Free Home Phone with Google Hangouts

With our kids getting older we felt we needed a home phone. Being who I am I wanted a free home phone.  We don’t want a landline , but we don’t want to buy cell phones for our kids either.

We thought about adding another line to our Ting.com plan.  That would only cost us $6 a month plus usage.  Then I realized I could get a free home phone.

Google voice is a product that has been somewhat retired or merged into Google’s hangouts application.  It allows you to make domestic VoIP (voice calls over the internet) for free and it allows for free text messages.  I have used it to reduce my cell phone bill by doing texts and calls over wireless and not over my carrier’s network.  In this case, I just needed it to make and receive calls.

We set up a google voice number on our oldest daughter’s google account, it will be her’s eventually.  I then took our old Galaxy S3 and returned it to factory default.  I had to load it with my daughter’s profile and load the Hangouts dialer app.  The phone can now make and receive phone calls over our wireless for free.  Now the girls have use of a free home phone without taking our phones.  They can talk to their distant family for as long as they want without me worrying about my bill going up.  It is the best of both worlds.

How do get a free home phone:

Items needed:

• Old Android phone
• Google account
• Wireless Internet access

1. Register a google voice number on your google account.
   1. You can pick by area code or even have it spell something for you.
   2. This is your new “Free Home Phone Number”
2. Log into your android phone with the Google account which has your new Free Home Phone Number
3. Install Hangouts Dialer on your old Android phone.
   1. You can now make calls with the hangouts dialer over the internet

If you try this out let me know how it works for you…