VoIP
Traditionally your telephone is connected to the telephone company (telco) over a copper pair of wires. Now, most of us have broadband internet connections to our house, and cellular telephones, bring in a new wave of telephony options. One of the most popular is voice over IP. In order to try this out, you will need 3 things:
- A broadband connection with low latency
- A VoIP phone. This can be a softphone or a hardware voip phone, or a VoIP phone adapter.
- A VoIP (SIP) provider.
The advantage of going this route, is once #2 is resolved, monthly costs of a SIP provider are a fraction of the cost of traditional copper pair. The risk is that if your internet connection has issues or is down, you will have no telephone access. If you have a cellular phone for emergencies, it's probably not a big deal if VoIP calls go to voicemail because of internet issues once in a while.
In Canada right now for example, there are SIP providers that will give you a DID (your own North American telephone number) for less than $3CDN/month, and then you pay 1.1cents CDN per minute anywhere in North America! This is surely less than you pay the telephone company.
