Internet is changing many aspects of people’s life. One of very initial goal of internet was to make long distance voice call very cheap as stated by Cisco CEO John chambers in 1990s. It is very much in reality now. Still, home phone /landline can be pretty expensive. Thanks for Obihai technology and Google Voice, there is very low cost of solution for home phone. Below picture shows my home phone system.

In this post, I explain how to set up a low cost home VOIP phone system.

Buy an Obihai box from amazon

There are many different model of Obihai boxes from amazon.
I choose Obihai200 for $47.55. This is just a one time expense!

Connect Obihai box to home wifi router.

I use a cat5 ethernet cable to connect Obihai 200 to my linksys router.
It is possible to use wifi as connection, in this case you need a USB adapter.

Open a Google Voice account.

If you have gmail, you have a Google Voice account automatically.
You can access Google Voice to set up your account.
Google Voice offers free US and Canada voice service, and very low international call, e.g to China, 1 cent/min.

Transfer your current home phone to Google Voice.

This step is a bit complicated: first you need buy a T-mobile prepadi SIM card, and transfer your home phone number to T-mobile prepaid account first, then ask Google voice to transfer number from T-mobile prepaid account to your Google Voice account.
Detailed steps, check here

For details of set up box, please refer to [here] (http://www.obitalk.com/info/support).

Total cost

• Obihai box 200: $47.55, one time charge
• Transfer home phone number: ~$15 for T-Mobile prepaid SIM card, + $20 google Voice transfer service, one time charge.
• US and Canada phone call: free from Google Voice
• Internation call, for me I mostly call to China, which is 1 cent/min. For other countries, check [here] (https://www.google.com/voice/rates).