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.