Whitelisting a Phone Number

[jashburn]

I have been very happy with my Obi, with one unfortunate exception.  I cannot call home from my workplace.  My office is at a government facility.  Thus, I have no control over the configuration of the IP phones.  When calling home, I receive the message "The party you are calling does not accept blocked calls."  After several emails with Obi support and trying all of their suggestions, my problem was not resolved.  Eventually, Obi support simply stopped responding to my emails (yet another problem, I suppose).  If there is no solution, then a statement to that effect would be more satisfactory than being ignored.

If anyone else has found a solution to this problem, I would greatly appreciate hearing from you.

[drgeoff]

You did not elucidate us with:

1.  The ITSP that your home number is on.

2.  What OBi support have had you try that has been unsuccessful.

Presumably you can reach your home number from a phone other than at your workplace.  So what is different about calls from there?  Is the Caller ID withheld?  Have you configured your ITSP or your OBi to reject anonymous calls?

[SteveInWA]

I don't blame them for not responding, since your issue is unrelated to your OBi device.  The message you are hearing is not generated by your OBi device (nor by Google Voice, but since you didn't tell us the name of your service provider, we have no way to help you).

Whatever phone service you are using at home has an anonymous call blocking service turned on.  You need to deal with the carrier for that phone service, and/or find out why your workplace is blocking outbound caller ID.

[jashburn]

It's been several months since I've wrestled with this.  Without digging through my emails, I recall trying the star code that is suppose to allow caller id (?) to go through.  I also added my work phone as a trusted number.

Again, apologies for the redundant posts.  Two different browsers were giving error messages as soon as I hit post.  I should not have assumed they didn't go through.

Oh, ITSP is Google Voice.  Yes, I can reach my home number from every other number I have tried.  Only my work phone is a problem.  It is a federal facility with lots of security, carefully managed IP phones, proxy servers on all the internet connections, etc.  I don't think that caller ID ever showed up on the home phone when calling from work, but my family's recollection is vague and obviously I was never at home to see the other end of the call.  I'm guessing caller ID is withheld.  And finally, no, I have not configured Google Voice to reject anonymous calls.  I want to solve this problem first.

Thanks.

[zsak23]

Do you have a service for 911 such as CallCentric?  Calling that number may work.

[SteveInWA]

It's been several months since I've wrestled with this.  Without digging through my emails, I recall trying the star code that is suppose to allow caller id (?) to go through.  I also added my work phone as a trusted number.

Again, apologies for the redundant posts.  Two different browsers were giving error messages as soon as I hit post.  I should not have assumed they didn't go through.

Oh, ITSP is Google Voice.  Yes, I can reach my home number from every other number I have tried.  Only my work phone is a problem.  It is a federal facility with lots of security, carefully managed IP phones, proxy servers on all the internet connections, etc.  I don't think that caller ID ever showed up on the home phone when calling from work, but my family's recollection is vague and obviously I was never at home to see the other end of the call.  I'm guessing caller ID is withheld.  And finally, no, I have not configured Google Voice to reject anonymous calls.  I want to solve this problem first.

Thanks.

Based on your description, your work's phone system is the problem.  If they don't permit outbound caller ID (for security reasons), then there is nothing you can do about it.  Google Voice does not generate that error message.

[azrobert]

If GV isn't generating this message then this doesn't make sense unless you are forwarding the call to another service provider. Callcentric has an Anonymous Call Rejection feature with a message similar to the one you described. This feature is turned on/off in the extension definition.

[jashburn]

I don't have CallCentric or any other service.  It's strictly Google Voice plus my Obi200.  If the problem can only be fixed by my employer, then I'm out of luck.  It is an enormous organization, and there is zero chance they will tinker with anything to accommodate me.  I suppose I'm a bit mystified by the fact that, not only does there not appear to be a work-around, but when Googling my problem, about the only discussion I find relevant to it is this forum thread.  I appreciate the replies.  If there are any more thoughts, I'll be happy to experiment since I've go nothing to lose.

[SteveInWA]

Since you are the only person who has this problem when calling your home number from work, a simple alternative would be to get a free inbound NY State phone number from Callcentric, and set it up on SP2 of your OBi.  When you want to call home, call that number.  This will only affect inbound calling; you can default the OBi to use SP1 for all outbound calls.