Let’s address the elephant in the room — or, more accurately, the dropped call in the pasture. If you live in a rural area, you’ve earned a healthy skepticism about technology promises. “It works great!” usually comes with an asterisk: in ideal conditions, in metropolitan areas, with fiber internet.

So let’s have an honest conversation about VoIP reliability in the real world, where internet connections vary and the nearest cell tower might be a suggestion rather than a guarantee.