Free Sip Calls To Us Landlines

Feature: Ask Ars: Help! I need VoIP service for my virtual office!

Q: I recently quit my old job at a large company and started working for a startup. The startup is 100 percent virtual (we have no office, and everyone works from home), which is great, because I love doing conference calls in my boxers. But the downside is that I miss some aspects of my older, non-virtual job. Specifically, we all had landline phones with great sound quality, voicemail, and extensions—the usual phone features that everyone expects at an office job.

But now I'm stuck using either my cell phone, which drops calls when I'm inside my house, or my own personal landline, which I tie up for hours on end (this drives my wife nuts). I've recently started looking into business VoIP services, and I thought maybe Ars would have some insight there, since you guys are a virtual company as well. Any thoughts?

The good news is that you can indeed find a VOIP provider that gives you all the features that you're used to from your old office phone—extension dialing, voicemail, a directory, etc. The bad news is that finding a decent VoIP service for your startup or business is a lot like buying a new cellphone. There are lots of options to choose from, and with a myriad of add-ons and pricing plans, it can be difficult to tell them apart.

Ars currently uses a service called OnSIP , which offers such features as voicemail, extensions, call forwarding, and automated menu—essentially, everything you've described and more. We also have the flexibility of using OnSIP with both standard Polycom IP phones , which offer exceptional call quality, and with third-party software clients as well. (Seriously, the Polycom phones running over IP provide scary-good clarity for conference calls. Our editor-in-chief "jokes" about holding staff calls just to enjoy the experience.)

Other services, such as Aptela , 8x8 Inc. , and Phonebooth , work in a similar manner but differ on a few key points that we'll examine shortly. In any case, you'd be wise to compare features, call quality, and most importantly, price—some of which we'll do here.

But before we dive into specifics, let's lay the groundwork by explaining what made your old office phone system work the way it did, and how VoIP phones differ.

In your non-virtual office, it's likely that you had a private branch exchange, or PBX, handling all incoming, outgoing, and internal calls. For the sake of both cost and efficiency, this type of system also allowed multiple users and extensions to be directed—or multiplexed—through a single line. From an internal standpoint, this makes it easier for employees to contact each other within an office by dialing nothing more than an extension. Such inter-office calls stay within the PBX, as opposed to being unnecessarily routed to the phone company and back to a person who could quite possibly be sitting down the hall.

LocalPhone Free Calls to USA Mobile & Landlines |Free Pc to Phone ...

I guess, this Localphone Free Calls to US Mobile offer is valid for both old and new users. So if you wanna make calls to US phones then probably you should make use of this localphone offer. Making calls from Localphone is very easy, the easiest way is to either make Pc to Phone calls using its softphone. Or make Phone to Phone calls using localphone SIP settings. Just configure Localphone SIP in your Fring mobile account and start making free calls to USA. Apart from this offer, Localphone is also offering 15% extra free credit by using the special offer. That's like 15% extra bonus credit. Obviously, Rebtel 100% bonus credit offer (exclusive to Free Pc to Phone Calls readers) is better than this one. But still if you have already planned to join Localphone then making use of 15% bonus credit offer will be useful.

VoIP Monthly Newsletter

PC magazine, the independent guide to IBM-standard personal computing

IMS, A New Model for Blending Applications

New scientist

Wireless Home Networking For Dummies