OK, so the oil prices are high, house prices are through the roof, and now you have other bills to worry about - like your mobile phone that you never thought of buying but now cannot live without.

Well, I’m going to show you how you can reduce your mobile phone bills, and make up to 300 minutes PER WEEK of free phone calls to anywhere within Canada, USA, and a whole bunch of other countries.

No, this is NOT a gimmick, and YES it works. I’ve managed to do this myself and am now showing the good folks at work how to use this method. So, read on.

First, if you have never heard of VOIP (voice over Internet protocol, or making phone calls over your Internet connection) then you must be living in another world, or totally out of touch with the Tech world. But, no worries, you don’t need to know anything technical to get this working - hopefully!

Instead of going into the technical details of what VOIP is, or how SIP (session initiation protocol) works, I’m going to simply show you what equipment you need and the steps you need to take to make free phone calls. But, if you are really curious, you can read up on SIP at What is SIP - just know that it is an open protocol based on open standards.

Step 1: if you don’t want to be tied to your computer, you need a mobile phone that can connect to the Internet. It must have some features, as follows: WiFi capable (so you can use whatever WiFi hotspot is available), SIP (so you can use the phone with any VOIP provider that supports SIP). Some options are:

  • Prestige 2000W VoIP Wi-Fi phone for about $150 USD.
  • UTStarcom 6700 for about $150 CDN with a service plan, e.g. see the Telus Mobility Plan with a UTStarcom 6700, or the Bell Mobility Plan with a UTStarcom 6700. This is the phone I’m going to show you how to setup and the one I’m using for work. Since this phone also has access to the cellular network, you can use it as a regular mobile phone when a WiFi hotspot is not available, which makes it an ideal corporate phone. The Prestige 2000W VoIP Wi-Fi phone above is ideal if you are going to use it mostly at home over your home wireless network (or corporate WiFi if you have such access), since you don’t have to tie yourself to any service plan. Bell Mobility (where we bought ours) is one such provider you can get these from.

Step 2: sign up with a VOIP provider that also offers access via SIP. One of the best I’ve found is www.voipcheap.com. These guys give you up to 300 minutes of free calls within Canada, USA, and number of other countries. Visit their Website to see all the countries you can call for free. And don’t worry, they don’t even ask you for your VISA. However, you can pay for “credits” and use them if you want to phone any non-free countries, but that is optional.

Step 3: install the SJPhone software from www.sjlabs.com/sjp.html. Note that to install this on the UTStarcom 6700, navigate to this Website and click on the “.cab” version of the PocketPC software, which will prompt you to download and open it. Just click YES, and this will both download and install the software on your mobile. Of course, if you are using the Prestige 2000W VoIP Wi-Fi phone, then you can skip this step as you only need to configure the SIP settings.

Step 4: once the SJPhone software is installed on your UTStarcom 6700 (or any PocketPC phone/PDA), start the software and create a new profile using Menu/Options and then Profiles tab. Leave all the settings as default values, except for the following:

SIP Proxy:
Proxy Domain: sip1.sipdiscount.com
Port: 0
User Domain: sipdiscount.com
Check off: Register with proxy & Proxy is strictly outbound.

STUN:
Check off: Use discovered addresses in SIP
Server Address: stun.softjoys.com
Port: 3478

Initialization tab:
Check off: all the options for Account and Password.

Step 5: click OK to save the above settings, and then click on “Initialize” to enter your www.voipcheap.com account and password. Check off “Save service information permanently” and click OK.

Step 6: if you have made it this far, you are now ready to connect to your WiFi and make your first call. Close SJPhone and connect to your WiFi hotspot - I will not show you how to do this, as this is not a tutorial on how to use your UTStarcom or PDA. Once you are connected to your WiFi, start up the SJPhone software again. To make your phone calls, all you need to do is enter the phone number in the international format as follows:

Example 1: call a UK phone number. Format is: 0044(area code without the leading zero)(phone number)
Example 2: call a Canada/USA phone number. Format is: 001(area code)(phone number)

That’s it !! Happy free phone calling. You now have a fully functional, MOBILE, method for making FREE long distance calls to some of the major countries in the world.

If you want more details, or have suggestions for improving this method, or have suggestions for other SIP services (such as www.voipcheap.com), leave some comments here.

Looks like they changed the rules after I wrote this. It seems that now you have to buy £10 worth of credit to make unlimited calls to the free countries; otherwise, your calls are limited to 1 minute. However, this seems to apply only to new accounts.

Another site, www.voipstunt.com, which looks suspiciously like the www.voipcheap.com site and software, is now up and running. Offering the same service, but looks like phone calls are still limited to 1 minute unless you pay 10 euros.