Press Record.

A few posts ago I was discussing solutions for mobile phone long distance.
For a lot of us, the celly is our only phone. The Bell Canada sign up and monthly service fees don't really make sense just for the convenience of having another phone number.
As an avid VoIP geek (having worked with Orbit, Canada's 1st National VoIP service) I would be amiss not to mention the very slick http://didww.com/, http://freeworddialup.com/ and of course Skype and Gizmo Project. Combining these services

For about a year and a half or so, I've been using the services of Unlimitel.ca and registering this using Xten's X-Lite soft phone on the road, and at home, using a Sipura SPA-1001. This device lets me register 2 lines across 2 services. One port I have on Unlimitel, and the other signed on to Pulver's FreeWorld Dialup. This gives me a geographically local SIP VoIP service provider with responsive support from Mr. Monette and free monitoring tools. Pre-paid ($50 pre-paid) costs, depending on destination, between 1.1 and 4 cents per minute. I have no complaints.

I've began playing with Skype much more since last year's road show madness. The free PC to phone calling (now expired) and super simple setup and reliable operation hooked me almost imediately. The fullscreen videocalls were handy calling back to the office.
I've sourced a solution that uses Skype as it's backbone, and offers the same flexibility as my home setup. The call quality may not always be 100% but the technical simplicity makes it a lot more attractive to new users.

Using DIDww.com I signed up for 6 months of inbound calling through a local Toronto phone number at $35. Last December, Skype had a promotion running for one year's worth of North American outbound calling for $14.95. The Skype-out unlimited calling package is now $29US.

Within the DIDww setup, you have the option of using "hunt groups" to roll your call to alternate numbers after specified timeouts. I chose to roll to a Gizmo Project account, I never have on. That trips the voice mail and messages are delivered to the email address stored in my profile.
These prices are USD so thats about $100CDN for one years unlimited incoming and outgoing calling. If you want to keep things simple, the Skype plan includes $2.50 of free international calling. You can also use this deposit to forward calls by setting the number in the software client. Roll that to a cellphone and you can field those important telemarketing calls anywhere.

I'll clean this post up after I get some rest, and add a review of the Vtech USB Skype phone that makes this all work.
For you Yahoo Messenger users, theres a few versions for you too.