I’m “This” Close to Canceling our Home Phone

We’re just about to pull the trigger on canceling our home phone service.  I have resisted canceling our phone because I have used it a lot for work, since I work out of the house.  Recently, I received a VOIP phone number and a Plantronics USB headset for my work laptop and it is working very well.  I’m on a pilot at our company which is sure to turn in to a permanent service.

What is it?  It’s basically a corporate version of Skype that integrates with Microsoft Communicator (the business version of their instant messaging product).  Now when I need to call someone, I simply put the headset on and dial right from the screen on my computer.  I’ve been using it for about a week now and the call quality has been outstanding.  It also improves voicemail handling so that instead of having to dial in to a voicemail service, I just get an email in my Outlook mailbox with a wave file attached.

I will be trying to use this exclusively for a few more weeks to make sure there are no cobwebs in it and then we may cancel our home phone.

One thing that I’m a little hesitant about is losing the phone number that we’ve had for about 12 years.  I really wish we could port it over to Google Voice but I’m not aware of that option yet.  Does anyone know another cheap way I could port the number and park it somewhere for future use?