Home Phone Service Savings

Your mission, if you should choose to accept, is to replace your current home phone service with something unbelievably cheap.  Your mission objective is to reduce your current $31 per month service with one that costs $1.50 per month while keeping your existing phones, good phone quality, and features such as caller id, call waiting, voicemail, etc.

Here’s how I did it:

1. Purchased an OBi 110 for $50 from Amazon.
2. Day 1:
1. I purchased a Verizon prepaid phone from Walmart for $15.  It included $10 of air time, otherwise I would have had to purchase some.  At $0.25 per minute that is only 40 minutes of talk time, but that is enough to tell people, “let me call you right back on my other phone”, for a week.
2. I began the port of my house phone number from Cox to Verizon by calling Verizon customer service.  They needed my Cox account information, PIN, and security question/answer.
3. Day 5:
1. Verizon port was complete.  I called Cox to cancel the phone service, but they said that they automatically cancel the service for me.  I called Verizon to get my account number which is required when porting the phone number to Google.
2. I created a new Google account with Google Wallet and Google Voice.  I didn’t want to use my existing Google account.
3. I logged into Google Voice and requested that they port my new Verizon mobile number (which was previously my Cox number).  Google charges $20, that’s why you have to setup Google Wallet first.
4. I setup the OBi 110 which gave me a new phone number.
4. Day 6:
1. Google emailed me confirming that the port from Verizon was complete.  Configured Google Voice as SP1 and OBi (using OBiTalk).
2. Threw away the prepaid phone.  The $10 of air time, or any purchased air time, gets cancelled after the port.
3. For 911 service, I created a CallCentric account and configured SP2 on OBi (using OBiTalk).  This requires $5 minimum balance, plus $1.50 setup fee, plus $1.50 per month (e.g. $8 upfront cost).

Total time spent: About 5 hours of active effort over 6 calendar days.
Total upfront cost: $93
Total monthly savings: $29.50 per month

First year savings: $261
Second year savings: $354

Notes:

2. There are plenty of blogs about people who failed at different points in the above process and had difficulties getting back to where they started.  There is a risk that this won’t work for you!  The keys to success include:
1. Go with a standard carrier for your prepaid phone (e.g. Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T).
2. Each time you port a number, make sure the port completed before continuing with the next step.
3. The quality is very good.  At times, voices were slightly choppy and there was a slight echo.  However, overall, quality issues haven’t been a concern.
4. If the internet goes down, I have no phone or 911, other than my cell phone.  However, since this is a Google Voice number, I can redirect my calls to my cell phone if my internet was going to be down for a while.
5. The whole process is simplified if you are okay with getting a new phone number.  Steps 2 & 3 can be ignored.  These steps were necessary because Google cannot port numbers directly from Cox.  Thank you for being the middleman Verizon!
6. The OBi only has one phone jack.  You can only plug one phone into it.  In my case, I’m using a 3-phone system from Panasonic.  Only one phone needs to have a phone jack anyway.  I have read blogs where people ran a line from their main phone input (outside) so that the OBi makes all wall outlets in the house live.
7. This posting is just to confirm that someone out there was successful.  This isn’t a guide to save you time or headache.  Just be prepared that it is going to take hours of reading documentation and blogs to get through all of the ins and outs, not to mention sitting on hold with customer service.

-- 4/12/2016 Update:
Still going strong!

-- 11/1/2014 Update:
Still going strong! Replaced my router with an ASUS RT-AC66U because the other one died. Excellent router and that issue that caused me to have to power cycle the OBi is gone. I guess the old router was the issue all along.

-- 6/6/13 Update:

After using the OBi 110 and Google Voice (still free) for an entire year, I can't believe we ever paid for our phone service. We have realized our projected savings and it couldn't have been easier (once everything was set up). The only flaw that I've noticed is that after about 2 months caller id stops working. However, a 10 second power cycle of the OBi 110 fixes it every time.

-- 9/23/13 Update:
I can't believe I used to pay for my phone service. I have never regretted switching over. The caller id issue above seems to be gone. It might be that I upgraded my router recently. We are realizing 100% of our projected savings. My total payment is $1.50 per month.

-- 3/26/14 Update:
Still 100% customer satisfaction. Google Voice is dropping their free service so I switched to PhonePower and dropped CallCentric. Now I pay $35 per year for my phone service including 911 and all the bells and whistles.