Re: [PLUG] Phones (considering switching from POTS to VOIP, keeping my number)

[Tom Diehl <tdiehl@rogueind.com>]

On Wed, 25 Sep 2013, Isaac Bennetch wrote:

> Hi!
>
> I've got regular POTS phone service through Verizon. It's really just to
> have a number to give businesses I don't want to deal with and for
> emergency use. I like having copper to my house for that reason; even if
> we lose power and the cell phone networks are overloaded, the phone is
> likely to keep working.
>
> What I would like to do (and you can tell me if this is a bad idea) is
> keep my existing phone number (probably making it some VOIP system) and
> get a new copper line to the house. That way, people can call my current
> number and my cell phone and house phone will both ring if it's an
> important number, it will get dropped if it's a known junk caller, and
> so on. So far this sounds a lot like Google Voice to me, but I've heard
> a lot of complaints about the call quality and I'm concerned about
> getting my number locked in to Google's services (as far as I can tell,
> there's no way to port out of Google Voice).
>
> Anyway, I think I've explained my case and I turn to you for thoughts.
> Is this possible, and if so how would I do it. I'll do a brief recap:
> * Prefer to keep a copper phone (which will probably get a new number)
> * Prefer to be able to define behavior based on incoming number (ring
> all my phones, none of my phones, only my cell between 9a-6p, etc)
> * Side note: I don't tend to call internationally and tend to use my
> cell phone for long distance; having cheap international calling
> available would be 'nice' but isn't a needed feature.
> * Voicemail transcription to email would be great
> * Voicemail access from everywhere would be great
>
> Basically I think I'm looking for Google Voice without the Google or
> risk of poor quality.
>
> What do you think -- am I making sense and is this a realistic goal?
> What sort of companies or technologies should I be looking at.

As long as you are willing to build your own solution, check out
http://incrediblepbx.com/ and the associated howto articles @
http://nerdvittles.com/ . Be sure to pay attention to the part about security.

Even if the current article of the week does not interest you, you can
scroll down to get an index of precious articles and build your own solution.

The incredible pbx allows you to do what you describe and much more.

You can even run it on a Raspberry Pi. :-)

Regards,

--
Tom Diehl       tdiehl@rogueind.com      Spamtrap address mtd123@rogueind.com
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