I have come up with a home voip solution that is even cheaper than the previous solution I blogged about before that involves using Voipbuster and Skype.
This new solution does not involve Skype.
What you'll need:
A broadband internet connection with one extra available ethernet port
An unlocked analog telephone adapter that can be configured for any SIP provider.
(Personally I use an old former Packet8 adapter that I have unlocked. Do an Amazon.com or ebay search for "unlocked vonage adapter" and you should be able to find an inexpensive similar device.)
A Voipraider account (www.voipraider.com) or a similar account with one of the other Betamax services, such as Voipbuster.
An ordinary phone (yes, any phone that you'd use for normal landline service!)
An answering machine (Personally, I have one of those old ones that were popular in the 1980s that uses a cassete tape and even includes a speaker phone. I bought it used at a Salvation Army thrift store in Dayton, Ohio, in about 1995 for $2. It still works like new! No need to subscribe to home phone voice mail!)
A free Washington State US phone number provided by ipkall.com that you can use with sip. Register for free on their website and they give you a number.
(If you need to have a number in your own geographic area code) a free Grandcentral number from Google. The Grandcentral number will be in your US area code, and you can set Grandcentral to forward all incoming calls you receive on that number to your free Washington State number you got from Ipkall, which will MAKE YOUR PHONE RING WHEN PEOPLE CALL YOU! A novel idea.
How to make it work!
1. Plug your ATA into your cable modem or broadband router.
2. Plug your phone into the phone line jack on the ATA. If you need to plug multiple phones in, such as a cordless phone and an answering machine, plug a splitter into the ATA first and then plug both phones into the splitter. DO NOT PLUG THE ATA INTO A WALL JACK WITH A LIVE PHONE COMPANY (non-VOIP, think Verizon, AT&T etc.) PHONE LINE, OR IT COULD DAMAGE THE ATA.
3. Configure your ATA to use voipraider, voipbuster or a similar service by following the SIP device configuration instructions on http://www.voipbuster.com/en/sipp.html or by Googling for configuration settings if your particular device is not shown. Note that the sip server address for voipraider is sip.voipraider.com and not sip.voipbuster.com, but otherwise the settings are the same for either service.
> If the above step was successful, you should hear an American dial tone when you pick up the phone.
4. Make a test call. Services like voipraider give you a certain number of free minutes for test calls before they make you buy credit. Call your Mom and ask her if she can hear you. It will seem no different from any other ordinary landline phone call.
5. Connect your ipkall number to your voipraider account so that people can call you.
Log into your ipkall.com account and enter and submit the following settings:
(Example: You are Barack Obama. Your email address is barack@presidentialemail.com, your voipraider user name is "obama" and your voipraider password is "president")
Sip phone number: obama
Sip proxy: sip.voipraider.com
e-mail address: barack@presidentialemail.com
password: president
Seconds to ring before hang up: 120
6. Call your ipkall Washington State number from a different phone. Your other phone will ring. Don't answer, let your answering machine pick it up and leave yourself a message!
7. Now that you know that you can both make and receive calls, you need to buy $10 of prepaid credit from voipraider. When you do that, voipraider will award you 90 free days of unlimited calling (actually their free calls are limited to 300 minutes per week, but who calls that much) to all of the countries on their free list, which includes all landlines and cell phones in the United States. Voipraider won't start eating away your credit until after your 90 days of free calling have passed UNLESS:
a) you call American "toll-free numbers" (Yes, it's weird, but voipraider charges you 2 cents per minute to call "toll-free numbers" but charges zero for you to call "non toll-free numbers". So use your cell phone to call toll-free numbers, or call them with Skype since Skype doesn't charge anything to call toll-free numbers.
b) your phone calls to the free countries exceed 300 minutes per week. Unless you are operating a call center from home or intend to make endless calls, don't worry about this!
c) you call a non-free country (like North Korea) or you call a mobile number in one of the countries where only calls to land-line numbers are free (like the Czech Republic). Those charged calls are stilly extremely cheap but not free.
8. Enable outbound caller ID:
Set up a second voipraider account but don't buy any credit for it. Temporarily connect your ipkall number to that second account by following the above instructions.
Download the voipraider Windows program from their website and run it. In the program options, enter your ipkall number (or Grandcentral number if desired, see above) as the number you want to be shown as the number you're calling from and click verify. When your phone rings, pick it up and when the voice with the British accent asks for the 4-digit verification code, enter it as shown on your computer screen. Then it will tell you your number has been verified.
Exit and close the voipraider Windows program on your computer. Log out of the 2nd voipraider account that you created and log your ATA back into your original voipraider account that you bought the credit for.
(Outbound caller ID may need a bit of tweaking with your ATA settings if the voipraider number verification steps alone didn't make it work. Google for help!)
NOTE: You CANNOT call 911 in the US from a phone with this set up. Have an alternate method of reaching them, such as a cell phone.
Comparison:
The above solution
- incoming US number: $0 per year
- outgoing calls to numbers in the US and other free countries: about $10-20 per year depending on how quickly you use up the prepaid credit each time your 90 free days expire
- voice mail: $0 per year (You're using your answering machine!)
Skype as your phone service:
- incoming US number: $60 per year
- outgoing calls: $3 per month unlimited to US numbers, about $10 per month unlimited world (to land-line numbers only in countries besides the US)
- voice mail: Last time I checked, Skype charges about $30 or more per year, or they give you free voice mail if you have one of their unlimited calling subscriptions.
Skype has much better caller ID functionality, but that's about the only advantage I can think of.
Neither of these solutions lets you make emergency calls! If you need cheap "real phone service" in the US and don't want to pay a lot, go with something like joiphone so that you get things like 911, and then make the above solution your second line. 
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