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Ummm...help?

Started by lrubin28, January 19, 2015, 10:17:14 PM

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lrubin28

I was going to start off with "help me, Obi-wan" but I'm guessing that's out here a million times....

My wife and I currently use Verizon for a land line in our home, and we use ATT for cells.  My wife is also self employed and pays for another Verizon landline in her office.  There are 5 cell phone users in my plan.  One of these users is currently in overseas.  He can call us for free, but can't text for free.  We can text him for free, but not call him for free. 

To complicate it, our home land line through Verizon has 2 'virtual' lines/numbers connected with it.   One number is the family's home phone.  A second number is my wife's work number - this line has a double ring to identify incoming calls as work calls.   The third number is used as a fax number and it has a triple ring which the fax recognizes. 

I feel like half my pay-check goes to phone bills.  I just heard about Obi and was looking at all the different products, and honestly I'm confused as hell...can someone help me to understand what products I should be looking at given what I described above - I'd appreciate it very much!

Confused in Boston

202Owner

You have several needs:
o  home landline
o  home office landline with fax
o  cellular service
o  international calling
o  lower your phone bill
o  telemarketer block

If you have a fast stable broadband ISP (like fiber or cable) and a home LAN with a good router that you manage, then you can learn about DIY BYOD VoIP, get an account with a good ITSP like VoIP.ms or CallCentric or others, buy an OBi202 or 302, and setup comprehensive and flexible phone service that you administrate.  Once you have it working, you can port your existing numbers and cancel your existing service at your own pace.  You will get more features, more control, and pay much less.  This will also lead you to cheaper International calling, and could help you to discover ways to improve your cellular usage and costs.  Your BYOD VoIP solution can also include multiple sites and mobile devices.

This is a learning process that you will need to pursue to reap the full rewards.  Do-able and well worth it, imo, but not plug and play if you want to do it fully.

The OBi is an analog telephone adapter (ata) that can 'connect' your existing house telephone wiring and phones to your LAN.  It permits you to continue using your existing telephone equipment.  The OBi ata is a good starting point and a fine ata with many features and a polished design... it's worth working with.  Later, you can consider IP phones that connect directly to your LAN for more business like features and better audio quality than some traditional consumer grade telephones... but more expensive and decentralized configuration for small users.

Alarm service and faxing and other services that expect to communicate over traditional telephone service 'might' have issues communicating over VoIP.  You'll have to trust but verify.

Traditional phone service is regulated PSTN or POTS over copper.  Lately, it's becoming POTS over fiber, but still regulated.  Regulation is state cost control/oversight... a good thing but still costly.

New voice service is unregulated digital products... VoIP over cable or fiber.  No regulation and no cost control... and not as reliable as copper POTS.  The big telcos want to bundle it with TV and Internet to obfuscate their pricing.  The cheaper retail spinoffs offer a discounted plug and play version with fixed capability.

It's all going to become VoIP.  You can stick with the big players and pay more for less; switch to the discount plug and play providers and pay more for less; or you can do it yourself, bring your own device, and pay less for more.

An OBi will cost you ~$70.  An ITSP deposit will cost you ~$25.  Then you will have enough to build your phone service and try it out for 2-3 months.  Google Voice is free calling but there are many considerations you will eventually realize... for starters, no 911 service.  One nice thing about DIY VoIP is that you can mixed in additional ITSPs for failover, backup, or best cost routing.

Search Google for VoIP forums.  Find a helpful active one and lurk to begin learning.

Hope that ummm...helps.

Rick

Quote from: lrubin28 on January 19, 2015, 10:17:14 PM
I was going to start off with "help me, Obi-wan" but I'm guessing that's out here a million times....

My wife and I currently use Verizon for a land line in our home, and we use ATT for cells.  My wife is also self employed and pays for another Verizon landline in her office.  There are 5 cell phone users in my plan.  One of these users is currently in overseas.  He can call us for free, but can't text for free.  We can text him for free, but not call him for free.  

To complicate it, our home land line through Verizon has 2 'virtual' lines/numbers connected with it.   One number is the family's home phone.  A second number is my wife's work number - this line has a double ring to identify incoming calls as work calls.   The third number is used as a fax number and it has a triple ring which the fax recognizes.  

I feel like half my pay-check goes to phone bills.  I just heard about Obi and was looking at all the different products, and honestly I'm confused as hell...can someone help me to understand what products I should be looking at given what I described above - I'd appreciate it very much!

Confused in Boston

I don't profess to be an expert in all things OBi, but I muddle my way through.

International - he can't text you, you cannot call him.  Assuming he has internet service, why can't you setup a GV number for him and then he either uses his PC to text and uses the Voice app on his phone to text?  For the phone calls, if he gets an OBi then you can call him and he can call you OBi to OBi.

For your cell phones, what are you trying to do?  Reduce talk time?  Or nothing?  In my case, if I want, I can have GV call my cell and then make the outgoing call.  Since my GV number is part of my "family" of ten numbers, the calls are all free.  I don't do it often as I have lots of minutes, but every now and then I do.  

As far as home numbers, you can setup GV to be your "home" and "virtual numbers".  I ported our home number to GV, and GV rings my OBi, i.e. the phone in the house.  You can port your other numbers to GV also, or if they are free for calling you can just forward them to GV which will ring the OBi.    All calls are free.  You can setup your OBi directly to do that, or there are some indirect ways.  But you now have free incoming and outgoing calls - may not be that way forever, but it is now.  

Instead of GV you can pick other providers, which are real "VoIP" providers, but you will pay for calls in at least one direction.  It will be cheaper than Verizon, but GV is "free".  Of course with GV there are issues at times, and they have no customer service.  But there are issues with all VoIP providers.  

For faxing, you can find an internet service, you can get a fax number from a provider, or you can slow your fax machine down and get it work with GV.  

I suggest you figure out your goals, for example - "we want to eliminate our Verizon bill and pay not more than $X per month for similar services" and then start researching more.

I have an OBi 110, with some GV numbers.  When someone calls my GV number, it forwards to Callcentric which has free incoming on free numbers, and the CC line rings my OBi.  Or my cell.  Or any other number I tell it to ring.

I pay $1.50 per month for the ability to dial 911 and have it work - via Callcentric.