Questions before purchase - please help
Brian321:
My wife is from Romania. We live in the USA. My wife's daughter and my wife's parents live in two separate households in Romania. Her daughter has Internet service, but her parents do not. Both of them have landline phones.
From what I've read so far about the Obi110, it is possible to install one at her daughter's house, connect it to both the Internet and the landline phone, and use it to call local phones over the POTS from another Obi device, or from a smartphone running the ObiON app.
Also, it looks like we can get another Obi110 and install it here in our house in the USA. That will allow her daughter to call us for free too.
That part is cool. There are a couple of things I don't know if it will do though...
First, if we call on our Obi110 in the USA to her daughter's Obi110 in Romania... how can we control whether it rings the phone attached to the Obi110 in her daughter's house, or will allow us to call out on the POTS line at her daughter's house? Will we be greeted by some type of automated attendant that will ask us if we want to ring the phone or use the POTS line? How can this be controlled so that ONLY our Obi110 device has this ability?
Second, if my wife's mother (she ONLY has a landline phone), who also lives in Romania but does not live in the same household as the daughter (where the Obi110 will be located in Romania), wants to call us... can she do that by calling the daughter's landline phone number, and then using the Obi110 at the daughter's house to call our Obi110? Will she also be greeted by an automated attendant with the option of ringing the daughter's phone or calling our Obi110 in the USA? Can this be controlled so that other callers who call the landline phone will not be able to use our Obi devices (and also prevents them from using the daughter's landline phone)?
Also, can the automated attendant for one of the Obi110 devices have a language of Romanian? If not Romanian, how about Italian?
Thanks for any help you can provide.
Brian
ianobi:
I think you will like the replies to your questions :)
First: Yes, there is an auto attendant in each OBi. For other OBi numbers to gain access to it they have to be in the "Circle of Trust" for that OBi. If your OBi number is in your daughter's CoT, then you will be greeted by "press 1 to continue this call" (rings daughter's phone), "press 2 to make a new call" (call wife's parents etc), "press 3 ..."
Second: Yes, same sort of thing. Wife's parents number would be put in a "Trusted Callers" group to gain access to the auto attendant.
Language: Yes, you can record your own prompts for the auto attendant. This takes some time and research.
A lot of the above can be automated by clever DigitMaps to not need the auto attendant, but that's a big subject!
CoalMinerRetired:
> Also, can the automated attendant for one of the Obi110 devices have a language of Romanian? If not Romanian, how about Italian?
For this I'd suggest simply record the same prompt in two languages, like some big companies do. Such as "Hello, you have reached Verizon, Hola, has llegado a Verizon,." http://goo.gl/gnqd7.
Brian321:
Wow, so as long as my wife's daughter has Caller ID, and the CID number shows up on her home phone when my wife's mother calls... then I can add her mother to the trusted numbers list, and her mother will get a voice prompt for how to proceed. Very cool. I'll have to find out if the CID number appears on her daughter's phone when my wife's mother calls my wife's daughter.
I've read about the "digit maps" as you put it. I haven't delved into how to configure that yet, but it looks interesting. As for recording the voice menus... I'm sure we can figure that out. I didn't know that was even a possibility. I'll research that. My wife speaks Romanian and English (and Hungarian and a little bit of a few other languages... she's very handy to have around when we are in South Florida!). She could make the recordings.... no problem.
This whole technology looks amazing. There seem to be endless possibilities. Connecting two of these devices on different continents could give people at both ends local calling on both continents! This seems to be what I've always hoped for. It would allow my wife to call anyone in Romania for free, and they could call anyone in the US too. It might even be worth getting a 2nd land line at my step-daughter's apartment... heck, I might even be able to get the family to share the cost of the extra land line!
Brian321:
Oh... one more question...
If someone who is NOT on the list of trusted callers calls my step-daughter's land line number, will the attached phone just ring without the auto-attendant interfering? I wouldn't want most callers to be confused by the automated attendant.
Thanks again.
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