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I must say I haven't had problems with this, despite darkening the doors of countless hotels in dozens of countries every year. On long trips I travel with my trusty Sipura SPA-1001, on shorter ones I just use Eyebeam on the MacBook. Both approaches pretty much always work. I'm about to pick up a Nokia E-Series with SIP support, I understand that may be a bit trickier. But it doesn't support Skype in any case, so I'll be stuck with whatever stunning (harr harr) connectivity I can get from it.

Would you continue to run a separate full-bore 400-watt PC as an in-house router and switch, especially when low-power, wall-wart-driven $29 router appliances from Linksys and D-Link are so pervasive?

Then why would you use Skype when all the various Vonages out there make use of an Analogue Telephone Adapter (ATA) to interface your PSTN phone with an IP-based network, no PC or software required?

Figure 1: My ATA: http://www.sipura.com/

Yeah, I'd like to see *my* grandma forced to sit in front of a PC and wear a headset to talk to me.

I'm not against Skype - I'm just saying that the SIP-based, ATA-driven Vonage-like VoIP experience - one that most closely resembles a traditional PSTN circuit - holds the most traction in this burgeoning market. Moving your "10 digits" from a simple household appliance that has withstood a centry of use to a complex power-hungry pandoras box does not constitute progress IMO. *Augmenting* your traditional telephonic device with computer-based doodads and thingys is good - replacing your telephone with them is cause for concern.

When my family and I moved to our new house a year ago, I cut the CLEC cord once and for all and went totally ATA/SIP/VoIP. I've got a UPS on the router and ATA for good measure. And guess what...the wife can't tell a difference from the old house. Until we see ATA-friendly SIP protocol chatter from Skype, I'll continue to have my reservations.

I initially had planned on using skype for my long distance. However I soon grew tired of being tied to the computer with a headset. While there are some ways to get a regular cordless phone to work with skype, all involve having a computer running. You can also purchase stand alone voip phones that are skype compatable for the small price of $200+.

I finally settled on buying a Sipura voip adapter and service from SIPphone. Setup was pretty easy and now instead of my $60 phone bill I have a $10 - $15 bill. After two months it paid for itself.

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Sorry about the link on my previous post:

http://www.sipura.com/Documents/SPA-3000.pdf

I also misread your question, I assumed you were asking for something you would use personally.

I was wrong, obviously.

There is a device called cellsocket that my company uses to connect regular analog telephones up to cellphones. You pick up the phone, hear a dial tone, then dial as you normally would, but it uses your cellphone for the connection. You could possibly connect something like this to your house POTS wiring and use your regular phones in the house while your cellphone sits and charges.

As far as making VOIP calls, there is the Sipura-3000 which mentions something similar to what you are asking. The manual is located at:
http://www.sipura.com/Documents/SPA-3000.pdf/
You could purchase or set up an Asterisk server for this purpose, integrating a POTS line, Cell line,and various SIP services, etc. That will run into quite a bit of an expense and configuration though. A Digium card Wildcard TDM400P http://www.digum.com/ with a combination of FXO and FXS modules would probably be what you need.

It's a lot of effort though, and possibly a lot of expense. I would try out the Sipura-3000 and a CellSocket type adapter first. I have 3 Sipura devices so far, and they work nicely, and are fairly easy to set up.

After taking this into consideration, unfortunately, going through the local Ma Bell monopoly was still the cheapest and most reliable option for us (a business needing 3-5 phone lines).

Usually there are resellers that will get you a fully-featured POTS line at well below the cost of a line from Ma Bell. Bell Canada is the main carrier here, and I can get lines from either AllStream or Primus for several dollars less than Bell, and they include many features -- call/name id, hunt group, other stuff I don't use -- at less than the cost of a basic line from Bell.

We've been running on Asterisk for a couple of months now, and it's made an impact on our phone bills. Our telephone hardware was aging anyways, so we deployed Asterisk with all new (and low-cost) VoIP phones, at around the same price it would have cost to get a low-end, not very configurable non-VoIP system.

We have 4 incoming analog POTS (plain old telephone service) lines (one is dedicated to fax). We have two VoIP providers (mostly just for redundancy.. outgoing minutes are cheap). Long distance calls are routed through VoIP, and a maximum of two local calls will get routed through POTS lines before using Voip, which for the most part keeps a POTS line free for incoming calls. If our internet is down, long-distance calls simply fail over to the POTS lines, and if they're all used up it tells you "all lines are busy now", which is annoying but not any different than it would be without VoIP.

Since we just moved and were forced to change our number, I'm waiting on getting our old number switched to a VoIP provider. Right now it's call-forwarded to our new number, but when it goes VoIP, incoming calls on it will not use up our POTS lines. I was even considering changing our third line to hunt to that VoIP line, so that when the 3 incoming voice lines are busy, it will use the VoIP line and basically give us a huge call capacity. I think we pay something like $5/mo for the VoIP number, plus 1.1c/min (CAD$). Normally DID's (direct inward dial, which is what numbers that terminate on VoIP are called) are cheaper than that, but this number is in an area not serviced by many VoIP providers.

A lot of providers will also provide some kind of failover if you're not connected, ie, they'll just forward the call to another number. Often this will cost double (cost of incoming call + cost of outgoing call) but it's definately better than customers not being able to reach you.

We've already noticed a decent savings on long distance costs. We were paying something like 4.5c/min on POTS, but now we can call anywhere in north america for 1.3c/min or somewhere in there.

The real benefit (and one of the main reasons we chose a voip system) will be when we setup our first branch office later this year, and calls between them cost nothing. One receptionist (you only get an IVR off-hours, or if the receptionist is busy) can handle calls for both offices, we can have local numbers in both cities that are treated identically, and staff are encouraged to communicate because calling someone in another city is identical to calling someone in the office down the hall.

There's also the possibility of working from home. You can actually take our desk phones home, plug them into an internet connection, and they'll work the same as in the office. You can also install a softphone on your PC/laptop, and have an extension. I'm looking forward to using that when I go to some conferences this summer.

Anyway, the possibilties are really endless, and there's no reason that "going VoIP" means ditching all your analog lines. I'd even say that combining them gives you the best solution.

Why bother with Asterisk when you can buy one of these for less than $100? You get call routing, one FXS and one FXO port, lots of configurable options, and great community

I realize that Asterisk is a good fit for some specific applications, but you can buy a complete call router for less than a single port FXS card....

There's this: http://www.sipura.com/products/spa3000.htm

But I would certainly be interested to hear about others.

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Also, the newest firmware for the SPA-1001 seems to have some support for encryption, though it's not well documented yet.

I use this box from Sipura. Does exactly what you wants: Ethernet into one end and one ore two standard analog phones into the other. It's quite good.

I use mine with a service from Telio, a Norwegian company. Customer service not so good, but the prices make up for it I think.

VOIP saves me about 400$/mo.
When you have someone special in France and you are in California, try calling her 3hrs/day on POTS...
I get a very decent service with Oriunde, a Romanian VOIP provider. They even give me a local phone number for Bucharest, Romania, so that my folks can call me for cheap.
I've got a Sipura 3000 box: it comes with dialing plans, so I can forward local calls to POTS and long distance to VOIP.
(Hell, don't ask me why she is there and I am here, it's about that stupid yearly GC spouse quota)

Well thats all well but broadvoice charges $20/mo. I've been using them since August and have been very happy.

Broadvoice+Sipura from voxilla+asterisk=awsome home phone system.

Setup an asterisk pbx server, and signup with any number of VoIP providers who support G.711 codecs (like Voicepulse or their no bells service, Voicepulse Connect service). Plug your fax machine into a TDM400p card from digium.

Another option, pickup a Grandstream HandyTone 286 (from here for instance) or a Sipura SPA-2000 (from here for instance) (SIP devices, plug a regular phone, or fax, into it) instead of the asterisk box, but it gives you less flexibility. Both devices would work with the Voicepulse services, or most any other true SIP based VoIP service.

This works, been able to fax to people over Pulver's Free World Dialup service without any problems using both types of setup.

FWD works great and I highly recommend it. They even provide voice mail. Pulver has done a great thing, and the FCC has absolutely no business screwing it up! I don't need to call 911 over IP, and I don't want regulatory access fees and taxes to pay for 911...