning softwares with InCD utility. It also won’t work with unpowered USB hub.

Although it has it’s limitations, I have fallen for this product because it is cheap and usable. Buy it and call all your  friends to wish them happy holidays!

For more details visit their website .