Free Phone Service

This is a post on how to make and receive phone calls for free to and from numbers within the United States.

These instruction require you to have a SIP phone. You can run SIP phone software on your computer (SIP Communicator is nice, free, and open source -- http://sip-communicator.org/), on your smartphone/PDA (Fring is available for free -- http://www.fring.com/), or buy a SIP phone device which are a tad expensive (investigate this option after you get it working with the software if you wish).

In brief, you'll need to set up the following:

1. SIP service
2. IPKall service
3. Google Voice service

Step 1: SIP service
A SIP service provider is somewhat like Skype except that it uses the standard SIP Voice-Over-IP (VoIP) protocol. Here is a relatively recent list of free SIP service providers
http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/2009/01/free-sip-accounts-revisited.html
Register an account with any one of them.
After you get a SIP account, configure your SIP software on your computer or smartphone with your account details. Your SIP service provider should have a number to call to test your configuration. Make sure you are set up correctly by calling the test number.

Step 2: IPKall service
IPKall (www.ipkall.com) provides a land line number with a Washington State area code to receive land line calls and route them to your SIP phone service. To register an account with IPKall you'll need some details from your SIP service provider such as your SIP number and your service provider's SIP proxy server name.
After you register an account with IPKall, they'll email you your new Washington state phone number. Call that number from a phone and it should ring your SIP phone.
At this point (if you are set up correctly) you can receive but not place calls.

Step 3: Google Voice
Google Voice (www.google.com/voice) is a really neat free service provided by Google. With a Google Voice account you will receive a phone number with an area code in your area. You will be able to use that number to ring any of your phones (your home phone, cell phone, office phone, etc.). It also provides services to screen and block calls and gives you visual voice mail and a transcription of your voicemail via email and/or SMS. It's pretty neat. Using Google Voice you can also initiate calls.
Add your new IPKall number to your Google Voice account then use the Google Voice web site to place calls to any number within the United States. If you are using an iPod Touch you should use https://www.google.com/voice/m/contacts to place calls.
One caveat: Many people have set up IPKall numbers with Google Voice and IPKall terminates accounts inactive for 30 days. So, you might get a recycled number that is already registered with Google Voice. Google won't allow you to add it to your Google Voice account if someone else already has it added to their account. In that case, cancel your IPKall account and try again.

There you go. Free phone calls.
iPod Touch users will need the earphones with remote and mic (which can be found elsewhere for as low as a tenth the Apple price).

The easiest and best SIP service to use for this is Gizmo5 which Google bought a year ago. But since then new registrations have been closed. With a Gizmo5 account you don't need to use IPKall as Google Voice will allow you to set up your Gizmo5 SIP number as one of your phones.
I recommend that you enter your email address in the Gizmo5 web site to receive information about the re-launch if you don't already have a Gizmo5 account.