VOIP Provider
 

Any good and reputable VOIP providers out there? Prefer to deal with local.

TIA!

magic jack

i love voip.ms, US based, but they have a gateway in seattle.

Care to explain how it works? Looks complicated.

TIA!

I use voip.ms as well. They have servers in Canada too. (Montreal and Toronto)

They're pretty good and rates are decent.

It's not that complicated. There's 2 ways to use it - using a SIP client (software) on your PC or mobile device. You enter in the server you want, your login and password you're assigned and you can make calls.
Alternately, you can buy an ATA and connect a regular phone to it. You enter in the SIP settings in to the adapter for your SIP provider and you use the phone like any regular phone.

I use a combination of both. I have my iPhone set up with a SIP client (there's plenty of free ones) so when I'm out of town, I can make a call using my voip over WiFi rather than roaming. It saves on roaming and I have a local (to Vancouver) number people can call without incurring long distance to reach me.

I'm using the per minute plan because I don't talk that much on it (it ends up being $1.99/month for the DID and then whatever time I use - which is 1.5c/min in Canada, 1c/min to the US and about 0.5c/min to Hong Kong which are the 3 I mainly use) It's far cheaper than a land line from Telus and offers so much more portability.

This is going a bit off topic but it's the main reason I use voip:
To keep my cell costs low when I travel to the US, I buy a US SIM card. I usually get the AT&T $2/day unlimited plan. Within voip.ms's interface, you can set where the call gets routed to when someone calls your DID. I usually set it to my US number so that when someone calls my local Vancouver number, it rings my US phone instantly. No long distance charges for them, and very minimal (1c/min) cost to you. If your whole family uses some kind of VoIP, then SIP to SIP calls are free.

There's plenty of these providers out there so you can pick from any of them out there. However, I've had pretty good experiences with voip.ms so I'd recommend them if you're looking for a recommendation.