The invention relates to the field of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and more specifically to a system and method of terminating a VoIP call. In certain exemplary embodiments, the present solution provides in a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) network, a method of terminating a call received from a public switched telephone network (PSTN) phone by a session initiation protocol (SIP) phone via a PSTN gateway, in the absence of a terminating signal from the PSTN gateway, the method comprising: (a) receiving at said SIP phone a sequence of codec frames from said PSTN gateway; (b) determining if a specified portion of each codec frame in said received sequence of codec frames is a specified value; (c) if said specified portion is said specified value, incrementing a counter by an incrementing amount; and (d) when said counter reaches a specified threshold, terminating said call In the absence of a BYE message, session termination of a VoIP call can still be facilitated using the method and apparatus of the present invention.