VOIP

One of my big concerns with working in Israel was how good the phone connection through Voice over IP would be for work. I spend at least three hours a day on the phone in conference calls and if my connection breaks up too many times or if there is lots of static or anything else then it won't be good at all. My parents use Vonage and they have a lot of trouble with their line. My friend, Aryeh has been in Israel for a few years working for an American company and has been using Vonage the entire time. He assured me that if set up properly I won't have any trouble. We signed up about a month before I moved here to test it out in the States and it worked fine. By the time we moved into the house last week we had everything set up and it was all working perfectly. People at work who know I'm in Israel have commented about how clear the connection is.

In the States we had two phone lines - one for work and one for home but here we have just one (American) line. It's been working out fine so far and I don't anticipate any problems. We don't have a cordless phone on it right now because the phone we had intended to use with it isn't working for some reason. So it's been a bit of a pain for Shira to always come into my office to talk on the phone. The one thing that we chose to do which might have been a mistake was to keep the same phone number that we had in Baltimore. It's great for our friends and family because it means that they don't have to learn a new number. The problem is that it means that telemarketers, tzedaka organizations and other people we don't want to call us don't have to learn new phone numbers. So it's really important that we turn off the ringer at night so we don't get the "dinner" calls at 1 AM. I think it was worth it because we're just here for a year. This way when we go back we'll have the same phone number. If someone is making aliya though I'd advise to get a new phone number.