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

[Isaac Bennetch <bennetch@gmail.com>]

HI,

On 9/26/13 6:43 AM, Tom Diehl wrote:
> 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.

Thanks for the tip. This looks great. Do you use this? I'd love to see a
presentation or demo sometime.

> 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.

Looks very interesting.

> The incredible pbx allows you to do what you describe and much more.
> 
> You can even run it on a Raspberry Pi. :-)

Is there anything Raspberry Pi -can't- do?

> Regards,

Thanks!
___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug