VoIP

A while back our landline developed static and then went dead.  The signal out at the box was fine, and I replaced the jack, so it became obvious that the problem was in the line under the house -- in an horrible crawlspace I'd never wish anyone to enter.  It was decided we would have that line disconnected, and that we would probably bundle phone service with our local cable provider.

I might add that this house once had 3 working phone jacks, and that the 2 others failed over the past few years.  Old lines...

Okay, so we scheduled a service call to have the cable company hook us up, but I had second thoughts.  Should it really cost an extra $30 per month?

For the record I have no idea what our phone cost before, because my generous-yet-frugal mother-in-law took care of it.  How much is it for local service, no long distance, no caller ID nor call waiting?  That's what we had...

...and to be quite frank, it pissed me off.  Without caller ID, I had no idea whether there would be an actual person on the line when I answered, or (more likely, it seemed) yet another telemarketing robot*.  Plus, if we wanted to make long distance calls we had to have a calling card.  Sheesh.

Since the landline failure the number of cellphones in this family has gone up from 2 to 3.  This is pretty much an acceptible number of phones for a family of 5 living under one roof, in my opinion (though my daughters might disagree).  I can be reached through one of them, usually, via my wife or one of my daughters (and at times I'm left with one of the phones).  However the one my wife has was sort of inherited as a byproduct of my mother-in-law's recent divorce -- so her phone is on her mom's plan, and her mom is only willing to pay for a certain amount of service (generous, but frugal).  She's pretty insistent about us getting some kind of alternative...

Now, believe it or not I've toyed with the idea of getting a cellphone myself.  For good or bad, though, I'm electrosensitive enough to be bothered by microwave radiation -- got a quick and nasty headache recently just by putting one of those phones up to my head (and now I only use it on speaker).

Point is, yes, phone through the net in some form is the answer.  But which form?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_VoIP_software

I'm looking into it.  We'll need some hardware, and this will take a while to figure out, but there just HAS to be a less expensive alternative to bundling phone service with the cable company.  I mean, $30/mo might not sound like much, but that's $360 a year.  Already I see I can get a number from DiamondCard for $24/yr...!  Don't know what the additional charges will mount up to, but I can't see it approaching $360.

Looking at all my options before committing to anything.  Comments?  Suggestions?

*Generally I like robots, but...