I live in Canada. For many years, I lived in the province of British Columbia. That’s where I got my first cell phone number that I’ve been using for 20 years.
Now I’ve moved back to my home province of Saskatchewan for work. And I intend to retire here.
Many people get confused when I give them my number as it has a BC area code. So I’d like to obtain a second phone number with a Saskatchewan area code. But I can’t do a straight out switch of numbers because my current number is tied to so many companies and websites.
I’d like to add an eSIM to my iPhone with a Saskatchewan phone number. But all of the Canadian mobility companies want me to buy a second plan to do that.
I came across the term ‘virtual phone systems’. It seems to me that one of these systems would allow me to accomplish what I want to do.
Does anyone have any experience with companies that offer this type of service? And, one day, would I be able to port the number they give me to another mobility company?
I think you might be better off buying a residential Fongo phone number for $5/month and then just permanently forwarding that to your cell phone. (It costs about $60 to get the initial hardware, then $5/month thereafter.) They do offer a mobile app and I don’t know how it works cost wise.
Thank you, it all looks pretty good. The only problem I can see is that I don’t think I got to keep the assigned number if I cancel the service.
I’m going to investigate the difference (price wise between the home and mobile app.
I’m planning to sign up for Fongo home service as you suggest.
- Can I use my iPhone as a handset?
- Is there a limit to how much call forwarding I can implement.
- Is there a size limit on my voicemail box?
Thanks.
Yes and no. If you want home (i.e. landline service) then no.
From their FAQ at the bottom of Fongo Home Phone | Low-Cost Home Phone In Canada for $4.95 :
I don’t think so, but it depends on what you mean. If you forward to a number they would charge to dial, then I presume they would charge you for the duration of any forwarded call. They include dialing in Canada/US so forwarding to those sorts of numbers should be free.
Yes, plenty. I think it can only have like 10 messages, and it will only keep them for like 2 weeks max. I don’t know if you can pay extra for a better setup.
Thank you both for your responses. The reason I’m considering signing up with Fongo has changed since my initial post.
I’m moving to a rural town and LTE is the best cellular connection I’m getting. A lot of my iPhone calls are being dropped. So I want to set up a VOIP line. I’ll have wifi at home and 5 minutes away at my work. I won’t need to use my iPhone very often to make calls.
I’m going to Google this question, but are there wireless phones that connect to VOIP systems? Or do I always need to be physically connected to my VOIP modem?
Ok. I just found out that I can enable wifi calling on my iPhone. That’s probably the best option?
I have 50 down and 25 up Megabits per second. Should that be a good enough wifi connection?
Apologies for so many posts!
I now have wifi calling enabled on my iPhone and it works well. I also have my iPad enabled to receive and initiate calls. Thank you for helping me brainstorm.
Multiple wifi partitions may be overkill for my home setup. I only have my iPhone, iPad, windows 11 laptop, Roku and fire stick. Is setting up a wifi partition the same thing as setting up a VLan?
I use the ISP supplied modem/router. I connect my air cove router preconfigured with my Express VPN software to the ISP modem/router. What router do you use/suggest?
What kind of faraday pouch do you recommend?
I assume you don’t use Apple Pay if you’re not taking your phone with you when you run short errands around town?
And do you use an alternate to your phone’s GPS while driving long distances?
It seems strange that Fongo Home provides an analogue adapter. Is it a VOIP service and does analogue to VOIP in the adapter, or does it use an analogue connection?
Here, in Germany, we dropped ISDN and analogue nearly a decade ago, everything is VOIP here.
If Fongo is VOIP and lets you use a VOIP telephone as well as plugging in old-fashioned analogue telephones, you should be able to use a VOIP app on the iPhone (E.g. 3cx) to connect to Fongo whilst you are at home, but not when you are away - unless you make a VPN connection to your router with the phone when you are out and about…
I gave up on my land line about 2 years ago. I have the number from my provider forwarded to my iPhone and I only give out my mobile number these days, I probably get about 4 spam calls a month on the landline (zero direct to my iPhone) and almost zero serious calls.
The use a Grandstream HT801 Single-Port Analog Telephone Adapter. It converts from SIP (VoIP) to FXS (POTS).
But could you just use a real VoIP telephone instead?
I guess that is theoretically possible, but they don’t allow you to (i.e. don’t provide the necessary information to) provision your own service, so it would require support from them for the chosen VoIP phone.
Their model appears to have them be a lean and mean (not much staff) business and to go after the subset of the population that still want to have an analog phone service with analog phones they already own. (i.e. the elderly, mostly.)
As long as the ATA isn’t locked down, then yes. Get the SIP details from that (or the provider) and enter into a VOIP phone to receive and make calls.