Finally, after four months, Verizon finally transferred my number over to Vonage. I had to whine to Vonage a bit, which seemed to speed things up actually.

As soon as I got the confirmation of the number being transferred, I raced outside, hunted down the Verizon box, and disconnected the phone line from the house. Which of course allows me to plugin the Vonage line into the house line (without fear of any interference from Verizon hiccups).

I get all these features from Vonage for $15 a month. For anyone who still uses dialup, if you're paying $20 for that, and $35 for Verizon phone service (what I was paying), It costs just a few dollars more for Comcast high speed ($42) and Vonage ($15). Plus you end up with high speed (4 Mb down (!)), all those telephone features mentioned above, and you're no longer paying Verizon :-)

Verizon, see ya :-)