Ron Schenone

It’s The Comments Not The Article About Magic Jack

Posted by on Mar 13, 2009 | 11 Comments

Over at The Boston Globe their tech guy wrote his opinion about Magic Jack. But it wasn’t the article about Magic Jack that caught my eye. It was the comments. As with all products there were the pros and cons about how well or not so well Magic Jack worked. This is normal for almost ever service or product. As I have previously mentioned, my Vonage was causing me fits until I found that it was my router causing the problem, I replaced the router and Vonage has worked perfect ever since.

This one comment really caught my eye:

You must also remember majic jack is a product not a service per se, yet. they do not have to abide by the FCC rules yet as they are not considered a communications company. VOIP companies a la vonage etc, are facing heavy regulation soon, and wil have to charge all those regular phone charges like the universal service fee, etc.
So enjoy it while you can, get the most out of it, maybe till teach comcast and verizon a lesson enough to get them to be reasonable, but dont burn any bridges or look at anything long term. within a year experts predict voip will be equal in cost to regular landlines.
just thought you all should know.

Has anyone read anything about this? Are fees going up for Vonage, Magic Jack or any other VOIP services? Or is this just an urban legend?

Comments welcome.

Source

  • Jeff

    I would guess its going to be an urban legend.

    To be honest here, VOIP is cheap because calling people uses very low bandwidth. From there your calls are routed from a local hub with regular lines.

    The only regulation the FCC would have with it is the devices, since all the actually ‘lines’ are over your ISP which deals with all the regulations.

    I would love to see where this info is coming from, because I don’t see it coming soon.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hello Jeff,
    Maybe AT&T started the rumor ! LOL
    Thanks for stopping by, Ron

  • GOOSE

    I hope it’s a legend…..I bought a Magicjack mainly because it was so cheap. It works OK but having to plug it in to your computer makes mine “unwireless”. They offer a 5 year plan for 60 bucks. Maybe I should buy that before they Magicjack up the prices!

  • Pingback: Gettin’ Geeky With It | Chris Pirillo

  • Pingback: » Gettin' Geeky With It

  • http://www.lightstream-media.com Mel Minitor

    I purchased 2 magicjacks each with the 5 year plan. One for my S.C. office and one for office in Az. It is saving us a ton in long distant charges. I feel since I am already pay for my internet service, I am paying my share of FCC charges. The only problem I’ve found is when we have a few computers on the network doing downloads, it will cause the magicjack to break up… however, when there is not a lot of network usage, it works fine..

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Thanks for the info Mel.

  • Pingback: It?s The Comments Not The Article About Magic Jack - Globe Blog

  • Pingback: It?s The Comments Not The Article About Magic Jack - Boston Globe Blog

  • Frank Schnyder

    Yeah. People feel brilliant when they figure something out. Although the comment was based on logic, I agree with the other people here that say that Magic Jack is only responsible for the device and the account management, not the internet connection. I bet a lot of their support answers are “call your ISP!”

  • Brian Hamilton

    Well this is an article comment. I think that I should make it good.

    But I think that this is a load of garbage. I mean, I can’t even believe that they would come out with something like this, and make people buy it. It is a good idea in retrospect, but seriously, I think that this is going to be shut down. And then what? Back to the regular ways…oh joy.