Skype + Google Voice (GVOICE) + Obihai110?
pinchpenny:
Hello,
I am a miserly, chintzy pinchpenny. I am faced with an inevitable and wasteful expenditure: a home phone. My family all have cell phones, but my elderly father insists on having, additionally, home phone access. Reason does not persuade the unfortunate laggard minority. Also, my father (astonishingly) uses the home phone quite a lot. So, it seems unlimited outbound calls is best.
I've seen somewhere in the forums that a setup with, say, CircleNet for outbound and FreelyCall for inbound would be reasonably cheap. But, if someone is calling 24 hours or more in outbounds calls a month, that's a little over $7 a month. Also, I do not know how to go about this set up.
Main question: Is there a way to spoof my gvoice # for outbound calls while using Skype's current $2.99 unlimited calling plan AND not have to have a computer on in order for the setup to work?
OR is there an even cheaper alternative?
[UPDATE]Skype + Google Voice number + Obi110 seems to work well in conjunction
Thanks in advance for the help!!
peterh:
Alas, you've just missed the boat for getting free Internet telephone service via the ObiHai and other devices through Google Voice. That's what I've been doing, but their free service ends this month, so I've had to sign up with another provider.
I've been very happy with the Obi110 I bought several years ago. It's given me great phone service (through Google) for very little money. Now the GV free ride is ending, I signed up with PhonePower, which I've only just started with, but looks like it'll be a good choice for our household. We picked their $35/year plan, which has 300 minutes of outbound calling per month and a penny-per-minute rate after that. More than we need, but they have a $60/year unlimited plan, too.
Assuming you have broadband Internet and a router with an open wired Ethernet port, I'd probably go with an Obi110 and pick one of their "approved service providers." Both PhonePower and Anveo offer great plans, any of which beat the pants off of local phone company offerings and cost. Your dad will get cheaper phone service with more offerings, probably won't notice any difference between traditional landlines and the Obi110 line, and can take both the ObiHai interface and his phone number with him if he ever moves elsewhere.
One last thing. You can go to, say, PhonePower and order their service with their "free" adapter, but they PhonePower charges more when you get their adapter, and their adapter is tied to their service. The ObiHai works with several service providers, and, if your provider goes away like Google Voice has or their service quality declines, it's pretty trivial to switch providers.
pinchpenny:
Well, I've had the obihai110 with gvoice for about a year now. Now, with the fateful doomsday approaching (May 15th), I have to figure out what is best.
So, are you saying I can't somehow use Skype for outbound & inbound calls using my Google Voice number?
pinchpenny:
Well, I've answered my own question, it seems.
If you buy a FreeTalk Connect Me Skype adapter thingy, you will be able to make calls from your landline to other landline and mobiles using your Skype account (provided you pay for a subscription) and have your gvoice number show as the caller pretty nicely.
The problem you'll run into is RECEIVING calls using your adapter there and Skype. What you could do is shell out $60/year on top of the $35/year (subscription service) for a SkypeIn number. If you did that, you could forward calls to your gvoice number to this SkypeIn number for about a total $95/year (w/ unlimited nationwide calling).
But, if we recall, it would be cheaper simply using our Obihai devices with a SIP service provider (such as callcentric, anveo, vestalink, etc.) for about $59.99/yr unlimited calling. With the latter solution, you would get E911 service, among other things, as opposed to using the Skype method, which does not provide E911 service.
You might have been able to avoid paying Skype the additional $60/yr using ring2skype some time ago, but I did some research and it appears the current replacement for r2s (e.g., www.ring2me.com) does not offer U.S. numbers that forward to Skype. Without a U.S. number, Google Voice will not accept a phone number from outside the U.S. (including canadian numbers).
Am I correct on all of this? ???
pinchpenny:
bump
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