Magic Jack... Opinions?

I hate residential VoIP. No solid backbone available today to be able to rely on it. Even then, who the hell uses residential phones of any type anymore when you can call anyone you want on your cell phone for cheaper.

Then someone asked me today about Magic Jack... $20 a year for unlimited nationwide calling. Including Canada, I think?

Not currently interested in it for myself, I just wanted to get some 1st hand ideas from people who have it or know someone who uses it.

Does it work like it's advertised? What are the limitations?

Minor Edit: And how does it work in general? Do you receive a new phone number? How are incoming calls processed?

i have it i love it just need a comp and internet thats all

The customer reviews on it are atrocious, at least with a cursory Google search, with many accusing it of being an outright scam.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

IP telephony and a prepaid phone and you're set.

Yeah, it does sound "too good to be true" especially for the price.

However keep in mind most service providers charge X amount for any type of bandwidth or signal processing, whether be it for net access or analog voice and almost 100% of that cost goes to labor for upkeep.

A residential 50/35Mbps line from Verizon FiOS for example would cost an average person $180 a month while a 15/5 line costs $50/month. While technically it costs Verizon next to nothing to provide both of those lines, just a more expensive router / switch which are pretty much standard equipment today. All they do is access a switchport and punch in a clock rate. So all in all, the line you get from them is probably worth $5/month total. If that*.

Even for $2/month, I would say that's a big difference in the actual cost of the service being provided, what I'm curious about is what do people who actually use it think about it.

I've seen mixed reviews doing a google search, searching for "magic jack review" brings up, surprisingly, a lot of positive reviews. However when I search for "magic jack complaints" I see the same problem over and over again, about it "just not working and the company not helping us". But one has to remember VoIP is heavily reliant on the connection quality to the ISP. If the ISP does not have proper QoS implemented, then yeah, Magic Jack would probably suffer.

*Cost to cover for a general 5 year sucessful ROI from the millions they spend burying fiber cable.

excellent service.

Skype is actually a pretty good alternative, I will forward that idea to him too.

So $3 covers outgoing and incoming? And what's the service area? Nationwide or local?

Could always just get a cell phone plan with a fancy online android phone and tether it to your PC or laptop if you root/unlock it.

Well he has internet service covered, I was just trying to stop him from paying Verizon $35/month for a mere landline.

True. Just sayin you could take care of mobile phone AND internet coverage if you already have a plan with your mobile service for minutes/texting and data internet which you can then tether to your PC/Laptop.

Hmm so total Skype solution would cost around... $9 a month including purchasing a phone number. Not too bad.

I've also recommended him to just upgrade his family plan to the next level, in terms of number of mins for $10 more a month lol...


Yeah that would be an okay solution for a single station. But I can't imagine the nightmare of attempting to ICS a tethered connection for his whole family XD. I've also done some research a few weeks ago with ATT's 3G hotspot unit, but honestly I believe a fiber or cable solution would be more cost efficient and better suited for this situation.

Haha I was curious about this, too. I was remembering the good old days of the internet, and like in 2000, I was making ALL calls, anywhere, through the internet, for free. Outside of internet outages, there was NEVER a problem. So fast forward ten years, and people are saying that a similar pay service is fail. So I've been wondering about it myself.

When I saw this thread, I was all intrigued and ***. Then I come here... "it's good... it's bad... it's legit... it's a scam..." haha - I should have expected it!

I actually use MagicJack, and have for nearly a year. Call quality is good, customer service is very good as well. So far as I can tell, there is no limitation on the length of calls, and you can transfer an existing phone number over, or have a new one issued/created. Your missed calls go directly to your email (if they leave a voicemail) and you can listen to them on your pc. You don't even have to own a phone, you can make the calls with a headset/microphone & speakers. Only downside that I've found is that when a call comes in, the MagicJack phone log window pops up to show who's calling, and if you're playing FFXI at that time, it'll take your game window out of focus so you basically freeze in place in game until you go back to that window. I called their customer support to see if there was any way to make it so the window doesn't pop up, but it isn't currently possible.... so I put in a request that the feature be added so that it can run quietly in the background and not interrupt whatever I'm doing online at the time a call comes in.
Long story short: It works, it's a good value... just have to put up with the call log popping up when a call comes in or you place a call.

I have Magic Jack and live in Minnesota, US. My family has been using it for over a year now. It does work great. The calls are clear, and there are no problems calling out or receiving calls.
There are however two catches to it. The first being that your PC needs to be on for it to work. If you turn off your computer you are also turning off your phone service. The second is when making or receiving a call, a box pops up on your screen showing the call details (this is more of an annoyance, but it can be minimized). Other than those two things Magic Jack does work well.

Cool. Thank you everyone for your input.

Just being thorough now, I'll consider energy costs before backing up any claims...

Since these VoIP solutions require a computer to be on all the time and the average computer consumes 200w of power at 110v on average, it will cost:

Maryland Electricity = $.11 per KWhour ~ $.53 per KWday ~ $15.85 per KWmonth.

I know since he has a Netbook lying around, consuming about 10w @ 110v, which I assume is enough for a simple Skype or Magic Jack setup, the cost will be about...

$.024 per day and $.93 per month.

So cost of service plus power consumption will ~=:
Skype w/ Phone Number + 24/7 NetBook = ~$9.93/month
Skype w/ Phone Number + 24/7 Computer = ~$24.85/month

Magic Jack + 24/7 NetBook = ~$2.60/month
Magic Jack + 24/7 Computer = ~$17.52/month

Verizon Analog Phone line = ~$35/month

I maybe going in too much detail but hope this thread helps those who need to decide on a home based telecom solution in the future.

Thanks again everyone for your help.

It's very good there is few other problem i found myself.

1# while playing full screen game the magic jack going to unfull screen it.

2# While playing few full screen games magic jack wont work very well. You wont hear it ring. Or sometime you wont hear the ppl but they hear you.

I would say buy a very low cost Computer and just leave it with internet with it on :)