Brett Arends of TheStreet.com in his article “Skip Skype, Vonage: Get VoIP for Next to Nothing” shows that it is pretty easy to set up VoIP with an independent service provider in a “Do It Yourself” approach.

We want to point out that this approach works great with PhoneGnome service. Brett’s steps are:

1. Start with any standard (corded or cordless) phone
2. Buy an “unlocked” ATA (VoIP phone adapter) from someone like Voxilla: approx $60-$100
3. Subscribe to an “independent” VoIP service. Of course, we suggest PhoneGnome: $3 a month for a phone number, and 2 cents a minute or less for calls. Other plans are also available, including unlimited plans. Calls to anyone with PhoneGnome, GizmoProject, or other compatible SIP/VoIP are free.
4. Use the Voxilla Web site configuration wizard to configure the ATA. In this case, with your open SIP credentials provided free with your PhoneGnome account.
5. Lift the handset and call anywhere in the world for free, or at very low rates.

Mr. Arends recognizes, as we do, the advantages of such an approach:

Skype isn’t the cheapest service. You may not want to spend $150 buying a new “Skype” phone. And if you do, you’re stuck using it with Skype — to change to a new VoIP provider you’ll need a new phone.

Savings? It will vary from household to household but for us it’s about $50 a month, or $600 a year. (Bank those savings for 30 years you’ll end up with about $50,000.)

There’s also a lot of convenience features when using this DIY approach with PhoneGnome, such as free voicemail-to-email, sophisticated multi-ring forwarding (find-me), call recording, Google home page integration, Voice Messaging (Voice SMS) and much more.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 10:37 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.