Using VoIP to save on phone costs

Obviously phone bill cost is going to suck for me. At least initially almost all of my calls are going to be International to the US. And my poor friends are going to be stuck making International calls as well. And with most people having only a cell phone that can get costly. So how the hell does one deal with this?

VoIP might be the answer. So my parents know what I am talking about, VoIP is Voice over IP. Basically you make your phone calls go over the Internet instead of through a phone line. What is cool about this is that calls are cheap; $25/month gets you unlimited calls to any US or Canadian number if you go with Vonage.

Not only that but you get to have a phone number anywhere you want. As long as you have a broadband Internet connection calls can get routed to you from anywhere, meaning that a company like Vonage can give you a number in California, reroute the call over the Net to Vancouver, and then reach me on my Internet connection (using a box that allows me to connect a normal phone to my Net connection).

Where this gets interesting is if you set up a PBX. That acronym represents setting up a phone network. Let's say I get a VoIP phone account with a number in Washington. I then hook up my end in Vancouver to a cheap computer that has PBX software on it. Let's also say I have a landline in Vancouver. Now, theoretically I could have calls that my computer in Vancouver receives from the phone number in Washington be routed over the landline in Vancouver and have it, say, call my cell phone. So I just did a bunch of phone connection hops that allows a Washington phone number connect to my cell phone in Vancouver; WA VoIP -> BC computer -> BC landline -> BC cell phone.

It can also go the other way. Let's say I have my friends in BC call my landline when I don't answer my cell or they know I am out of the country. I could set up the computer in BC to route the call over VoIP to dial out to any number I specify, such as my dad's house number or Jer's cell phone. Now when I visit people in Washington my calls automatically get routed to the nearest phone to me in the states with them dialing a local BC number.

Pretty crazy when you think about it. The real trick is getting the setup done correctly. First I would need a VoIP account with a US phone number. Next, I would need a dedicated computer to handle the call routing. Last, I would need a landline hooked up to the computer to handle VoIP -> cell or BC landline -> US . This is also assuming I can get a Net connection fast enough to handle the VoIP calls (not only fat enough but not stuck behind NAT, on a school network perhaps, since apparently VoIP protocols hate it).

Guessing at costs, that is $25/month for the VoIP account, $200-$500 for the dedicated computer (costs vary so much based on size and noise minimization), $20/month for the BC landline, and $15/month IT service (as in maintenance of the setup on my part). Is $60/month worth it all? Will it shave that much off the cost of my Canadian cell phone? Hell, how feasible is all of this?

Answers: probably (taking into account the handiness of having a single number in BC for reaching me in the States and for people in the US to have a number to call without International charges) and who knows (another summer project!). =)