Skype as Alternative to GV Set Up Help
giqcass:
Welcome to the forum CheapSk86 :)
If most of your minutes are conference calling for work you are most likely sitting in front of your computer when you make the call. Would that be an accurate statement? You could cut your outgoing minutes dramatically by using the Google Voice portal to initiate the call. A lot of providers give you unlimited inbound calling. By using that trick you could probably stay within most providers limits. As mentioned earlier having multiple providers helps as well. If the conference calls are to 800 numbers there are plenty of companies that will connect you to those for free thereby eliminating a lot of outgoing minutes. If you check into the conference hosting company(assuming it is an outside provider) some of those provide a sip uri you can dial for free.
The Obi gives you a lot of options.
SteveInWA:
And, aside from giqcass' good answers, your employer is the actual cheapskate if they are not reimbursing you for home office phone service to use for their business purposes. Can't you expense the bill? Otherwise, as pointed out, they ought to have a toll-free number for your use.
CheapSk86:
Thanks guys for the follow-up.
The conference lines I have to dial in to are typically part of a conference configuration with WebEx or Adobe and I believe they are always toll-free. I could be wrong, but I know some of them are 866 and 877 numbers. If toll-free is free outgoing on the plans, that will definitely make a HUGE dent in my outgoing minutes. The rest of my calls are to the office, which is several states away, but not toll-free. But those account for 25% - 40% at most. The conference calls make up the bigger part of my call time.
It would be correct that many times I am sitting in front of my computer making the call, but tying myself to the computer is a little more restrictive than is feasible in many cases. Granted, I could use GV when I am stationary in front of it, so that's an option I could use, but many times I need to be able to move around. Sometimes I do use the VOIP options built in to the conference app (eg: WebEx has a computer audio option). Unfortunately, I can't have them call me for the conference, because they lines are specific to dial-in.
As for CircleNet or LocalPhone, I haven't looked at CN yet. I did some browsing of LocalPhone but it looked like it required dialing through an existing landline. Maybe I misunderstood it, but it looked like the primary role was to act as an inexpensive proxy for long distance calling. If the toll-free calls are actually free, a 5000 minute plan might work well for me.
I haven't looked at CircleNet yet. I have browsed Anveo, VestaLink, Voip.ms, Vitelity, PhonePower, a couple of the parent cos to some of those. I ruled out the PAYG plans because of cost in the end.
And my line would be considered a tax-deductible expense, but it is one of the expenses the company doesn't reimburse for. The policy for reimbursement is the hardware and service belongs to/becomes theirs. For a reasonable cost plan, the low price would be more beneficial for me to keep the hardware and maintain the service. I just have to find the right one that's reliable and meets my usage needs.
You guys are great with the info on here, btw. I appreciate all the knowledge. I have been "browsing" the forums and reading up on stuff for a while, but haven't posted until recently.
azrobert:
You can setup a free tollfree provider on a Voice Gateway then it doesn't matter if the provider you choose has free tollfree service.
I use tf.callwithus.com or tollfree.future-nine.com, but there are others.
See:
http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=7726.msg49995#msg49995
CheapSk86:
So setting that up uses a digitmap specific to tollfree numbers and routes the call through a different provider when it matches that case?!
Sorry, for the surprise(?!) but that sounds really.. enticing, intriguing, too good to be true, simple stupid? I didn't know there were free routing services for that. And if that's the case, with good quality and reliability, that could be an awesome helper.
Can you provide me a little more info (read the link) as to your experience (not just + | -) and how it works?
I feel like I hijacked the Skype thread. Sorry OP. In honesty my first post was to piggy-back on the skype discussion and feasibility of using one of those approaches, but it looks like the conversation has taken a new direction.
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