No cell service at home...what options?

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There are no cell towers nearby where i live in the country..


I recently ditched my Verizon plan and had an extender that would let me use my cell phone via wifi and satellite..


My only option is to get a land line via Frontier but everything is long distance except the nearest town, and the last time I did that my phone bill was over $100/month.


I am not familiar with Magic Jack or similar ways to use a phone via wi-fi or internet..


What is my best option to have phone service?


FYI- I called Verizon to see if i could use my extender with a prepaid phone and they said yes via tech support-- after hours and hours of trying to get it working they finally found a person to say that it wasnt possible.. My last hope to make it work with Verizon is to use my prepaid phone that i bought and get a post paid sims card... then try it again. Im frustrated with it and want to move onward.
 
Last few cellphones I've owned automatically use the home's wifi for calls.
The Google phones do that, when you sign up for Project Fi.
So, no need for an external extender.

I've only tried with T-Mobile, so I wouldn't have anything to give you if you want to stick with Verizon.
 
We had the same trouble with Verizon at our last home. Our service worked fine, then they updated something or other, and then our reception tanked and our calls would just drop during a conversation. You could almost time the drops to the second. Fought it for a few weeks and told Verizon to either fix it or lose a long time customer. They sent me an extender that solved our problwms. We don't need it now and I was going to offer to send it to you but it appears you've been there, done that already. Good luck.

If anybody needs an extender for Verizon (don't know if it will work with other carriers) cell service, I've got one you can have. It's just sitting around collecting dust now. We have no need for one where are now.
 
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I have no cell service at home. I use Vonage VOIP and it works fine even with 4Mb broadband. Vonage transcribes voicemails to emails and sends them, love that. They also have Vonage Extensions which let's you use the smart phone app as an extension of your home phone anywhere in the world there is cell or Wifi.

I also have cell phone set so it can use cell or Wifi for voice or text.

So with decent broadband, lack of cell is not a big deal.
 
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The Verizon extender must be activated on someone's postpaid account. Then it will work with any Verizon phone including prepaid.

But there are many purely VOIP options that are more cost effective.
 
I have T-Mobile and in my experience, the wifi calling isn't 100%, I've had bad call quality issues even when I'm not moving or switching from wifi to towers. I disabled the wi-fi calling on my phone.

If you haven't already, check out Google Voice, with it, you can make and receive calls for free. You can also redirect the calls to your cell phone, so you could use the phone to answer through wifi while at home, and when you're outside the house with reception on your phone, it'll ring just the same (even if you don't have data service on your phone).
 
Originally Posted By: mk378
The Verizon extender must be activated on someone's postpaid account. Then it will work with any Verizon phone including prepaid.

But there are many purely VOIP options that are more cost effective.


Yes the conundrum was that to activate my extender i had to call tech support.. i dont have phone service where i live so i had to make the call while in service away from my home. They asked questions about the lights on it, had me to push in a reset with a paperclip...which i could not do with the extender being at home and me being away from home.. it took much too much effort to explain this to them. The last effort was them telling me to take it to someones house and hook it up to their internet to get it working.
 
Originally Posted By: EdwardC
I have T-Mobile and in my experience, the wifi calling isn't 100%, I've had bad call quality issues even when I'm not moving or switching from wifi to towers. I disabled the wi-fi calling on my phone.

If you haven't already, check out Google Voice, with it, you can make and receive calls for free. You can also redirect the calls to your cell phone, so you could use the phone to answer through wifi while at home, and when you're outside the house with reception on your phone, it'll ring just the same (even if you don't have data service on your phone).


I will try this when i get service.. i just tried it and they want to send me a text to verify it..cant get text with no service lol.. looks promising.
 
I just saw with Iphone you can turn on wi-fi calling under Phone>Settings>WiFi Calling..

But of course my Iphone6 Straight Talk does not have this option..
 
AS others have suggested, if you have WiFi, and your phone supports WiFi Calling, you don't need a cell signal.

Our cell signal is poor at our house, but the phone works fine with wifi calling enabled. I also use it when I am in Canada (I don't have international calling or data).
 
I have used MagicJack . It is OK . The Ethernet cable plugs into the MagicJack box & your land line phone system plugs into it too . Which can include a cordless phone .
 
There's lots of VOIP solutions. I'm using Ooma, pretty simple for home phone use. Magic jack might be cheaper. If you're using comcast, they have a pretty good mobile phone deal, unlimited voice and text and 1 gb is $12/month. Unlimited data is $45 per line.
 
The T-Mobile Personal Cell Spot uses broadband service to create a 3,000 square foot "cell" in your house. It is NOT WiFi calling. It is a 3G/4G/LTE signal. I don't know if any of the other wireless carriers offer this. It is free. I have one in my house due to poor and inconsistent signal.

https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-24269
 
Originally Posted By: DBMaster
The T-Mobile Personal Cell Spot uses broadband service to create a 3,000 square foot "cell" in your house. It is NOT WiFi calling. It is a 3G/4G/LTE signal. I don't know if any of the other wireless carriers offer this. It is free. I have one in my house due to poor and inconsistent signal.

https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-24269

Yeah most of the others do, or at least used to. We had a Sprint one for several years until they got around to fixing the problem by us. It's typically called a femtocell.
 
You can also use a Obihai device and link it to a Google Voice account for free calling in the US. No 911 and no CNAM caller ID (but it will show the caller's phone number) unless you pay a little to a 3rd party provider for those services. Anveo offers 911 and CNAM for about $2 a month.
 
My old Blackberry will hit the home wi-fi on T-Mobile prepaid. You need an app from Crackberry, but it works.

All the iPhones will connect via local wi-fi (all our Euro visitors can connect when they're here to avoid roaming charges).

I'm sure there is a phone that will hit your home wi-fi, just need to find the right phone
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If you have internet service via cable, just sign up for their phone service if not too much, or use Vonage (we do and love it) - $19/mo with 400 minutes of USA long distance included, voice mail, etc. Cheap calls to Canada and Mex. Euro a bit more, but not bad
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