With prepaid SIM card, calls are charged per minute. I paid $100 for 1000 minutes every year, which is equivalent to 10 cents a minute. Or 10 cents per text message. Although my phone usage is considered insignificant at all compared with other average household, I'm still determined to find ways to reduce my phone expenses.
Solving Incoming Calls Expenses
There are a number of VoIP services out there, but I chose to use the free ones.
Gizmo5 is a well-known service, but new registration has been disabled since Google acquired it. I was thankful to have an account before that. But there is another free service called
sipgate. A phone number is assigned to the account once it's registered. What I like about these services is that even though outgoing calls are still charged, incoming calls are essentially free! So, that pretty much solves the incoming calls side of expenses.
Outgoing Calls are Trickier
Thankfully there's the free
Google Voice. Again, a phone number is assigned after registration. What's great about Google Voice, even though it does not provide VoIP service, is that it acts as a great phone forwarding system. For those who don't know how Google Voice works, say if you want to make a phone call to someone, Google Voice forward that request to your phone first, before it automatically dial out to the person. So the idea is to have Google Voice dial sipgate number first before it actually dial out to the person you wanted to call. Sipgate incoming calls are free, Google Voice act as a free forwarding system, and combining those two made outgoing calls anywhere within the US free.
Integration with iDevices
The next step is to make life simpler. I sure don't want to spend my time in front of the computer every time I make a phone call. Since I have iPhone and iPad, those two could potentially be very useful.
Sipgate has its own
iPad app which is great. But it has its flaw. For example, I can't pick up an incoming call if a call comes in if the app is running on the background because the "accept call" button cannot be viewed on the screen. Thankfully there's another app called iSip, which allows integration with any VoIP services or devices. One trick when setting sipgate on iSip is to turn off NAT Detect, otherwise an incoming call will not get alerted.
Having a VoIP app on iDevices is great. The problem now is with wifi constantly turning itself off after few minutes in sleep mode. An app from Cydia called "
Insomnia" and "KeepAwake" is available to solve this issue. However, it only works with iPhone. With iPad, it reboots itself few minutes after the screen is turned off. Even Insomnia Pro v4.0 seems to have
this problem. Nevertheless, all is well with iPhone.
And Then ...
I do not have data plan on an iPhone. So, this probably kills the "anywhere, anytime" characteristics as a cell phone. But I will be looking to see if there is a cheap, simple solution from
LEiMobile.
