Buying Obi110 in Europe and call forwarding on PSTN line

[fuli42]

Hello,

Just before hitting the order button amazon.co.uk, I would like to confirm two questions:

- I'm living in France. I can order Obi110 from amazon.co.uk and just plug it in? Or do I need to get an adapter as well?

- Can I forward calls coming from the voip accounts with my PSTN line subscription? I have unlimited calls on the landline. I would like to forward voip calls from my overseas colleagues through the landline to my mobile. Is it possible? If so, can it forward the caller ID too?

Thank you,
Balint

edit: added clarification to topic title

[carl]

I can only fully answer the first question :  You do not need a transformer, but you will need an adapter piece for the plug so you can plug it into a French outlet.
With the caller ID I am not sure because there are different standards out there.
I never had Obi110 so I do not know anything about the PSTN issue. What surprises me that you have free callings to cell phones from your French land line, that must be a pricey subscription.

[fuli42]

Ok, I'll try to find an adapter on amazon as well.

Yes, it's a little crazy, but it's true! Right now most internet subscriptions (adsl or fiber) include free calling to French mobiles. Our subscription costs 25 euros only. Probably the providers realised that since people are never at home, or only at off-peak hours, they might as well just offer them the free minutes.

That's why I'm trying to take advantage of this with the Obi so at least the call-forwarding is free.

[Stewart]

I am in Paris and have an OBi110 (purchased in US from Amazon) connected to Orange Livebox FTTH.   It works fine, though I had to change DisconnectTonePattern for the Line port to 440-30;10;(.5+.5) for disconnects from the PSTN side to be recognized.

If the OBi receives a call by VoIP and forwards it via the Line port, it is not possible to pass caller ID of the original caller -- your local PSTN number will display on your mobile.

If passing caller ID is important, you have two options.  Easiest is for your VoIP number to be forwarded by the provider to your mobile.  Of course, that won't be free.  IMO, Anveo, Callcentric and ippi are high quality; their calls to France mobile are $0.065/min. and up.  If you don't get many other calls on your PSTN lilne, you could have the VoIP provider forward to your local PSTN number, which in turn forwards to your mobile (I assume that the latter leg would be free for you).  That would take advantage of lower VoIP rates to FR landlines and bring the per-minute charge to $0.02 or less.  You could also consider lower cost providers such as CallWithUs or Future-Nine; they charge <$0.04 to FR mobiles and <$0.01 to landlines.  Of course, this method of forwarding does not involve an OBi at all.

The other approach is for the OBi to receive the call and forward it to your mobile or landline via a VoIP provider that permits spoofing the caller ID.  For example, Voxbeam's rates are $0.028/$0.006 to mobile/landline.  [I'm presently having some trouble with current OBi firmware and Voxbeam, but don't believe that the problem would affect your application.  Voxbeam offers a small credit at signup, so you could test without making a payment.]

Who is your ISP?  Mobile carrier?  In what country(ies) do you have a DID for your colleagues to call you?  With which VoIP provider(s)?

[carl]

Localphone- which I use a lot- would forward your friend's calls to the French land line for 1.4c/min and from there you go for free to the cell phone. Their call quality is somewhat less than Callcentric's but definitely acceptable if you are on budget and they offer a ton of interesting things useful for an international person.

[Stewart]

Localphone- which I use a lot- would forward your friend's calls to the French land line for 1.4c/min and from there you go for free to the cell phone. Their call quality is somewhat less than Callcentric's but definitely acceptable if you are on budget and they offer a ton of interesting things useful for an international person.

Thanks for posting this.  I had specifically not mentioned Localphone, because the last time I tried this (fowarding a US DID to Italy Wind mobile), they would send the caller ID as 10 digits, rather than 11.

That caused three problems.  The initial digits of the area code would be interpreted by the mobile as a country code and the number would be parsed and displayed in a confusing format.  The number would not be matched with the corresponding contact list entry.  And finally, you couldn't use the phone's call history to return a call.

However, before posting BS, I just did another test (US DID to France Orange mobile) and the Android phone showed +1775xxxxxxx, as it should.  So, it appears that the problem has been fixed.

[fuli42]

Thank you Stewart and Carl for the replies! Looks like a great community here!

Right now our adsl provider is OVH France. They offer unlimited calls to mobile only through an analog telephone connected to their ADSL modem. In fact the "PSTN line" is a SIP account, that you can only use through the PSTN line on their modem. Call-forwarding is not included, it costs 0.05 euros ($0.062) per minute.
I think Orange have an option for unlimited calls with their ADSL offers and it includes call forwarding as well. Stewart, do you have any info in this? If so I could switch to Orange, forward all my VOIP calls to the landline and then forward them to my mobile.

My VOIP provider is again OVH and I opened another account with ephone.hu for a Hungarian phone number. I'm looking to get US number to use with my American colleagues but for the moment skype suffices.

So my options are either swith to Orange and get free forwarding, swallow the 0.05euros for transfers (or use one of the cheaper providers that you mentioned) or use the Obi but lose the caller ID. 

[carl]

Thank you Stewart and Carl for the replies! Looks like a great community here!

Right now our adsl provider is OVH France. They offer unlimited calls to mobile only through an analog telephone connected to their ADSL modem. In fact the "PSTN line" is a SIP account, that you can only use through the PSTN line on their modem. Call-forwarding is not included, it costs 0.05 euros ($0.062) per minute.
I think Orange have an option for unlimited calls with their ADSL offers and it includes call forwarding as well. Stewart, do you have any info in this? If so I could switch to Orange, forward all my VOIP calls to the landline and then forward them to my mobile.

My VOIP provider is again OVH and I opened another account with ephone.hu for a Hungarian phone number. I'm looking to get US number to use with my American colleagues but for the moment skype suffices.

So my options are either swith to Orange and get free forwarding, swallow the 0.05euros for transfers (or use one of the cheaper providers that you mentioned) or use the Obi but lose the caller ID.  

That's what I was afraid of. Usually,those broadband bundle offers overseas involve their VOIP lines.
BTW. Localphone has till the end of May- thus tomorrow is the last day!) DID's ( incoming numbers) in different
countries with no sign up fees. Since they need about half a day to validate your call credit you should act immediately on that. I found that the call quality on their incoming numbers is generally  better than on the outgoing calls and e.g. my DID in Netherlands provides without exception a near land line quality.
What you also can do is to get a US DID from Localphone and forward it to your French cell phone for 6.9 c/min which considered the exchange rate is about the same as the 5 eurocent OVH charges you for forwarding.
Caveat : If you open an account with Localphone choose USD as currency and especially a credit card with an US billing address otherwise you will be charged VAT !
On edit :  In the time I typed this, Localphone assigned me my new Belgian number. Sometimes it goes lightning fast, sometimes it takes forever.

[carl]

Localphone- which I use a lot- would forward your friend's calls to the French land line for 1.4c/min and from there you go for free to the cell phone. Their call quality is somewhat less than Callcentric's but definitely acceptable if you are on budget and they offer a ton of interesting things useful for an international person.

Thanks for posting this.  I had specifically not mentioned Localphone, because the last time I tried this (fowarding a US DID to Italy Wind mobile), they would send the caller ID as 10 digits, rather than 11.

That caused three problems.  The initial digits of the area code would be interpreted by the mobile as a country code and the number would be parsed and displayed in a confusing format.  The number would not be matched with the corresponding contact list entry.  And finally, you couldn't use the phone's call history to return a call.

However, before posting BS, I just did another test (US DID to France Orange mobile) and the Android phone showed +1775xxxxxxx, as it should.  So, it appears that the problem has been fixed.

I had similar problems with different telecom providers in the US . And even where it works it would not help because I store the contacts with access codes in my cell phones and it never works like it should. On my T mobile phone, the number comes as + country code  and when you make a mistake and just return the call like I once did you pay with taxes $ 2/min where I would otherwise have paid 1.5c.

[Stewart]

I think Orange have an option for unlimited calls with their ADSL offers and it includes call forwarding as well. Stewart, do you have any info in this? If so I could switch to Orange, forward all my VOIP calls to the landline and then forward them to my mobile.

Sorry, I don't know.  My Orange line is forwarded most of the time (I'm in France for only about three months each year) and I don't get charged for forwarded calls.  However, I normally only forward to landlines.  I just did a test, forwarding to my mobile.  However, the "suivi conso" doesn't update in real time; I'll report tomorrow whether it shows a charge.  Also, my knowledge of French (and legalese in general) is fairly weak, so I'm not sure what the CGV says on the subject (it doesn't even contain the words "renvoi" or "transfert").  If you want to look for yourself, I believe that the relevant document is http://boutique.orange.fr/doc/contrat3381.pdf .

You would probably want to also look at offers from Free and SFR, who generally are priced lower than Orange.  I used to have Free ADSL and was quite satisfied with the service.  However, Free never got around to installing Fiber in the building; when Orange put it in, I switched.

[fuli42]

I just did a test, forwarding to my mobile.  However, the "suivi conso" doesn't update in real time; I'll report tomorrow whether it shows a charge.

Thank you Stewart, you are a real gentleman!

I wanted to add but forgot somehow that I wanted to switch to Orange to get the Fiber connection. When I heard some negative comments about their customer relations and when I looked at their 26 pages long terms of service I started not to have much faith in them.

We're not really using the internet connection that much, so finally I just left it at that. Also we still have about 5 months left on our contract with OVH. I looked up call-forwarding for Free ADSL (unlimited mobile) and they're charging 0.05 euros / minute too.
http://www.free.fr/adsl/pages/telephone/services-de-telephonie/la-messagerie-vocale/service-de-messagerie-vocale.html#les-services-lies-aux-appels-entrants/transfert-inconditionnel-vers-un-numero

I looked at CallwithUs and their rates are really interesting. But I have the impression that they are charging for incoming calls too? Do you sonetel.com? It looks like a good service with some sort of a pbx system included.

[Stewart]

The test call forwarded to my mobile appeared as € 0,00 so I believe there is no problem in that area.

I've had Orange FTTH for ~16 months now, with little trouble.  Once, I called support because the TV had stopped working and rebooting everything did not help.  They reset something at their end and had me reboot again; it's been fine since.  AFAIK, there has been only one Internet outage.  It occurred at ~3 AM and lasted a couple of hours; possibly it was just scheduled maintenance, though no notice was given.  Otherwise, the only other problem was some billing errors in my favor.  Orange discovered them a couple of months later and made a retroactive charge.  But yes, their CGV will give anyone a headache.

Thanks for telling me about OVH -- their personal SIP line looks like a good value for various applications.  How is the quality and reliability?

Sorry, I may have given you mis-information about CallWithUs.  You may not be able to set up forwarding directly on their site, i.e. you would need to bridge through your OBi or a PBX service; ask their support whether it's possible.

I've never used Sonetel, though there was a recent thread about them, mostly positive.  http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,27172249 .  Among others, Anveo and VoIP.ms also include some PBX features with their services.

Many companies offer measured DIDs and/or DIDs that include some usage and are billed per-minute after that.  For example Anveo has "value" DIDs with 40 minutes free per day (more on paid accounts) and unlimited DIDs at a higher monthly cost.  With CallWithUs, it's more complicated, because they buy from several vendors.  You may find one number with 3000 free minutes/month included, and another in the same area that is pay-per-minute only.

[fuli42]

Sorry, I forgot to reply to your post...

For now I settled with the following setup:
I have an account at PBXes.org that monitors all my VOIP lines. When I'm at home or work (on wifi) I'm connecting to PBXes with my iPhone (Bria). PBXes allows TCP connections so the battery life is not affected much. If I loose connection to PBXes, the calls are transfered to my mobile number using a CallWithUS line.

I managed to set up so that the caller ID is preserved during the transfer. In most places in France I could also use the 3G network to place and receive calls but the quality is of course a little better on the GSM line.

I did a quick research on ADSL subscriptions and the SIP lines. I know that OVH doesn't let you use the SIP account that comes with the subscription.

The provider "Free" gives you the credentials to use the SIP line, but some users report that they cannot call other mobile phones with it. Others say it works:
http://forum.freenews.fr/index.php?topic=78643.0

I've read that SFR does allow you to use their SIP line without constraints:
http://www.freenews.fr/spip.php?article9731

My contract ends with OVH in october, for the time being I'm happy with the current setup. It could be tweaked more, but wouldn't be worth the time invested in it. I'm quite happy with CallWithUS (and PBXes). Thank you for recommending them!