Now that three or four years have passed since Microsoft killed all Skype phones, is it now possible to connect an ObiHai device to our Skype telephone number?
In my wife's mini-office, our original Skype number (which we got in 2013) forwards to our Google Voice number (which we got in 2017), which is connected to our Obi 200, which rings a simple desk phone. So calls to our original Skype number ring that phone, and we can answer. Of course, when we call out, we are calling out on our Google Voice number, not our Skype number.
Is there now any way to get the Obi to connect directly to that Skype number for calls in and out?
I ask because Skype for Business has something called Skype Connect which works on a PBX with SIP. We have only simple Skype (not Skype for Business) and we do not have a PBX. But if it's SIP, could we configure an Obi 200 to make the connection?
EDIT: We're in NYC.
Thanks.
Nope. Consumer-level Skype is a closed system; you can't get its SIP credentials to provision on an ATA.
Why not port that Skype number out to a SIP Internet Telephone Service Provider (ITSP) like Callcentric or voip.ms, and then provision it on your OBiTALK device(s)?
SteveInWA - Belated Happy New Year, and hope you are doing well.
Your suggestions are interesting, as my wife is also complaining that the call quality is not good these days.
I assume you are recommending NOT to port that Skype number into the Google Voice? I have refrained from doing so all this time because I don't want to lose that Skype number, which is what all my wife's clients have. But your thoughts?
EDIT - one technical question -- the Obi200 points to CiscoOpenDNS as its DNS, and I don't see any way to change that. Would call quality improve if I could change that to, say, cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 ?
Thanks.
There are two reasons why I recommend porting directly to an ITSP instead of to Google Voice:
- You have to go through an unsupported gyration of first porting the Skype number to a mobile phone service provider (since Google Voice can't port in landline or VoIP numbers). You must wait a full week after porting into a mobile carrier before subsequently porting that number to Google Voice. Increasingly, the "big four" mobile carriers are dropping prepaid, per-minute service, because it isn't very profitable for them, given their overhead costs. So you end up with a third-party reseller, or MVNO. The MVNOs generally don't like people churning their numbers in and out (it is essentially costing them money for nothing), and they make it difficult to obtain the PIN needed for porting out, or they impose a 30 day waiting period. It's a hassle, but people still do it.
- Skype, like Vonage, uses the same underlying Competitive Local Exchange Carrier, or CLEC, as Google Voice, in most cases: bandwidth.com.
For some reason, ports between bandwidth customers have a higher failure rate, likely due to the way the porting system is set up. It seems that bandwidth's system gets confused, and may treat it as an internal transfer, and then doesn't purge the number out of the previous service provider's inventory.
Bottom line: as always, people will ignore the risks and do it anyway, but that's up to you.
As for DNS, yes, you can use any DNS service provider you wish. Aside from Cloudflare, there's the Google high-performance public DNS at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, and the Quad9 DNS at 9.9.9.9. I use https://www.quad9.net/.
You need to use your OBiTALK account dashboard, click on your device, and get into Expert Configuration mode. The DNS setting is under either "System management" if you're using Ethernet, or under "OBiWiFi Configuration" if you are using a WiFi dongle. See the screenshot attached.