From the time I decided to become an L.A. actor, my life has been one telecommunications nightmare after another, a hellish mix of pagers, cell phones, forwarded voice mail, forwarded home phone, dedicated fax lines. (And a P.O. Box, because yes, even Gapâ„¢-casual fake moms have stalkers.) This year, my descent into the Hades that is the Los Angeles telecom megalopoly accelaterated sharply when I started spending copious time at The BF's pad, a.k.a. my country house, a.k.a. that place dead-smack in the middle of The Silver Lake Cone of Silence.
Apparently, the wealthy folk whose million-dollar homes ring the Silver Lake Reservoir do not like tatty cell towers cluttering their views or mutating their DNA. Which is fine for them but sucks for me, since it takes my brilliant telecom workaround, forwarding my land line to the cell, and metaphorically drops it on its head from a 15-story window.
And even if I wanted to forward my phone to The BF's land line (which I most decidedly do not, a girl has her limits), I couldn't, since the BF, self-employed in the VFX world of film & TV, is doing the same forwarding between cell-and-home dance I am. Nothing like having your best corporate client ring your boyfriend's pants while they're on a bell.
Anyway, about a month ago, in utter frustration over shitty cell reception when there was some, missed calls when there weren't and a few really scary races to auditions, I gave up my main land line (the other is for the fax/DSL) and ordered Vonage.
Holy-fucking-crap! My number rings at home! My number rings at my country house! And it really is my number, my one and only number, because Vonage lets you port your old landline number to your new Vonage account!
There are a few small kinks I need to work out. Hauling the Vonage router around with me is gonna get old, I can see right now; I'm looking into the possibility of a second router or at least an additional power supply (the heaviest part of the gear). There's a little dropout now and then, thanks to less-than-perfect DSL.
But for anyone splitting their time between two places, especially two places with crummy cell reception, or fearsome of losing their actual, memorized phone number in a cross-town move or another area code split, Vonage might be just the ticket.
xxx c