Disclosed is a method and system for employing underutilized communication channels as outbound gateways. A call from a calling terminal to a called terminal is routed to a first residential gateway at a first customer premises via a broadband data network and then routed from the first residential gateway to the called terminal via a local area network. The call is thereafter re-routed to a second residential gateway at a second customer premises via the broadband network and then routed from the second residential gateway to the called terminal via the local area network. The re-routing of the call via the second residential gateway may be in response to a determination that the first customer premises requires bandwidth (of either the broadband network or local area network) or other resources that are being used by the telephone call being routed via the first residential gateway. The call is thus re-routed via the second residential gateway in order to free up the resources needed by the first customer premises.