"FREE" VOIP phone service in Canada

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CIA.com just lower their Home Phone Basic plan to ZERO dollar a month. You'll get:
1. A DID number anywhere in Canada;
2. 3 free feactures including voice mail and caller ID.
3. Unlimited local incoming&outging;
The catch is they charge $3.95 system access fee. But even $3.95/month is the lowest voip plan you can find in Canada.

CIA claim they support Sipura-2100 only but I do put the number successfully in my Netgear WGR615V VoIP wireless router I bought at $40 from ebay.
Here are the steps how I make it work in Netgear WGR615V VoIP route:
1. Go to »myaccount.cia.com and login with your CIA id you get in your e-mail;
2. Make sure your CIA phone service status is "Active";
3. Register your Netgear WGR615V MAC address in "register voip terminal" link, wait 2 minutes and the system will create the provison file in CIA server;
4. Open your Internet Explorer window and paste this link:
»voip.cia.com/provision.php?MAC=123456789012
(replace 123456789012 with the MAC address of your Netgear WGR615V). You'll get the provision XML show up;
5. Find the three lines
voip-mtrl2.cia.com
4167654321
1234567@cia.com
6. Go to »192.168.61.1/set_voip.htm in Netgear WGR615 router, put proxy/username/phonenumber/password you get from step 5. Both username and phone number are "User_ID" in step 5;
7. Save your change and wait 1 minutes, you'll see the green light;
8. Dial 1-800-463-3339 and you'll hear "Wecome to Fedex"

If you have high speed internet already, the total investment for one year phone service is $4.3 x 12=$51.6 ($0.3 is GST of Canada) or you pay $4.3/month. If you don't have VoIP adapter, go to ebay to get a Netgear WGR615V for $55 shipping included.

CIA customer support sucks. If you don't know what your're doing, don't bother to use CIA because you're on your own if something goes wrong.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19168493-FREE-VOIP-phone-service-in-Canada

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fortissimo

join:2003-10-17
Richmond, BC

Account activated.  Tested briefly and ok.

PAP2 now directly on internet.  I haven't got it to work pass my NAT router yet.  I didn't see anything in the provisioning XML file setting up NAT traversal or Outbound proxy (should say I am not 100% sure how I should read the file as I don't have a Sipura 2100 around to match it with).

Since this is a commercial product, shouldn't it automagically work behind NAT without Outbound Proxy setting, or STUN server?  Or should I need to set it up still?

I can confirm these though:
voip-mtrl2.cia.com  #this is the proxy, likely also outbound proxy but the XML seems to say "no" on the Outbound Proxy?

4167654321  #  this is the "user id" or "account", also likely the Auth. ID, but the XML seems to say "no" as well.

1234567@cia.com  # this is the password (or "secret" in Asterisk speak).

It could be obvious but the OP didn't make it 100% clear (but I still thank the OP for this wonderful news).

Their LD cost is a bit higher than most, so I guess their marketing plan seems to want to get upsell to other features or products.  There is no way they can make money on just a bare line.

I observed an abnomaly on the account webpage.  If you want to add additional features, it says "free" after each feature, but obviously it is not free (costing from $1.99 etc) on the main page.  I doubt that those are free, but I think it was free on the Premium account (or when it was $29.95 a month), so they forgot to clean this up.  I don't want to add them and then got charged for the extra features, but I think the Call Forwarding can be somewhat useful.

I found the features fairly basic compared to big companies like what I used to use like Broadvox Direct, etc.  But for the price it's unbeatable.  I have changed from having unlimited North America plan to low end plans because I just cannot use that much LD a month (most gone to waste).

Hope this will last!!

Another thing is that it doesn't say if they allow signing up for a DID that you are not living in.  It did say "address where you are installing this" meaning for e911 purpose.  No additional address field for credit card payment, so what if the credit card address doesn't match (let's say I use a friend's address in Toronto so I can get a Toronto DID)?

Anyway, finally something here, no more waiting for vBuzzer to deliver a Vancouver DID!  haha.