How to Cut the Cord - Stop paying for your landline

Many homes are still subscribed to cable. Many are still paying for bundled services like Phone, Internet, and TV. Often, these nasty cable bills are around $200 per month.

Now, what if I told you you didnt need to pay for phone or TV. You can get internet service in most places for between $30 - $100 depending on how fast broadband speeds you want. I currently pay AT&T for their Gigabit Fiber network $70/month. My parents have comcast at 50 Megabit speeds for $50/month. And thats it.

  • No fee for TV.
  • No fee for Phone.

This guide describes how we did this, and how to make free calls with Obihai and Google Voice.

PART 1: STOP PAYING FOR YOUR LANDLINE PHONE

This one is easy. Usually the cable companies charge around $10-$20 per month for the phone line. Thats $120 - $240 per year you are throwing out the window.

This guide will show you how to use a regular phone in your home just as you have always done, but not have to pay a monthly fee for it.

  1. Sign up to Google Voice. Its free and you get a modern Internet based calling account.
  2. Go to Amazon and buy an OBI200 device - its around $50 at the time of this post.
  3. Connect your OBI200 device to your router, and to your phone line.
  4. Create your OBITalk account
  5. Add your new device to your OBITalk account, and link it to your Google Voice account. The OBITalk setup wizard will take you through the steps.

If you want to maintain your existing phone number, you can also transfer or port your number over to Google Voice.

You should now be up and running with a Google Voice based landline. You can take advantage of all of Google Voice’s features, such as Voice Mail, Call Forwarding, Call Recording, etc.

TOTAL COST: approximately $50 (one time)

Look out for Part 2 where I describe how we stopped paying for Cable TV.