Vonage Simultaneous Ring and Virtual Mexican Number
For years I have lived in Tijuana and before I started living on a retirement income I had the Vonage Mexico Sin Limites plan with a Vonage Virtual Mexican number. I liked everything about it except the price.
Vonage Sin Limites is $39.99 (about $50.00 with taxes and fees) a month. The Vonage Virtual Mexican number costs an additional $4.99 (about $6.75 with taxes and fees) a month. So budget $67.00 to $70.00 a month if you want to implement what I am discussing in this post.
The call quality is as good as it gets. There are also some very handy features.
Calls made to the Vonage Mexican Virtual number are automatically routed to your Vonage U.S. number; however, the caller does not pay International fees; the cost to the caller is the same as it would be calling a Mexican number.
You can set Vonage Simultaneous Ring to ring both a U.S. and Mexican cell phone as well as your landline. It is a “set it and forget it” feature meaning you do not have to deal with things like activating or de-activating call forwarding.
You could set Vonage Simultaneous Ring so that a call your Vonage U.S. number or your Vonage Virtual Mexican number would simultaneously ring:
- Your Vonage VoIP landline
- Your U.S. cell phone
- Your Mexican cell phone
- Your U.S. and/or Mexican work number
Vonage also has an extension app that I added to my Android phone. (My guess is there is also an app for iPhones.) With the Vonage Extension app a person in the U.S. can call a Mexican (landline or mobile) number without charge. The cost of the calls is part of your monthly Vonage Mexico Sin Limites fee.
I suggest using the + key when entering phone numbers into a contact list. Examples:
+1 858-123-456 = U.S. numbers
+521 664-987-6543 = Mexican Mobile numbers
+52 664-567-8901 = Mexican landlines
I enter my phone numbers into a Gmail account contact list. (Since Google owns and develops Android it Gmail works well with Android phones. However, it is possible to import/export contact lists from Outlooks and other programs and I believe it is also possible to synchronize non-Gmail contact lists with Android phones.)
I synchronize my contact list—with entries made using the plus key—with both my U.S. and my Mexican cell phones. That way I only have one contact list to maintain and I can make a phone call using either cell phone.
All this makes for a very nice telecommunications solution for people living in Mexico. (At least for those who are not living on a limited income.)
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Now that I am living on a limited income I have a different telecommunication solution that works almost as well and costs much less. But that is a subject for another post.
Another topic for another post involves the advantages of pairing cell phones with Bluetooth handsets. Something I recently did and so far am happy with the results.
