We got tired of paying Telus (our local phone company) a lot of money for what seemed to be little service. I started looking at alternatives and decided to give a voice over IP solution a whirl. By now most people are familiar with VoIP: phone service over the internet. Basically, a VoIP provider acts a gateway between the regular phone system and the internet. You're probably familiar with services like Vonage - you sign up for a monthly plan and they send you a little box which connects to the internet and your regular house phones. Their plans were certainly cheaper than the regular telephone company's plans, but I found Vonage's sound quality to be spotty - no doubt because I live in Canada and the calls were being routed down into the US (where Vonage is located) and back up here.
 
I've found a better way to manage my phone system, and that's to do it myself. Using a free package called TrixBox, I have been able to run my own phone system using a spare computer. It handles everything from phone greetings to voicemail, can ring both my cell and my house phones simultaneously when a call comes in, and gives me excellent call tracking reports. I can see exactly how long I've spent on the phone and compare it to previous months. And best of all, it's dirt cheap. You still need a VoIP service provider, but since you are handling all the "extras" (voicemail, caller waiting, etc) via Trixbox, the phone plans are cheap. I pay $2.50 per month for my phone line, plus 1.1 cents / minute usage. That means for a typical month, my phone bill is about $12 CDN.
 
I'm going to put together a small how-to document, but in the meantime be sure to check out the following links:
 
TrixBox - I use this software to run my phone systems
voipinfo - A great resource for all things VoIP - lists service providers by country/region.