Server Outage Progress Fongo / Freephoneline

Server Outage Progress:  April 25, 26, 27 2023

We have approx. 30% of Fongo Home Phone users back online.

More Home Phone users will come back online as the day goes on. No action is required.

Free VoIP Phone Service in Canada

VOIP is Voice over IP or Voice over Internet Protocol - using IP networks like the Internet to route phone calls vs using a regular land-line also known as POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service).

This setup can be totally free by using a "soft phone" on your PC or Mac and with a small initial investment it is possible to use a regular phone and still have a free VOIP phone line in Canada - or a Canadian phone number somewhere else in the world.


Get a real phone number
No monthly phone bill
Call many cities in Canada free

This Instruction will cover getting a phone number, setting it up as a "soft phone" on your PC or Mac

But it gets better - with the correct VoIP/ATA device (an "Obihai") and configuration we can bridge VoIP calls over to POTS lines and vice-versa. What is the use of this? I have a VoIP device in Vancouver, Canada and a second device at a family members house in Auckland, New Zealand - this device in Auckland has a Vancouver number on it and is also connected to the POTS system and therefore has an Auckland phone number associated with it. From my device in Vancouver I can call the device in Auckland over the Internet, then call out on the Auckland land-line - so I can get Auckland dial-tone from Vancouver, for free! In Auckland they can pick up the phone and dial almost anywhere in Canada for free. There is also an app for both iPhone's and Android phones that allow you to call an Obihai device and use it to call out - for example my brother in New Zealand installs it on his iPhone and I add him to my trusted network. When he connects his iPhone to the Internet via WiFi he can call my Obihai device and use it to call me on my cell phone

freephoneline.ca - How does it work?

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

VOIP Landline: How to get a free home phone line for life

According to the latest study by the US National Health Information Survey released in June 2012 (link), from 2008 to 2012 the percentage of American households that only use wireless phones went from 17.5% to 34%. All the while, the percentage of households with a landline phone (with or without an accompanying cellphone) decreased from 79.1% to 63.6%. The trend is clear. Consumers are cutting their landlines in favor of cell phones at an ever increasing rate. There are many reasons for this behavioral shift. Smartphones are now ubiquitous. The majority of adolescents and adults have or would like to buy a smartphone. You can carry it around with you all day, others can reach you with one number, you can browse the web, write/read email, play games, listen to music and some users even have unlimited voice and data plans. It’s very convenient.


We believe that the primary reason why users are giving up landlines it that they cost too much. Why pay for 2 phones when you have one with you at all times that does so much more? That’s a very good question, but what if we told you can you can setup a home phone for practically nothing? Would you be interested then? No monthly fees. You can use regular phones and it’s free for life. Now that we got your attention, a lot of common responses that we receive are “this sounds like a scam”, “that’s impossible”, “must be  terrible service”. Well, we have been using this service for over a year without any issues. We have even helped setup such a line for a couple of friends, also without any problems. We’ve read reports that others have been using such a service for over 5 years and they’re still happy with it.

Did we mention that you also get unlimited long distance calling in Canada? Oh ya, that’s free too.
What I’m describing is a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) telephone line. Before we go any further, you should ensure that you have 1) a high speed internet connection, 2) a computer/laptop, 3) a regular landline phone (we recommend a DECT 6.0 cordless phone with a base station and 3-5 handsets), 4) a wireless router and 5) an analog telephone adapter (commonly referred to as an ATA device). Below is a diagram of how everything would be connected.

Freephoneline.ca ATA Disconnect RESOLVE

The most comment support related issue at Freephoneline-Fongo is ATA voip disconnects and are related to Registration Interval.

As the owner of 13 voip ATA's and have sent many Freephoneline-Fongo support tickets. I also made many support phone calls to Freephoneline-Fongo. With the ATA; OBi, VTA-CV, Granddstream, etc) all issues have been resolved with setup changes.


It seems recently as of September 2013 all the ATA with default setting have had disconnect problems,  my question then, is Freephoneline-Fongo making changes, well I can not comment.   But I have had to re-setup all the ATA's that have been working for years until recent September 2013.  

Freephoneline.ca ATA Registration Period RESOLVE

RegistrationPeriod that need to be changed from 60 sec to 3600 sec

the RegistrationPeriod is located in the Expert menu under

Service Providers > ITSP Profile X SIP > RegistrationPeriod

Uncheck the Obitalk Settings and then the Device Default and change the value for 3600

That should fixed the "486 Too many registers" Error Message

Default Value
RegistrationPeriod:  60

Freephoneline VoIP Unlock Key Credentials

The Freephoneline VoIP Unlock Key provides sip credentials that can be used to configure any SIP client to work with the Freephoneline service. Please review the following Freephoneline guidelines to set up your SIP client. Failure to follow the required guidelines will result in account suspension followed by a notification email. Once your configuration adheres to the guidelines, service will be restored.
These guidelines may change over time - if and when they are changed freephoneline users will be notified at the email address used for account login a minimum of 7 days prior to the changes being required. Please ensure your contact information is accurate by visiting your account profile on freephoneline.ca.

freephoneline.ca - Free Local Soft Phone Line for lifetime VOIP

I have found this pretty amazing, especially for their life time free phone line and long distance deal. If you need to attach a VOIP ATA device then you need to purchase their configuration file for a one time fee of $50.

http://freephoneline.ca/

Features:

Free Phone Number
Free Caller ID
Free Voice mail
Free Call Forwarding
Free Long Distance to most Canadian Cities

Have been using this for more than two years now, and personally speaking, works like a charm and found no difference between Bell voice quality and FPL as long as you use G711u codec.

Grandstream HT502 Setting for Freephoneline

Before you start configuring the adapter, make sure you have the following settings for your SIP account:

- 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:

Freephoneline.ca Config Info: Obihai OBi-110 ATA

I read the on-line reviews of the Obihai OBi-110 and its smaller sibling, the OBi-100, and decided to test an OBi-110 in conjunction with FPL.

The first challenge: if you purchase the OBi-110 or OBi-100 from Amazon.com (.com not .ca) it won't get shipped to Canada. Don't know why -- and don't really care except it involves one more step. Have the device shipped to a friend / relative in the good ol' US of A and then have it transshipped via UPS. It adds about $28 to the price -- but I believe in the long run it'll be well worth it.

STEP 1:
I presume you can read the instructions which come with the OBi-110 / OBi-100 about what plugs in where.
However, to summarize (I purchased an OBi-110 so I'll use this going forward; the OBi-100 is identical for purposes of these instructions):
#1. Plug in the supplied RJ-45 cable to the OBi-110 and plug the other end of the cable into your router. I have a D-Link DIR-615 with 4 wired ports of which 2 were free. The other two router ports have D-Link Gigabit Ethernet DGS-1008D switches / hubs attached.
#2. Plug the supplied telephone cable into the PHONE jack on the OBi-110 and the other end into your telephone handset
#3. If your router is set up for DHCP as soon as you connect the power (standard 12 V adapter) the device should receive an IP address
#4. Check that the POWER and PHONE LEDs are SOLID GREEN, and that the ACTIVITY LED flickers periodically
#5. Perform an echo test of the Obihai unit (using the OBiTALK network) by dialing **9-222-222-222
Alternatively you can make a test call by dialing **9-333-333-333 followed by the outgoing number

GrandStream HT-286 Configuration for freephoneline.ca

GrandStream HT-286 Configuration for freephoneline.ca

ATA Config - GrandStream HT-286

http://support.fongo.com/attachments/token/l7ddqvurbehk2yf/?name=ATA+Config+-+GrandStream+HT-286+%2528Nov2010%2529+%281%29.pdf

Setting up the Grandstream HT286 for Freephoneline

Before you start configuring the adapter, make sure you have the following settings for your SIP account:
- 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 to router and a phone to the Phone port. Then pick up the phone and either push the white button on the adapter or dial *** from the phone. The adapter should start playing some menu options. Dial ** and the adapter will read back (with voice) the IP address it has obtained from your router. Open a web browser and type in that IP address. The login page will come up, enter admin to log in. You will be automatically taken to the Advanced Settings page:

Factory reset your OBi110

There are 3 ways to do this:
1. Power on the unit (no need to connect phone or internet), and look for the distinctive hole on the back of the OBi110 by the top-left corner of the product label.    Insert tip of a paper-clip and press for 10 seconds.   The power LED will blink and the unit will reboot.

2. With the unit connected to the same network as your PC, open the webpage of the device.  Under System Management -> Device Update -> Reset Configuration.

Option:
3. Enter ***81 on the phone connected to the OBi's PHONE port.
Pressing ***81 reboots the device and it then shows in Obitalk as online-unmanaged.

I'm not sure how I lost my OBi config settings.
I did ***81 to test it, and was poking around the OBi expert configuration in the OBi portal. I now find that all my OBi settings are set to default, the password was reset to admin.

Linksys PAP2 | PAP2T for Freephoneline.ca

Before you start configuring the adapter, make sure you have the following settings for your SIP account:

- SIP Server address (sometimes called SIP Proxy)
- SIP User ID (the phone number, with 1 in front of the area code)
- The password for the SIP account (a combination of letters and numbers)
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.

Plug in the adapter (power, an Ethernet cable to your router and a phone into Line 1). Wait about 20 seconds then pick up the phone and dial ****110#. The adapter will read back (with voice) its IP address. Open a browser and enter that IP address. The Info page of the adapter will show up.

Setting up a Linksys PAP2 | PAP2T for Freephoneline.ca

Freephoneline.ca Setup Grandstream HandyTone HT-701

Freephoneline.ca Configuration settings for the Grandstream HandyTone HT-701

The instructions say 'Fongo' but will the same settings in PDF file work with freephoneline

Yes they will. Freephoneline is simply a brand of Fongo

ATA Config - Grandstream HT-701 (Fongo) FW 1.0.0.18 (Feb 2013).pdf

ATA Config - Grandstream HT-701 (Fongo) FW 1.0.4.3 (Feb 2013).pdf

Fongo | Development Support Specialist.
http://forum.fongo.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=536

D-Link VTA Setting for Freephoneline

This page discusses the VoIP settings for the D-Link VTA VoIP router. For all the other settings, please consult the user manual available here. The guide applies to all the versions of the D-Link VTA (VTA-VR, VTA-CV, VTA-VD).

Before you start configuring the adapter, make sure you have the following settings for your SIP account:
- 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 to your router and a phone into the green Phone 1 port. Wait about a minute for the router to power up, then check your router's DHCP table to find the IP address assigned to the ATA (see some samples for different router brands here). Put that IP address in a browser and login with username Admin and blank password.