When my partner and I first lived in NJ several years ago, we initially ordered Verizon phone service, because we were unaware of alternative options and/or there weren't very many better phone service options. Now of course the world has changed and there are tons of different options. I initially discovered a VOIP service called Packet8 that cost about $20 per month for unlimited domestic long distance. That seemed cheap at the time. Compared to our current set up though, Packet8 and similar options just seem a little too expensive, even though it was also a quality service.
When we moved addresses, we were offered a good deal from the cable company to get what they called the "triple play" consisting of internet, phone service and tv. It was a good deal, so we signed up for a year and saved a lot of money. Then the year was up and they upped our monthly rate for each service. So in order to keep paying the same per month for internet, phone and TV I called the cable company and canceled the phone portion of our service. 
The rep was quite argumentative and tried to convince me not to cancel the cable phone service. He did so very aggressively. However, I wasn't going to let him have his way. I had already purchased a Netgear cordless Skype phone on ebay for way less than its retail value. It looks and operates like an ordinary cordless phone and has its own version of Skype installed on it. Armed with it and a Skypein number in my area code, I no longer really needed phone service. The phone number from Skype cost only $60 per year and meant that when people called that number our phone rang just like any other phone and we answered it and talked just like on any other phone. Then we ordered the unlimited calling plan for the U.S. and Canada, basically unlimited local and long distance for less than $3 per month. To call, we simply had to pick up the phone, dial the number and press the green button. The phone needs no PC to be on in order to work, because it runs Skype on the phone. And when people called us, the cordless phone would ring and we'd answer it and talk. Few people ever knew we weren't using a "regular phone" as the sound quality was indistinguishable from regular phone service. In fact, it was even better.
There was initially one small issue with using Skype as our only phone service, and that was that our NJ number didn't show up on people's caller ID when we called them. Instead it would show a meaningless fake number or "unknown" with no number. Rather than wait forever for Skype to start offering it, I came up with a solution of my own, although it took some time. I came across a website that posted instructions for unlocking old voip adapters formerly used with old services like packet8 so that they can be used as analog phone adapters for any voip service. I will post the instructions another time. Then I configured our old packet8 dta device to work with Voipbuster, a German voip service that is way cheaper than Skype. Voipbuster gives you 120 days of free calling to landlines in over a dozen different countries just for buying 10 Euros worth of prepaid calling credit. Logging into the ip address of the unlocked old packet8 adapter and following the sip device configuration instructions on the voipbuster site was all I needed to do to get an American sounding dial tone from an ordinary phone plugged into the device. With the 120 free days that they give, outbound calling is almost free. They don't start eating your 10 Euros worth of prepaid credit until after the 120 free days have passed. The call quality is indistinguishable from calls made from any other phone service and is even better than traditional non-VOIP phone service.
Voipbuster enabled outbound caller ID to work with Skypein numbers even before Skype eventually enabled the service on their own. Here's how.
a) You have a cordless phone with built-in Skype, such as our Netgear phone.
b) You have an incoming phone number you bought from Skype for $60 per year ($5 per month), called a Skypein number. So your cordless phone will ring when people call your number. Simple enough.
c) The ethernet cable running from the transmitting base of the Netgear cordless phone plugs into your internet router.
d) The regular phone cable running from the landline jack on the Netgear phone plugs into your unlocked voip adapter configured for voipbuster.
e) Set the "preferred line" on the Netgear cordless phone to "landline". Your fake landline is your dial tone generated by the unlocked voip adapter configured for voipbuster.
Now the caller ID part...
Download the Windows Skype-like voipbuster program from their website. Run it and find "caller id settings" Input your Skypein number as the number you want to use for caller ID and then click on "verify number". When your Netgear cordless phone rings, type in the 4-digit code that you see on your computer when you hear the lady with the British accent say "Please enter the verification code you received." Once it has been verified, your Skypein number will show up on people's caller ID when you call them. Calling them by the way is not a fancy complicated process. Simply pick up the phone, dial the number and press the green button, assuming you've selected "landline" as your preferred line (see above). Or if you prefer to hear the dial tone first, pick up the phone, press the green button and after you hear the American dial tone just dial 1+area code+number and wait to be connected.
...
That instruction is actually now a bit obsolete, because Skype now offers outbound caller ID for its Skypein numbers, which means using the SIP device and Voipbuster no longer needs to be part of the solution. But doing it my way and making the outbound calls with Voipbuster instead of Skype and using Skype only for receiving Skypein calls on the Netgear cordless phone is still cheaper than using Skype for both incoming and outgoing calls. We live in Europe again, but we still have our NJ number so that people in the U.S. can call us here without having to call a foreign number. And we still have at least 90 free days of calling left on our Voipbuster, so we use it to make our outbound calls. However, lately when we outbound call via Voipbuster our number doesn't always get sent correctly to people's caller ID, even though when we outbound call via Skype it does. Voipbuster is cheaper though, and since most people know it's us calling and we still have free days left, we use it to call. Until our free days are used up with voipbuster, I see no reason to switch to Skype's unlimited U.S. or unlimited world calling plan just so people see our NJ number when we call them, especially since Voipbuster includes free calling to landlines here in the Czech Republic.
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