A Marriage Made in Heaven: Sprint/Nextel Cellphone + Asterisk = Unlimited U.S. Cell Phone Calls for $5

Huray! VOIP.

Sprint announced the availability of a new add-on for existing and new Sprint cellphone customers. For $5 more a month and a little Yankee ingenuity, you now can make unlimited FREE calls between your Sprint cellphone (or multiple PCS phones if you’re on a shared plan) and your residential phone number regardless of the wireline carrier. In short, your home phone service need not be with Sprint. If you have Sprint home phone service, then the new PCS to Home service will be free. In either case, no cellphone minutes will be assessed for inbound (read comments!) or outbound calls between your Sprint cellphone and your home number … ever. In fact, they’ll show up on your statement as PCS-to-PCS calls which are also free.

Here are the steps to set this up!

1) Have an asterisk box set up with some Digital PRI and some DID's...Ya, this is the hard part, i'm sorry your gonna have to sell one to someone and use theirs...Or i guess you could set up your asterisk box through broadvoice or something .... you just need TWO LINES OF dial tone on your asterisk box MMMMkay?

2) Have a sprint (or nextel) baised cell phone. I always liked those free incoming plans...

3) Call sprint and ask them for the NEW "Sprint to Home" service to be added to your plan. They will ask you for your phone number. Make sure you give them your number that goes into your asterisk box!

4) Add your self into the dial plan... I have shown two different ways to do this...

a) IF YOU HAVE DID's it looks like this...

exten => 4745,1,Answer()
exten => 4745,2,Wait(1)
exten => 4745,3,Authenticate(313)
exten => 4745,4,DISA(no-password|default)

b) IF YOU HAVE ONLY CALLER ID IT LOOKS LIKE THIS
(replace 6781234567 with your cell phone number...)

exten => 6781234567,1,Answer
exten => 6781234567,2,Wait(1)
exten => 6781234567,3,Authenticate(313)
exten => 6781234567,4,DISA(no-password|from-internal)

THE DISA command drops you into a dialtone as if you were on your system...don't let anyone access this, they could call china on your dime...Thats why we use the authentiate command)

5) I then programmed a speed dial on my phone...
(replace 16781231234 with your asterisk phone number you gave to the rep as sprint)
I press and hold 'P' for 3 seconds...

16781231234,313# <==This is the hot key i used. I press my speed dial, the phone calls up and with only a 3 or 4 second delay, drops me into a dialtone on my asterisk box.. I can then call out anywere only using the dial plan that my asterisk box is paying for, and no cellphone minutes are being used! Hurray!