Free Cell Phone Service

[Hatha Sunahara]

I was watching a network propaganda broadcast on the TV around 6pm tonight and there was a story about Apple's new products, among which were some new incarnations of the iPhone. I have an iPhone5, and for some time now it has made me paranoid because it is a tracking device, and a 'bug' which can enable people I don't know to listen in on what I'm doing. In addition to losing my privacy, I have to pay an exorbitant amount of money for the 'service' provided by the wireless carrier who helps anyone who pays to spy on me.

So, it occurred to me that I have two things in my house that might enable me to 'opt out' of conventional cell phone service without actually losing the ability to get or make calls on my cell phone. One of these things is VOIP service, for which I pay around $8 a month and it allows me to make calls over my internet connection. The other thing is I have a wifi router which enables wireless devices (such as a cell phone) to connect to my internet service. Well, I am thinking why should I pay AT&T some huge amount of money if I can bypass them entirely. And so, I started looking around how to use Wifi and VOIP as a substitute for cell phone service. And there seems to be no shortage of ways to do this, and it turns out lots of people are doing it. I can do this using my iPhone, or I could buy an old Android phone and install a few apps on it and configure them to do just what I want. There are even ways to use Google Voice to get completely free phone service.

I was just wondering if anyone on this forum has any experience with this, who might be able to give me a few tips on getting the most reliable continuous service at the lowest possible cost. Since I am going to be trying this fairly soon, I might be able to post some of my own experiences and give people tips on how to do this based on what I've tried that actually works.

Here's a typical example of what I am talking about:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qM-xAU-dt4


Hatha

[ShortJohnSilver]

Good question!

OK I have some experience with VOIP. I have heard good things about the Android app "Zoiper" as a "softphone".

Concerning quality and reliability, if you are always in a place with decent Wifi - you are fine. Now if you want to use a softphone over cellular data, well, it can be sketchy depending on a huge number of factors.

If you feel you need more hand-holding you can pay Skype something like $60 a year, and they will give you a number and then you just run Skype on your phone and you are done.

[Neuro]

Good question!

OK I have some experience with VOIP. I have heard good things about the Android app "Zoiper" as a "softphone".

Concerning quality and reliability, if you are always in a place with decent Wifi - you are fine. Now if you want to use a softphone over cellular data, well, it can be sketchy depending on a huge number of factors.

If you feel you need more hand-holding you can pay Skype something like $60 a year, and they will give you a number and then you just run Skype on your phone and you are done.
I did the skype number thing a few years ago, on my iPod but it didn't work to well, calls to me weren't generally directed to me even if I was connected. Probably some software glitch that may have been worked out... But I don't think you should do the VOIP route because of concern for your privacy, it is as easy to locate and record your conversations by this as with your normal cell, just you pay less...

nowadays I am using apple's FaceTime,with primarily my family when I am working in Turkey, works very well.

But probably I should just stop communicating altogether to avoid being recorded and categorized...