Setup Your Own VoIP Home Phone for $5/month…or Free

For the past couple of years, I’ve been using Vonage for my home phone service. Recently, I decided to dispense with a packaged phone plan all together. Why not build my own from the ground up? This post described how to do just that.

This will be old hat for you VoIP gurus, but I think most people — even the tech savvy — don’t realize how accessible do-it-yourself VoIP is now. Until recently, I didn’t know all the pieces of the puzzle were ready for me to put together with so little hassle and expense (and volume). Anyway, I didn’t find a step by step guide, so I thought I should provide one.

Step 1: Buy an unlocked Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA).

You can plug in any normal telephone into an ATA which in turn is plugged into your router. The ATA sits between your phone and your router, converting the analog signal to digital. Basically, it VoIPifies your phone. I purchased a basic Linksys PAP2 from DirectCanada.com for about $50. Of course, I already had a PAP2 from Vonage, but it was locked down so that it will only work with their service. There are ways to unlock them, but I decided not to monkey with that.

Alternatively, instead of using an ATA, you could buy an IP Phone that can talk VoIP natively.

Step 2: Setup an account with a proxy server.

Basically, you need a server to play middleman between your phone number provider (we’ll set that up later) and your ATA adapter. Your phone number is going to register itself with the server as will your ATA. When someone rings your number, the call is routed to the proxy which then routes it to your ATA which then sends the signal that causes your phone to ring.

Free World Dialup (FWD) provides this service for…well…free.

Step 3: Configure your ATA to register with FWD.

I use a Linksys PAP2T v. 3.1.15 (LS) and configured it with these instructions along with the setup information from FWD.

Some notes:

• Don’t forget to click both “switch to advanced view” and “Admin User”. Otherwise, you won’t see all the fields.
• To set the STUN server, click on SIP and scroll to the bottom of the page.
• After you save the settings, wait for a bit then reload the Info tab. You want to see: “Registration State: Online”
• I was seeing “Can’t connect to login server” until I figured out that my router was the problem. I was using a Linksys WRT54GP2 which has a built in ATA (locked down to Vonage unfortunately). The router was hard wired to forward SIP packets to its internal ATA and was therefore interfering with my external ATA. A different router did the trick.
• For trouble shooting the PAP2, under System, you can set Syslog Server and Debug Server to the IP address of a computer on the network and Debug Level to 99. Then, on that computer, use a syslog reader (e.g. Kiwi Syslog Daemon) to see specifically what is going on.

Once your ATA is registering properly, do a couple tests prescribed by FWD.

Step 4: Setup a Direct Inward Dialing (DID) number.

A DID is just a normal phone number that takes incoming calls and forwards them to your server. I only have direct experience with two DID providers, Les.net and IPKall. I’ve written more about DID providers in a previous post.

I started with a free DID form IPKall. After you are registered, set your number to forward to FWD (IPKall has instructions on how to do that). As soon as that’s done, when you call your IPKall number from a different phone, the phone attached to your ATA should ring!

If the quality is acceptable and you don’t mind having a Washington state number you could use this setup permanently. I chose to pay for a DID from Les.net so that I could have a local number. Also, Les.net provides outgoing call termination at decent rates so I can use them for incoming and outgoing calls. FWD does not provide for outgoing calls to non VoIP lines. I think you could stick with IPKall/FWD and still make outgoing calls by setting up an account with a “SIP termination” company. You’d just enter their address as the “Outgoing SIP Proxy” in your ATA.

Step 5: Upgrade to a local DID if desired.

Again, I use Les.net and its working great. The setup for every DID provider will be a bit different I think, but the concept will be the same as with IPKall/FWD. One difference in the case of Les.net is that they provide the DID and the proxy, so there’s no need for FWD. I’m not sure, if all DID providers do that or not.

Summary

I pay $3.50 per month plus 1.1 cents per minute for incoming calls. Outgoing calls cost 1.5 cents.  I’m happy with these rates, but there are cheaper options. We use our cells a lot, so I think this “landline” will cost us around $5 per month. So far, the quality has been better than Vonage.

If you decide to give this a go and you get stuck, leave a comment and I’ll help your out as best as I can.