If you're ready to cut the cord to your traditional landline telephone and use your broadband internet connection as your phone line, you have plenty of options, especially if you're interested in continuing to use the phones you already have in your home for VoIP calling. This week we're going to look at some services that allow you to connect your regular home phones to the internet for cheap internet calls.
Earlier in the week, we asked you which services you used to transition your home telephone service from a traditional carrier to your broadband connection, and you responded with great suggestions. Now we're back to highlight the top five, based on your nominations.Photo by Andy Melton.
Ooma
Ooma prides itself on quick setup, and richly featured devices and services. When the company launched a few years ago, they were one of the first to offer you the ability to port your phone number (for a charge, of course) and call any number in the United States?including other land lines?completely for free. They still do, and even though there's more competition now, Ooma still makes setup easy and offers competitive international rates. If you sign up for Ooma's subscription "Ooma Premier" service ($119.99/yr or $9.99/mo,) you get a second line, three-way calling, call forwarding, Google Voice extensions, personal blacklists, enhanced voicemail features (many of which are already available with Google Voice,) and more. To get started with Ooma, you'll need to drop $199.99 on an Ooma appliance, and up to $249.99 for an appliance with a Bluetooth or wireless adapter so you can extend service into other rooms or use a Bluetooth headset with it. Ooma-ready phone handsets will set you back an additional $49.99, and the Ooma mobile apps for iOS and Android will cost you $9.99.
Obihai
Obihai is the manufacturer behind the Obi100 and Obi110 VoIP conversion boxes. The beauty of the Obi line of products is that if you set them up correctly, all of your calls can be completely free. They integrate well with Google Voice, and while you can certainly plug on into your broadband connection at home and use your home phones over VoIP, you can also download the Obion mobile apps for your smartphone to send and recieve calls through your Obi on the go (wireless charges still apply, but long distance and tolls won't.) If you have a friend with an Obi device in their honme, you can call them over the internet, using your home phone, completely for free, and others can call you direct, or call a friend with a local Obi and get routed through to yours, avoiding long-distance charges. Getting on-board with Obihai will cost you $43.99 for the Obi100, or $49.99 for the Obi110 (which allows you to bridge calls between VoIP and a land-line.) Those of you who nominated Obihai made note that the combination of an Obi device and Google Voice gave you the closest thing to having a full-fledged phone company, complete with enhanced features, for a single one-time charge.
Vonage
Vonage was one of the first VoIP services to make it big?huge marketing campaigns and a robust VoIP solution that allowed you to use your home phone and avoid long-distance charges didn't hurt. Unlike some of the other contestants in the lineup, Vonage doesn't offer you a one-time purchase, after which you're on your own unless you want premium services. Instead, you trade in your traditional phone company for Vonage, and you still get a monthly bill, just from Vonage instead of your phone company. That bill can range from $11.99 to $49.99 domestically, and tack on between $14.99 and $54.99 internationally if you need to make global calls. At the same time though, they offer you a VoIP appliance for free, and all of the features that a traditional phone company would offer you for a much lower price. That subscription price also includes voicemail, caller ID, forwarding, Vonage "extensions," or the ability to ring multiple numbers, and more. Vonage is ideal for the user interested in switching to VoIP, but doesn't want the hassle of setting up an appliance themselves, or hooking up with Google Voice for extended features.
Skype
Skype is more than just a computer-to-computer calling service: the service has come a long way and offers a number of solutions that allow you to use your home phone with Skype to call your friends on their computers or their land lines. Skype's new FREETALK appliances allow you to connect any traditional phone in your home to your broadband internet connection and place local and long-distance calls through Skype. If you'd prefer, you can buy Skype's branded cordless phones that do it all for you. One of the nice things about Skype's home phone service is that you can use it in conjunction with your Skype account on your mobile phone or desktop computer, making Skype a complete replacement for all of your calls: mobile, VoIP, and computer-to-computer. Of course, the FREEtALK applicances will set you back between $39.99 and $59.99 depending on the types of phone calls you plan to make, and the Skype-branded phones will cost you between $69.99 and $89.99 depending on the ones you want. You'll have to sign up for an annual subscription or add credits to your Skype account to continue using them. Also, keep in mind that Skype does not offer E911 or emergency calling.
Nettalk
NetTalk is another VoIP service that combines cheap appliances that connect your home phone to your broadband internet ocnnection with subscription services that replace your traditional phone company. NetTalk is cheap: their appliance will set you back $69.99 and comes with a year of service, after which you'll pay $29.99/year. The tiny NetTalk Duo adapter gives you free calls over your broadband connection across the US and Canada using your traditional home phone, free conference calling, and affordable international calling plans (although you'll have to be up on that month's per-minute rate to the country you plan to call.) NetTalk is one of the cheapest subscription services in the roundup, but that's mostly because they don't upsell you on advanced features like call forwarding, voicemail, and other services that Google Voice offers: they're a low-cost, no-nonsense VoIP solution.
Now that you've seen the top five, it's time to vote for an all-out winner.
While it's not really an honorable mention, we thought that this week we should give a special shout-out to Google Voice, mostly because the majority of you mentioned that you use Google Voice in conjunction with one of these services in order to make your internet calls even cheaper. Many of you noted that you'll hook up your home phones to one of these services, but also use Google Voice for cheap international and outgoing calls, and then only use your traditional phones for incoming calls.
Also worth mentioning is Magic Jack, which was noted but didn't get enough nominations to make it into the top five. Magic Jack has for years been synonymous with giving you a way to ditch your phone company and use your home phone to place calls over the internet, although it's reputation has fluctuated between lifesaving service and overpriced infomercial fodder several times over the years. Also, the more hands-on in the community noted they preferred to roll their own solution using Sipgate or Asterisk.
Have something to say about one of the competitors? Want to share your home VoIP setup with the community? Have your say in the comments below.
You can reach Alan Henry, the author of this post, at alan@lifehacker.com, or better yet, follow him on Twitter or Google+.
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