1. BIG THANKS
to the folks at Google Voice and Obihai who brought this back. I was using dirt-cheap
localphone.com for outbound, but free is even better than cheap! Plus of course google voice now has a log (history) of my outbound calls, which is sometimes handy.
2. I hadn't looked in a while, but seems Google now offers dirt cheap calling rates to Brazil landlines and the cheapest I've seen to mobile.
3.
Just one little thing missing. AFAIK, Google voice inbound to Obi, does not support Caller-ID-with-Name. Now I know the drill about CNAM lookup - but I'd be fine if somehow Google/Obi would just figure out how to just pull names from my Google Contacts. I'll populate that with my friends, family, and usual suspects. No need to go to an external CNAM database - but if you'd like to do that as a second, fine.
Which is just the way the CallCentric does it - First look in my personal directory and then if that fails, use a CNAM directory.
Which is why I'm still using Google==>CallCentric path for inbound calls. After all inbound calls are "free" with CallCentric, so why not? The only downsides are:t I have to separately populate my Callcentric "Name/Number" phonebook.
And I think sometimes the extra hop(?) creates a
funky connection with extra delay/noise/echo/dropouts. I use a panasonic phone system that pronounces and announces each incoming call, Caller-ID-Name makes this very very helpful. (Scenario: should I bother running to "catch the call" from Sally? no. - The boss? Yeah probably. That callback I've been waiting for? yes. The wife? Definitely