freephoneline.ca uses Voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology. You can sign up with their service for free online. Their website provides you a real Canadian phone number (your choice from random phone numbers generated by their system) upon signing up. You can make phone calls right away using a softphone (a software program for making phone calls from your computer) or Android and iPhone app. The phone calls are free as long as the cities (you are calling) are on their free calling city list. If you wish to use your regular telephone handsets with their service, you need to buy your own analog telephone adapter (ATA) and purchase a configuration file (VoIP Unlock Key) for your ATA. Once your ATA is setup with the configuration file and connected to Ethernet modem, you can hook up your regular phone to the ATA and start making and receiving phone calls. Please note, freephoneline.ca does not offer any support for a 3rd party ATA.
Standard telephone features such as Caller ID, Voicemail and Follow Me Service (essentially a Call Forwarding service; however, you can forward up to 3 different phone numbers) are included. Call Waiting is not advertising but it is reported to be working (you have to set it up in your ATA). The Enhanced Voicemail feature allows your voicemails to be sent to your email account. In addition, porting of your existing phone number is possible (although not guaranteed and available in all cities) for a fee which makes their service attractive for those who have had their number for a long time and would like to keep using it.
Depending on your current home phone bill, you can recover the initial setup cost within 3 - 6 months, (over 10 months if you are using a VoIP phone company such as iTalkBB which already offers very low monthly rate). It might sound too good to be true, but after the initial setup is paid off, you will never pay for your phone bills again! The only concern is that the sustainability of the company is unknown because freephoneline.ca does not collect any monthly fees for providing their service. As such, their revenue is probably dependant on long-distance charges and selling "VoIP Unlock Keys" to new customers.
Please remember VoIP phone service is dependant on your Internet connection so you will lose your phone service if there is a network or power outage. Also, you must keep your address up-to-date in case of emergencies because unlike tra
- SIP Server address (sometimes called SIP Proxy)
- SIP User ID (in most cases this is the phone number)
- The password for the SIP account
To obtain these settings, you must contact Freephoneline and ask for your configuration file. There's a one time charge for this, currently $50 CAD + tax. They will send you a Word document with the settings.
Connect all the cables: power cord, an ethernet cable from your router (or modem) to the WAN port of the HT502, an ethernet cable from the LAN port to your PC and a phone to the Phone 1 port. Open a web browser and type in http://192.168.2.1. The login page will come up, enter admin to log in then click Advanced Settings:
- SIP User ID (in most cases this is the phone number)
- The password for the SIP account
To obtain these settings, you must contact Freephoneline and ask for your configuration file. There's a one time charge for this, currently $50 CAD + tax. They will send you a Word document with the settings.
Connect all the cables: power cord, an ethernet cable from your router (or modem) to the WAN port of the HT502, an ethernet cable from the LAN port to your PC and a phone to the Phone 1 port. Open a web browser and type in http://192.168.2.1. The login page will come up, enter admin to log in then click Advanced Settings:
