Thursday, December 13, 2007

Will a Softphone work with my Cable VOIP service?

Here's a question I was recently asked:

I just got my cable company's digital (VOIP) phone service. Since I already had their Digital TV and Internet service, I got a really good deal on this.

They basically just switched out my old cable modem for a newer one that supports this service. So I'm curious if there's any way I could make and receive calls on my Mac using my new phone service? So I was thinking perhaps there's a softphone or some kind of application that would allow me to do this? I've looked around and seen some applications like X-Lite and iSoftphone but I'm not sure if these will do the trick. I'm actually not sure if anything will.

It seems rather complicated. This isn't something I really need, because I can obviously just use a regular phone, but it would be kind of nice.
Answer: YES!

Purchase the PhoneGnome box ($99) and connect it to your cable modem phone output (connect PhoneGnome between the cable box and your phones). Then you can use X-Lite or iSoftphone on your Mac using the SIP softphone credentials provided by PhoneGnome.

This way, you can even use your cable digital phone service when away from home - at work, from a hotel, at a friends house, Starbucks, etc. - anywhere you can get an Internet connection (even from another country). There are no extra monthly fees for this service - your cable company won't even know (and PhoneGnome doesn't charge monthly fees for the softphone capability).

By the way, this approach works with ANY hardware based VoIP service, even if they don't offer a softphone or support SIP, including even ooma.

1 comment:

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