On Tue, 12 Feb 2019 04:26:29 -0500, nospam
wrote:

In article , Char Jackson
wrote:

I don't own a cellphone/smartphone either. I do use VOIP,
because it's cheaper than the $55 per month they expect
here for a landline.

$55...yikes, someone must be very proud of their telco offering.

As for VoIP being cheaper, I assume you mean free (after acquiring a
VoIP adapter).

usually, voip-voip calls are free, while calls to/from ptsn are not.

By the way, thanks for backing off of the "calls to/from ptsn are not"
free thing. It's PSTN, but that was probably a typo.

GV calls within the US and Canada are free, but limited to 3 hours.
International calls start at $0.01 per minute, depending on the called
country. The called number can be PSTN, or not. It's still free.

google voice is not really a voip provider and only recently offered
voip support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Voice#VoIP_services
Google Voice permits Voice Over IP (VoIP) as a beta from both the web
and Android clients. It formerly supported XMPP signaling but no
longer does. However, it has been reported that at one time some
users could receive calls with their Google Voice accounts via the
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

Google Voice is still free and works pretty well,
although individual calls are limited to 3 hours.

it's not voip, although there are ways to use it as such.

I use it with an Obihai ATA and it looks like VoIP to me. I vaguely
recall that it might have been SIP back when it was launched, but that's
~10 years ago so I don't remember for sure.

obihai is one of the ways to use gv as a 'normal phone', originally via
xmpp, which is no longer supported. i'm not sure what it uses now.

I'm using a broader definition of VoIP than you are. Packetized voice
using a protocol that rides on TCP or UDP, either of which in turn rides
on IP. I don't really care what the upper layer protocol is.

--

Char Jackson