Forget about Rogers TalkSpot, Fido Uno and T-Mobile's Hotspot@Home. They keep you tied to your cell provider, cut that cord!

What you need is a cell phone with true built-in wifi and VoIP (Voice Over IP).This article is an introduction to this field, but it will likely become very big.

Cell Phones with Wifi/WLAN Built-in

In other words, the phone connects to both the cellular network and the wireless internet that's available.

Basically, with a phone like this, you send all of your outgoing calls while you're at home, or in range of wifi (anywhere in the world!) through the internet, but not through your cell phone provider, but a cheap VoIP provider.

Big Cellular Phone Cost Savings

For me, outgoing calls over wifi to most places in Canada cost just 0.5 cents/minute, toll free calls are actually free, and calls to the USA are just 1 cent/minute. So, airtime and long distance are now around 1/35th of their previous pricing.

What wer're doing now is, through the internet, connecting to the same telephone routing systems that Fido and Rogers use but make you pay $$$/minute to access. We're now getting the wholesale rates that the big telecoms get and.

This also means that you get free data access while you're at home or in range of wifi, which is usually faster than 3G/HSPDA.

Nokia Phones Have Great Support for Calls over Wifi

The phone I used for this is the Nokia E63, which was a bit pricy, but prices are dropping fast. This phone has so far proven to be quite equivalent to the Blackberry 8300. Nokia seems to be the forerunner in this wifi+cell phone market. The cellular phone providers HATE these kinds of phones, since it cuts their strangehold on people's communications significantly, so these types of phones often aren't available through the providers, or they charge $$$ for them. You have to often buy them on their own, but you also don't get stuck into crappy contracts.

You also need to be careful with which you get, some, like the Blackberry 8320, have wifi, but don't support making your own VoIP calls, but rather only integrate well with the carrier's UMA (Hotspot, Uno, Talkspot) service, so you're still shackled to them. Stay away from these kinds of phones. Basically, you need a phone which supports what is called an SIP Client to access the wholesale VoIP rates.

Calls on my E63 phone are automatically routed through wifi if available, and then only uses the cell phone network (Fido for now, soon to be SpeakoutWireless) as a last resort. Call quality can actually be better than cellular, but it depends on your internet connection at home.

The next step for this type of set up is to have all incoming calls routed to both my home phone (if I even have one), and the cell phone through wifi if available, and using the cell network as a last resort.

Wifi-Enabled Cell Phones can cut cell phone plan costs by 75%+++

Imagine if you have wireless internet access at work, college/university and/or at home, this would probably cover 90%+ of your telephone calls. This would be great for a university student that has wireless at their student housing, and wireless throughout their university campus.

One issue is that the phone doesn't support handing-off to the cell phone network if you get out-of-range, or to the home-network once you arrive at home, but this isn't an issue for most people that can plan ahead, or don't mind splitting that rare situation into two telephone calls.

This type of phone is also excellent for those travelling and will have access to wifi in their hotels or airports (YVR was really good for this). Roaming fees can get very expensive with Canadian cell phone plans through Rogers, Bell, Telus and the like.