Magic Jack

[cici235]

Unfortunately Google voice does not offer a local number for my area. My wife tells me that we are not giving up our home number that we have had for almost 15 years.

The great news is that Magic Jack now allows me to port our home number to my Magic  Jack Device.
Like many others my mind is just swimming with ideas on the best way to set my OBI110 and finally cut loose those monthly fees I am paying for my AT&T Land Line.

So here's my question (my understanding of Google voice is somewhat limited).

Why can't I just forward my Magic Jack number (soon to be my current home number) to my Google voice number.  Could it be that simple.

This would even solve the computer having to be on all the time issue with MJ. I still have 3 years left on my MJ so I hate to upgrade to Magic Jack plus.

We get a lot more calls than we make. Therefore I am not concerned about having a different number on the other party's caller ID when making outbound calls.

[RonR]

Sounds very feasible and something that you can test immediately before going any further.

[bitstopjoe]

 I have had MJ since Aug 2008. In March of this year I got an OBi100 and have since been forwarding my MJ# to it using my GV number. Works like a charm....
I did renew my MJ this year in case GV starts charging in 2012. If they do I can just re-plug my MJ in and be back in business..

Joe Sica

[cici235]

Thanks

I think this could work quite nicely.

[Everton]

Unfortunately Google voice does not offer a local number for my area. My wife tells me that we are not giving up our home number that we have had for almost 15 years.

It wasn't clear from your post, but did you "test" to see if the number could be ported to Google, despite the fact that they do not "offer a local number for my area"?  It is quite possible that you could not get a local number in your area, yet could potentially port your landline number (via a wireless carrier) to GV?  I must say, I have no way to test this without first porting the number to a Wireless Carrier.

An aside issue, if OBi could figure out the authentication scheme that Magic Jack uses for the old PC based MagicJack, they could sell a ton of these OBi ATAs!  Does anyone know if the new Magic Jack Device are "Locked" and is it possible to extract the SIP Credentials from them and use on a OBi ATA?

[Dav3yDark0]

An aside issue, if OBi could figure out the authentication scheme that Magic Jack uses for the old PC based MagicJack, they could sell a ton of these OBi ATAs!  Does anyone know if the new Magic Jack Device are "Locked" and is it possible to extract the SIP Credentials from them and use on a OBi ATA?

I have a feeling that if their authentication scheme became known, mJ would just change something else in the authentication and thus causing your mJ credentials in an ATA to stop working again.

There just isn't enough bang for your buck when it comes to hacking the mJ, not worth the effort imho.

If mJ offered credentials to customers for use with and ATA or softphone at a reasonable price I would probably consider getting my mJ account working on an ATA again.

Dave

[cici235]

I just assumed that Google would not let me port my number to a prefix that they did not support. I will look into this option. It does look like MJ will forward to my GV number just fine. It also gives me a huge benefit of not having to worry if my mini itx pc is working as it should. Plus my cell phone service is terrible in the house so it's nice to have a second line.