VoiceStick

With AOL releasing their AIM Phoneline, there’s been a lot of discussion of different VoIP services. I had given it a shot, but it didn’t have any numbers 626 numbers (Monterey Park, CA) or 425 numbers (Redmond, WA) available for me. I got a PM from another user that said he had gotten a 626 number in Alhambra, so I tried Mark Keppel’s address, but it still said no numbers were available. Probably all the 626 numbers are gone.

I was also introduced to VoiceStick.com today and I’m surprised I didn’t know about it before. This is so cool, even cooler than IPKall which I had introduced several times on this website.

VoiceStick has this Next2Nothing plan which is well, FREE. You get you own local number which others can reach you at and it’s unlimited incoming calls. However, outgoing calls cost 2.4¢/min to anywhere in the USA/Canada, but there’s always SkypeOut for that till the end of this year. Also, the quality of VoiceStick is better than IPKall as I’ve even gotten fax to come in w/o any problems. So now I have a local number for friends and family back in socal that want to reach me, but for now, it’ll only get the fax machine on my computer until I purchase a 2nd phone.

You no longer have to install the bloatware that AOL requires you to install before using the AIM Phoneline.

Another cool thing is that VoiceStick works with any compatible SIP software/hardware, so I was able to configure my Linksys PAP2 to work with it with help from this thread: Configuring Sipura SPA-2000 to use Voicestick

The attributes you have to change are:

SIP Port: 5060 (or 5061)
Proxy: i2telecom.com
Use Outbound Proxy: Yes
Outbound Proxy: 206.165.50.116
User ID: <your login>
Password: <your password>

I haven’t tried to see if there were any 425 #s but since this is nationwide, I would expect them to.

I currently have $0 balance in my VoiceStick account and don’t really plan to make outgoing calls anyway. There’s always my cellphone for that.