Digital Home Thoughts: Set Up Your Own Home Phone Service

"Google Voice. Skype. VoIP-to-PSTN providers. SIP-to-SIP calls. All of these technologies and products allow you to make calls that are either free or much cheaper than on your landline. Wouldn’t it be great if you could escape the clutches of your Telco and connect your home phone to these services? A phone server like Asterisk can help you realize this dream."

In a world all a twitter with text-style messaging, it is easy to forget that many of us have voices to communicate. Us old-school people sometimes use a phone to talk to other people and while it is slow and not quite multi-tasking friendly, it can be effective. Of course, with VoIP, calling people far, far away has become really cheap and with services like Google Voice, its practically free. If you have a free weekend, some extra hardware lying around, and the urge to prove your geeky prowess, you could do worse than setting up your own home phone service.