As businesses continue to increase their VoIP adoption rates for cost and efficiency reasons, the effect is beginning to affect homes as well. But if professional organizations are wary of VoIP’s impact on their business, the concern is much more serious in individual homes.

Most people don’t have the time or inclination to do complex setup and it has to be admitted that unless we get to a point where a technician can come to your house and do all the work for you, like that with a regular phone line, customers need to do the setup themselves. However, unlike the PSTN phone setup procedure that involves wiring and activating a new physical line, installing VoIP requires software configurations.

Skype is of course one of the most popular VoIP products. You can easily make outgoing calls with a headset and microphone, but you cannot receive calls without signing up for your SkypeIn service. You can buy a SkypeIn phone number that people can use to call you from their computer, phone, or any other device running Skype. You can even buy a dedicated Skype phone that you can keep as a landline. But with the proliferation of mobile phones running the Skype app, these have become somewhat obsolete.

A second option to enable VoIP in your home is to subscribe to a VoIP provider. There are many ways to do this and each provider may have a different way of doing it. MagicJack, for example, needs to have your computer running as long as you want to make and receive calls. Other providers will give you specific hardware that you need to connect. Carefully follow their instructions to set up VoIP in your home.

But if you choose a complete SIP-based solution, then you have great flexibility. With other services, you are forced to use the same phone or service when you are at home. However, when you sign up with a SIP provider, you can also use your phone’s Internet connection to make calls wherever you go by logging into the SIP server on the other end. You will need to purchase an IP phone or ATA adapter to get your normal PSTN phone to work over IP.

These are some of the ways you can use VoIP at home. It takes a bit of tweaking, but it’s definitely worth the effort.