With basic landline setup will answering machine still work as normal?
HunterT:
Alright, would Voip.ms be just to port the land-line number over to something that will be able to be ported to Google Voice or will it be replacing Google Voice completely. I am fine with a small payment either way. Is Google Voice truly the better way to go?
Rick:
Quote from: HunterT on March 28, 2013, 12:25:18 am
Alright, would Voip.ms be just to port the land-line number over to something that will be able to be ported to Google Voice or will it be replacing Google Voice completely. I am fine with a small payment either way. Is Google Voice truly the better way to go?
Voip.ms has nothing to do with GV. You can use GV or most/any VoIP providers. GV is free. Others are not. GV, as a free product, while offering nice capability doesn't let you do things like not answer after 25 seconds.
You need to review your goals and pick a solution that meets them. Are they:
1) Save Grandma money by eliminating POTS line
2) Replace POTS line with dependable service
3) New service to be significantly less than POTS service
4) New service to be easy to use
5) New service leaves messages on Grandma's answering machine, so she's comfortable with the change
6) Keeping old phone number
Also - please don't have two dialogs going on the same issue. This post: http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=5594.0 is the same topic. Pick one, then on the other one please put a line and refer the discussion to the one you want to keep going. Having two just wastes the time of the volunteers answering your questions. ;)
HunterT:
Alright, I am sorry I will close one of the posts.
Here are the answers to your questions so maybe you can tell me what would be right for me:
1) Yes I want to eliminate the POTS line completely.
2) Yes I want to replace the POTS line with dependable service (including e911 through a separate voip company if necessary)
3) I want the new service to be significantly less than POTS service (why not go free, is what I'm thinking)
4) I expect the new service to be easy to use for her once the setup is complete. I am hoping almost everything will seem the same for her. I wouldn't want to have to change anything on her. I think she can deal with the under 25 seconds of ringing. That would be at least 5-6 rings I guess.
5) Yes I want the new service to leave messages on Grandma's answering machine still so she is comfortable with the change. I can't have this any other way.
6) She 100% needs to keep her old #
I prefer using Google Voice because I am obsessed with Google and I know they are reliable with anything they release, but at the same time I know the voip companies with a monthly fee will give me way more features and possibly better call quality. If I did go with a voip company I would need it to be one that doesn't send you their own adapter, because I want to use the OBi adapter that I ordered. So if there are any companies who don't charge much and are reliable I welcome all recommendations.
It seems that Google Voice is the perfect fit, besides the 25 second thing. No idea why Google doesn't have a setting for that yet.
If you can come up with a game plan for me based on what I just told you that would be amazing and I will stop trolling your forums haha.
Thanks so much for your help.
Rick:
Quote from: HunterT on March 28, 2013, 05:36:14 am
Alright, I am sorry I will close one of the posts.
Here are the answers to your questions so maybe you can tell me what would be right for me:
1) Yes I want to eliminate the POTS line completely.
2) Yes I want to replace the POTS line with dependable service (including e911 through a separate voip company if necessary)
3) I want the new service to be significantly less than POTS service (why not go free, is what I'm thinking)
4) I expect the new service to be easy to use for her once the setup is complete. I am hoping almost everything will seem the same for her. I wouldn't want to have to change anything on her. I think she can deal with the under 25 seconds of ringing. That would be at least 5-6 rings I guess.
5) Yes I want the new service to leave messages on Grandma's answering machine still so she is comfortable with the change. I can't have this any other way.
6) She 100% needs to keep her old #
I prefer using Google Voice because I am obsessed with Google and I know they are reliable with anything they release, but at the same time I know the voip companies with a monthly fee will give me way more features and possibly better call quality. If I did go with a voip company I would need it to be one that doesn't send you their own adapter, because I want to use the OBi adapter that I ordered. So if there are any companies who don't charge much and are reliable I welcome all recommendations.
It seems that Google Voice is the perfect fit, besides the 25 second thing. No idea why Google doesn't have a setting for that yet.
Thanks so much for your help.
It's not 5 or 6 rings. She has to answer the phone in 4 rings or it will go to GV voicemail.
I don't use the VoIP providers. You can easily setup E911 service through different ones - although I would stay away from Callcentric which had a HUGE denial of service issue then the storm knocked out their server power (no backup generators). They are not reliable for E911 IMHO.
If you can teach Grandma to not run for the phone, and you can set her machine to answer before the 25 seconds are up (i.e. ideally after 4 rings), then using GV with E911 through a 3rd party should work.
Note - you can easily test things with GV and the number they give you to set the answering machine and test it out BEFORE you think about porting.
As noted on the other thread, when you port Grandma will have a period of time where the home phone will not receive calls but may make them, followed by the porting cell doing everything, after which you port to GV in 24 hours. You'll need to tell her to basically user her iPhone except when the house phone rings until you finish the port.
infin8loop:
GV is great but being a free service, when things go wrong, support can be sketchy to non-existent.
You might consider using both GV and voip.ms. Port grandma's number to voip.ms for free during their current special. The DID (phone number) will cost you $1.49 a month. The $20 you save by not paying GV to port will cover 13 months of DID service. And you will save additional cost and grief by not having to port the landline through a cellphone in order to get it on GV. You can then either pay by the minute .0149 cents for incoming calls to her number or get a monthly flat rate incoming plan at $6.95 (which includes the $1.49 for the DID) for up to 3500 minutes. So the break-even between the per minute and flat rate is about 366 minutes ((6.95 - 1.49) / .0149). I'm on the per minute and have never exceeded the 366 minutes. Outbound U.S. calls will cost $0.0105 per minute value route or $0.0125 per minute premium route or use google voice for outbound for free. You can fund voip.ms with a mininum payment of $25. I suggest paypal to avoid annoying international transaction fee that may apply on a credit or debit card since voip.ms is based in Canada. Callerid name lookup at voip.ms will be .008 (8 tenths of a cent) per call but add her frequent callers to her voip.ms address book and they will be free. You won't get incoming callerid name lookup on GV unless you jump through more work-around hoops that are covered elsewhere in this forum. Less an issue if you have everyone in the phone's address book.
Use google voice number for her outbound calls for free. Except 911 will be be configured to route through voip.ms. 911 service at voip.ms will cost another $1.50 setup and $1.50 per month.
The costs above are for my ratecenter. Your numbers may be higher or lower, but probably not significantly.
This setup works well for us. I don't have 911 activated on voip.ms so cannot comment on it's reliability. Our frequent callers call our google voice number for free. The myriad of other callers, doctors, dentists, etc. that have the former long-time AT&T number continue to call that number and they now come in through voip.ms. We use google voice for outbound.
It took about 20 days to port the AT&T landline to voip.ms. AT&T held the number until the current billing cycle ended. We had already paid through this date (pay ahead invoicing), so it wasn't a big deal.
All said and done, you will have a real voip provider (voip.ms) that you can configure and GV for what I will guess is significantly less per month than Verizon. If it doesn't work out you haven't lost much. The port is free (for now) and the voip.ms balance is refundable.
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