have thought about doing not-quite this with a western electric touch-tone capable beige deskphone - anyone have any feedback on good/simple VoIP providers/software for personal use (like 1-2 phone numbers + self hosted PBX/voicemail, remote access over VPN from softphone app a plus)?
Provider to recommend to your parents or grandparents: Callcentric
Provider for hobbyists who need flexibility: voip.ms
Provider for cheapest termination rates and flexibility: Anveo Direct (not the consumer product)
Bria and Groundwire have good SIP softphones for mobile, but aren't free. Since multitasking on iOS is so limited, these apps can register on their own servers, then send push notifications on calls.
3CX or Asterisk are good choices for connecting to trunks. 3CX is much less flexible, can cost money, but is "easy".
The UI takes some getting used to but the service is cheap and works great. Similar to how I did it, you'd need an ATA box to provide analog service to the phone, and it would talk to your provider over SIP/RTP.
Another option would be a self-hosted PBX box. Asterisk [1] is the tried and true open-source option, but it does have some sharp edges. 3CX [2] is another option, but it's proprietary and has some limitations.
Either way, you would need a provider to give you the 'SIP Trunk' (phone number etc). I think Twilio [3] is the best option for this, but I've been using a hosted service for a while so I don't have much recent experience with this and can't vouch for costs/functionality.
I switched my landline from Verizon to Anveo about 5 years back. They are pretty solid! I barely used my landline so I have the cheapest plan possible.
