Free Home Phone

A couple of months ago, I wrote another post about setting up a free phone number using Google Voice.  This can be handy, but perhaps you don't want to make and receive calls from your computer.  You want to use a real phone.  Today I'll explain how to do that.  You can even replace your existing home phone with this and never pay a phone bill again.

This system still uses Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).  In other words, you will still need to have a good Internet connection.  It's also not completely free since you will need to buy a piece of equipment to make it all work.  But dumping phone bills forever means it pays for itself, usually within a month or two.

This is the same concept as Vonage phone service, which offers a similar service for a low monthly fee.  The difference with this system is that after the one time purchase of the adapter,  your calls are completely free forever - at least until Google decides to dump this service.  But I think it has been available for nearly ten years.  It does not appear to be going away.

The service works like this: If you don't have one already, set up a phone number with Google Voice. Create or sign into your free Gmail account, then open www.google.com/voice.  Follow the steps to create a new phone number and pick one.  You can also assign an existing number you have to your Google Voice account.  You can now make or receive phone calls through Google Voice without paying a penny.

But today we are taking that one step further.  Say you want to add a second phone line in your house, or even completely replace the current landline in your home (or anywhere else).  You can connect your Google Voice number to you home phone system quite easily with a device from Obihai Technology.  This device connects to your home internet and then provide a port to connect a phone.  You can connect a single phone, multiple phones, or connect it into any phone jack in your home network to make it work with all the phones in your house.  Once connected to a normal phone, you can make or as many calls as you like.  All calls in the US or Canada are free.  Long distance calls are dirt cheap (e.g. calling Britain in one cent per minute).

I purchased an Obi100 adapter for about $50.  I set up an account and connected a regular 30 year old phone to it and have been using it as a second line in my home.  It has worked great with no problems.  You need to have a good internet connection for things to work properly.  A poor internet connection will distort the voice and make the conversation hard to hear.  Your adapter must connect into an Ethernet port on your network, not just WiFi.  Of course, you can plug a wireless phone into the adapter for a wireless experience.

I can take my adapter and phone with me and plug them in wherever I go.  I always have my phone and phone number with me.  It is usually easier just to use the Google Voice feature to forward calls to another phone or use my tablet when on the road.  But if you are going somewhere else, and want your landline phone with you, there is no problem, as long as you have Internet access and an Ethernet port.

I find this system particularly helpful with teenagers in my house.  I won't let them have a cell phone yet, or more specifically I won't pay for the cell service.  They can use this second line for phone calls without tying up our main line.  At some point, I'm considering moving my main home phone number over to this system, though I have not had the nerve yet.  My main number already uses Comcast VoIP technology, so it is not that big a leap.

The other issue is that Obihai does not work with 911 emergency services.  If you intend to use this as your only phone, and try to call 911, it does not know where you are and cannot connect you to  your local emergency services.  Please keep that in mind.

All that said, I have used this system as a second line in my home for several months now.  I have no complaints with it and recommend it to all.

Free Phone Calls

Talking on the phone used to be terribly expensive for long distance calls.  Costs have certainly come down.  Most of us can make unlimited free nationwide calls for a small monthly fee. But making a completely free call has been difficult to do.

There are many options for free voice communications, such as MS Skype or Apple Facetime.  But to make those work, you need to have the other party using the same program and be online ready to receive the call.  That is great for some people, but there are a great many who don't want to be bothered setting up a new app or sitting by their computer waiting for a call.  There are also many people I don't know very well that I need to call.  They may use Skype, but I don't want to go through the bother of figuring all that out just for a quick call.

For this reason, I am a big fan of Google Voice.  Like Skype or Facetime, you can make computer to computer calls for video or audio chats, as well as instant messaging.  But there is also a dialer component.  You can call anyone on any phone by simply dialing their phone number and talking.  To the person being called, it is just like any other phone call.

The service is 100% free, at least for US and Canada calls.  For other countries, you may have to pay, although the rates are pretty good.

To set this up, you simply need a free Google account and use the free Google Chrome Web Browser.  Add the Hangouts App from the Chrome Web Store.  Dial a number and start have a phone call.  Of course, you will need a computer with microphone and speakers.  I prefer a USB headset myself for better quality.

Even better, if you have limited minutes on your phone, you can use the Hangouts App on your phone to make calls on the phone.  I have an old Android phone without any service on it at all.  I connect it to a Wifi connection and can make and receive calls (you can get a free phone number with your Google account).  I did my tests with Android, but Hangouts is available for iPhone as well.  Tablets of virtually any variety will also work fine.

Google Voice has many other benefits as well.  I can forward calls from my Google Voice to another number, or multiple numbers.  This means I can receive calls many different locations.  Google will also convert any voicemail messages to text and email the full message to me.