No Incoming Calls Received from Particular Provider
SteveInWA:
I'm getting confused by your terminology usage. Let's avoid the use of "land line".
IF you properly set up your Google Voice account, then you have an inbound Google Voice telephone number. This "virtual number" forwards to two destinations: Google Chat, and your AT&T cell phone. Your OBi emulates (acts as) a Google Chat client. The telephone plugged into your OBi will ring whenever a call is received by your Google Voice number, and you've check-marked the Chat box in the list of forwarding destinations. So, let's call that your OBi.
At this point, it's unclear to me what you are hearing. If you have an answering machine function on the telephone plugged into your OBi, you should disable it completely.
On your AT&T Wireless phone number, you should enable AT&T's conditional call forwarding feature. CCF will forward unanswered or busy calls back to Google Voice's VM system.
To enable CCF, go to your Google Voice settings page again, on the Phones tab. Click the link that says "Activate Google voicemail on this phone". This will pop up a box, with a string of digits in it. Clicking this link does nothing at all to Google Voice settings. It merely displays the instructions for you to type in the digit string on your AT&T Wireless phone's keypad. It should start with **004*, then your 10-digit Google Voice number, then #. Enter that string on your iPhone, press Send and wait for confirmation.
Now, you should be able to test inbound calling from a variety of sources, and the caller should hear your Google Voice's voicemail greeting (what you called the outgoing message). They should then be able to leave a message. Anything else that they hear is being generated by some other voicemail system -- either an answering machine at your house, or your AT&T Wireless greeting.
dryland:
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At this point, it's unclear to me what you are hearing. If you have an answering machine function on the telephone plugged into your OBi, you should disable it completely.
This is exactly what was happening. Out of curiosity, is this step necessary? Does having my phone's answering machine on somehow clutter or confuse the Google/obi system setup? Because I actually prefer keeping my messages on my phone's own system (which has a blinking light to notify me of new messages). But I have already turned it off as you suggested and will live with Google Voice voicemail if necessary.
While I love the option of forwarding the Google Voice number through to my cell, I would prefer to keep my cell's voicemail and missed calls on my cell network and separate from Google. Is there a reason other than consolidation and perceived convenience to engage the CCF?
Thank you for your clear explanation of how the GoogleVoice number, GoogleChat, and OBi work together and for taking the time to walk me through all this. I suspect it'll come in handy when I speak to the tech guy(s) tomorrow.
Edited to add: I think I may see what you're getting at regarding turning my phone's answering machine off and setting up CCF for my cell...are you trying to just isolate everything to GoogleVoice in order to basically eliminate those others as possible sources of complications so that we can then say with confidence that there can be no other culprit except for GoogleVoice or the local landline provider?
SteveInWA:
OK, so it sounds like there was nothing wrong with your Google Voice number; the problem was caused by your answering machine. There is nothing that the phone company techs need to do. It's working as designed.
Your comments and preferences suggest that you only want to use Google Voice as a "free telephone company". That is not its designed purpose. It's a full-function inbound telephone call and text message management system.
If you prefer to just keep all of these things separate, and use a good old-fashioned answering machine, I think you'd be happier using your OBi with one of the paid SIP VoIP telephone service providers. Your OBi would then simply be like a telephone jack.
Most of us here are happy with the service provided by Callcentric, voip.ms or Phonepower. These three carriers offer the best balance of price, features, quality of service, reliability and support.
If you go that route, you can port your Google Voice number out to the SIP ITSP of your choice.
dryland:
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OK, so it sounds like there was nothing wrong with your Google Voice number; the problem was caused by your answering machine. There is nothing that the phone company techs need to do. It's working as designed.
So the answering machine could confuse (only one) provider's system and to such an extent that calls from that provider are not allowed through to my obi at all? That's amazing.
Like I mentioned, I will change my obi-phone and cell preferences if it helps to make this system function correctly. But if change is not necessary, then I am happy to keep things separate. Regardless, it's not a deal breaker for me to have to change a couple of things to make it work and I want to give this an honest shot before I try something else.
Thanks again.
drgeoff:
Something doesn't stack up in all of this.
If your phone with integral answering machine is plugged in to only the OBi200, then the only way the answering machine can play the "Telephone number xxx-xxx-xxxx can't take your call ..." to a caller is in response to a call coming in to the OBi200. Yet in the first post is stated "I've checked the obi's Status>Call History and there is no record of a call from her landline...it's like it never happened. Her landline does not appear in the History of my GoogleVoice account either."
Are you 110% certain that the house wiring, into which both the OBi200 and the phone are connected, really is totally disconnected from the outside world?
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