Low-tech VOIP
Since we had to set up all of
our utilities from scratch on our new property, Mark decided to enter
the twenty-first century in the process. Why pay for both internet and
a home phone when you can use VOIP technology to get both for the same
price?
To that end, we spent
fifty bucks on a phone adapter that lets us plug an
ordinary home phone into our router. Then Mark set up a free Google Voice account that provided a
local phone number and simulates having a home phone. We did opt to pay
$25 per year for optional 911 service, but otherwise calls are totally
free within the U.S. and Canada.
What's the catch? There
are only a few. First, you can only set up a Google Voice account if
you already possess another phone number --- we used our emergency,
pay-as-you-go cell phone for that purpose. Also, there's no caller ID
on the phone (although you can see the number on the internet) and
voice messages are emailed instead of showing up on your home answering
machine.
On the plus side, phone
quality seems to be quite a bit better than on a cell phone. And the
transcribed voice messages that come to your email inbox are a major
time saver if your callers have a tendency to ramble on. Overall, this
is a cheap and easy solution for home phone service if you already pay
for internet service, and I suspect it'll be plenty for our
low-phone-use household.
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.
Hi Anna and Mark,
Great idea. So do you have a wired internet connection and Google voice up to that?
Or does it hook to a wireless internet connection?
And what does the final cost picture look like per month?
John
Hi Michael,
And now we pay $$ for what? A two way radio in our pocket that we own.
Hi Anna,
This is a basic Fairpoint wired DSL internet line. About 700 k bits per second. Not really cheaper than you since I 'must' get wired telephone also.
ALL the incoming wired telephone calls are junk....
But it is wired, so not radio with all that unreliability added.