Amazon announced that the Echo device can now make outbound calls for free to the US, Canada and Mexico. To receive calls from regular calls, you need to buy a $35 connect box.
Is that box an Obi product?
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/29/16387398/amazon-echo-free-voice-calls-us-canada-mexico
That was a somewhat puzzling announcement, as I would think that the market for this is small and getting smaller.
The device is a modified Grandstream HT800 series ATA. It looks like they're only using its FXO port to turn it into a landline gateway. The concept is: someone calls your landline number (e.g. POTS or some VoIP provider), and you've connected the box to that service via an RJ-11 cord. The inbound call is then somehow bridged to your Echo device(s). I guess it would be attractive to people who have landlines, and are too lazy to answer the call on a regular telephone handset or speakerphone, but it seems like a solution for a problem that doesn't need solving.
I successfully made a couple of calls to 10-digit numbers yesterday on one of my Echo Dots. The call quality was quite good, although the Dot's tiny speaker is no comparison to a decent speakerphone.
The outbound calls worked fine for me on the orig echo and yes, it's a LOT like a speakerphone :-) However, a friend is buying a dot for a friend who is partially paralyzed and wants to maker calls out. Seems perfect for her.
My reason for mentioning this here was there was a mention of Google but I didn't read it carefully enough. I thought they implied it was using Google Voice.
Where does the Echo Connect go? In between the phone base and OBI or between the router and OBI?
It doesn't go between anything. The easiest way to understand it, is if you think of it as a speakerphone, which can be controlled by your voice. It has a standard RJ-11 phone jack on it. You plug one end of a phone cord into it and you plug the other end into a RJ-11 duplex adapter (included), plug the adapter into the OBi's phone jack, and plug your existing phone cord (for whatever other phone you want to use) into the adapter.
Echo Connect<-----> |
|<---->OBi phone jack
Other phone(s)<---> |