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Thread: Anyone use Alexa Calling on a tablet to make free phone calls using wifi?

  1. #1
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    Anyone use Alexa Calling on a tablet to make free phone calls using wifi?

    Thanks for any comments or help you care to offer.

    I am trying to find an inexpensive way to use wifi to make phone calls to US numbers.

    I hear one can purchase an Amazon Fire tablet with Alexa calling and make phone calls. Are these calls made via wifi for free?

    Does one have to pay for an Alexa Calling subscription to make this work? Or is Alexa Calling a free or cheap app with one-time purchase / download?


    Background
    I tried buying a cheap TracFone smartphone with pay-as-you-go service. Making calls using minutes works fine. But I wanted to be even more frugal.

    So I got an account with Google Voice. Then I downloaded the apps Hangouts and Hangouts Dialer to the TracFone smartphone.

    This worked for a couple of calls.

    Turns out TracFone hates free wifi calling. So it blocked my use of Hangouts Dialer and routed all outgoing calls through it's own dialer and charged me minutes.

    (Sometimes the reduction of minutes didn't show up on my account status for a few hours, fyi.)

    So the TracFone / Hangouts experiment was an epic fail.


    Now I'm looking for other ways to make free calls using wifi.

    If you know about Alexa calling and/or Amazon Fire tablet and wifi calling or any other way to make free phone calls via wifi to US numbers, I would be very appreciative of any info you care to share.

    btw - My landlady allows me use her wifi connection as an included utility. But I can't attach a Voip phone to it because she already has a work-dedicated Voip line attached. So no Magic Jack, Vonage, etc.

    Many thanks!

  2. #2
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    I finally found the Amazon Alexa help page for this topic.

    Here is the webpage:
    https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custo...deId=202136150

    This morning, a young fellow showed me how he uses Facebook Messenger on his smartphone to make free calls via wifi.

    I'm trying to download the Facebook Messenger app to my phone. Not having much luck so far.

    Making free calls to anywhere in the US and Canada via free wifi would save many people lots of money. If I nail this, I'll spread the word here on SLF!

  3. #3
    Senior Member Gardenarian's Avatar
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    I have a cheap Amazon tablet with Alexa.
    I haven't tried making calls with it, but I'll give it a shot and report back

  4. #4
    Senior Member Gardenarian's Avatar
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    Apparently, Alexa can only call/message devices that have the Alexa app installed, so the use is quite limited. Too bad!

    It does appear that the Alexa app is available for most platforms (though Amazon requested a phone number with texting just to set it up. Could be other ways to do the set up, not sure.) If you just have family that you regularly call, it might workvfor you. It will not call 911.

  5. #5
    Senior Member Gardenarian's Avatar
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    BTW, I use a Republican Wireless phone. A WiFi only plan is $15 / month. You can use your own (compatible, unlocked) phone.

  6. #6
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    Thanks, Gardinarian for the feedback and suggestion.

    If I can't get free wifi calling with Alexa, I'll probably go with Republic Wireless. I took a look at the website. $15 a month with unlimited minutes and text sounds good. But I have to buy a $50 phone.

    The Fire tablet with Alexa would cost $50 so if I can get that to work, I'll have a tablet and no monthly call fees.

    If I can get Alexa and Fire to work, I'll post about it and how it's done.

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