Re: [H] Auto call forwarding
Thanks for all that - I'm going to keep it for future reference. When we finally stop moving every few years from the military and buy our keeper house I am definitely planning on putting in a full asterisk system linked to both VOIP, the home automation, and us wherever we are. But that is still a few years away. I went cell phone only back in 2004 and convinced my wife to in 2006. Mainly because I hated the idea of having to pay monthly telephone charges twice - once for a landline and once for a cell phone. Right now we are paying $105 a month to Rogers for two phones and 200 shared minutes. I know, it's awful. The plan itself is $60/mo, plus $20/mo for voicemail and caller id (both of which are free in the US), $14/mo system access fee, and the rest taxes. If I wanted to add a data plan for my iPhone it would be $15/mo for 5 mb. Yeah, right. The only good part is that all incoming calls are free, including international. Thankfully we use Skype for all our international and long distance calls (yes, they charge long distance fees for cell phones here). I would love to switch to VOIP but it won't solve the problem of needing a cell phone because I travel a lot. And where we live is not wired enough to get by with using VOIP over wi-fi. Here's to hoping that Google wins the 700Mhz spectrum auction and teams up with Sprint to build a free cell phone service nationwide. Because by that time I will be back in America :) On Jan 11, 2008 12:58 PM, Tharin Olsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have looked at Asterix before and never got around to setting it up. The problem is that I don't have a landline - just my cell phone. And the SIM card will not be in that cell phone as it will be traveling with me and have another country SIM. So I'm not sure how Asterix would get the calls and forward them as I am under the impression that it needs to be connected to POTS somehow to do that. Maybe I'm wrong. And normally I would just have the phone company forward the number but I am guessing that forwarding my Canadian number to an American number would cause some sort of sizeable fee. I'm not sure how forwarding charges from the Telco works because I've never used it, but I bet you are right that if you forwarded calls from your cellphone to some international phone number you would bear the expense. Plus it might be some ridiculous rate because it is a cellular service and they seem to like to screw you whenever you step outside what your normal service plan allows. I don't know anything about Grandcentral so I can't add my opinion about it; however, I do have a fair amount of experience with Asterisk. Right now I use Asterisk in my home and business with a four port card [2 pots lines (FXO), 2 phone lines in the house (FXS)], a per minute voip account, and I'm currently experimenting with bluetooth connectivity to a cellphone. It is definitely easier to setup Asterisk for use with a VOIP service provider than with a landline because all you need is a high-speed internet connection which is something you've probably got already. Going on the idea of strictly using a VOIP service to interface with Asterisk, you would need to forward your cellphone number to the voip phone number. A call from Canada to the U.S. would probably be no biggie since most VOIP companies charge the same fee for calls to Canada as the U.S. Because you ultimately need to terminate the call to a mobile number you would configure Asterisk to forward that incoming call to your current cellphone number as an outbound call via the same VOIP service or some other VOIP provider else that will terminate the call to your destination for less. 1. Incoming call on Canadian cell number == Forward to local VOIP number 2. Incoming call to Asterisk server == Forward to Current Cell number through cheap VOIP service I was under the impression that most US cellphone providers allow calls from the U.S. to Canada. Time used would be deducted from your minutes but no extra charges are incurred. Better check that out with your provider. If you can forward the call for no extra expense to a US# then you could just forward the Canadian cell# directly to the U.S. cell# while you are stateside. I imagine you would just be losing minutes on both cellular accounts. You would probably want to forward your incoming calls through a VOIP service if you are going to the EU because I think those folks have to pay for just about every second they use a phone including local calls. I also think it is more expensive to make international calls to EU mobile numbers than an EU landline. There are VOIP plans that are Per Minute (what I use since I use very little minutes) and plans that are Unlimited. Careful with unlimited plans because I've read on forums that companies monitor the frequency of calls and the randomness of the numbers. They might deem you as
Re: [H] Auto call forwarding
Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have looked at Asterix before and never got around to setting it up. The problem is that I don't have a landline - just my cell phone. And the SIM card will not be in that cell phone as it will be traveling with me and have another country SIM. So I'm not sure how Asterix would get the calls and forward them as I am under the impression that it needs to be connected to POTS somehow to do that. Maybe I'm wrong. And normally I would just have the phone company forward the number but I am guessing that forwarding my Canadian number to an American number would cause some sort of sizeable fee. I'm not sure how forwarding charges from the Telco works because I've never used it, but I bet you are right that if you forwarded calls from your cellphone to some international phone number you would bear the expense. Plus it might be some ridiculous rate because it is a cellular service and they seem to like to screw you whenever you step outside what your normal service plan allows. I don't know anything about Grandcentral so I can't add my opinion about it; however, I do have a fair amount of experience with Asterisk. Right now I use Asterisk in my home and business with a four port card [2 pots lines (FXO), 2 phone lines in the house (FXS)], a per minute voip account, and I'm currently experimenting with bluetooth connectivity to a cellphone. It is definitely easier to setup Asterisk for use with a VOIP service provider than with a landline because all you need is a high-speed internet connection which is something you've probably got already. Going on the idea of strictly using a VOIP service to interface with Asterisk, you would need to forward your cellphone number to the voip phone number. A call from Canada to the U.S. would probably be no biggie since most VOIP companies charge the same fee for calls to Canada as the U.S. Because you ultimately need to terminate the call to a mobile number you would configure Asterisk to forward that incoming call to your current cellphone number as an outbound call via the same VOIP service or some other VOIP provider else that will terminate the call to your destination for less. 1. Incoming call on Canadian cell number == Forward to local VOIP number 2. Incoming call to Asterisk server == Forward to Current Cell number through cheap VOIP service I was under the impression that most US cellphone providers allow calls from the U.S. to Canada. Time used would be deducted from your minutes but no extra charges are incurred. Better check that out with your provider. If you can forward the call for no extra expense to a US# then you could just forward the Canadian cell# directly to the U.S. cell# while you are stateside. I imagine you would just be losing minutes on both cellular accounts. You would probably want to forward your incoming calls through a VOIP service if you are going to the EU because I think those folks have to pay for just about every second they use a phone including local calls. I also think it is more expensive to make international calls to EU mobile numbers than an EU landline. There are VOIP plans that are Per Minute (what I use since I use very little minutes) and plans that are Unlimited. Careful with unlimited plans because I've read on forums that companies monitor the frequency of calls and the randomness of the numbers. They might deem you as abusing that plan and charge you a different rate/fee. CallCentric, Telasip, Teliax, Voicepulse are just a few of the VOIP providers that support Asterisk. If you are going to be in a hotel or office with access to a high-speed connection it might be good to use a cheap ATA from Linksys or Grandstream and pair it with a regular telephone. You could then configure the ATA to communicate directly with your VOIP provider and eliminate the extra cellular minutes and long distance fees. You could also use a PC or laptop with a softphone. You could install Asterisk as a virtual machine on your home computer if you don't have a spare pc to dedicate to it. Any management of the dial plans on the Asterisk system could be done remotely over the internet. -Tharin Olsen
Re: [H] Auto call forwarding
ITharin, I'm glad you listed out everything. I was about to on my last post and decided I didn't want to type that much, hehe :) I'm currently moving my PBX settings to a new box running PBX-in-a-Flash. Very slick install to dedicated box. I haven't tried the vmware image. I've used Trixbox in the past, but dumped it long before the recent fiasco where a user found that it had a backdoor with root access, and now Fonality is trying to recover its user base, and explain that their root level backdoor is a feature. I've been running off the version of asterisk built into LinuxMedia Center which works well but needed a lot of command line tweaking to get everything going, which isn't necessary with some of the newer packages. lopaka Tharin Olsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Brian Weeden wrote: I have looked at Asterix before and never got around to setting it up. The problem is that I don't have a landline - just my cell phone. And the SIM card will not be in that cell phone as it will be traveling with me and have another country SIM. So I'm not sure how Asterix would get the calls and forward them as I am under the impression that it needs to be connected to POTS somehow to do that. Maybe I'm wrong. And normally I would just have the phone company forward the number but I am guessing that forwarding my Canadian number to an American number would cause some sort of sizeable fee. I'm not sure how forwarding charges from the Telco works because I've never used it, but I bet you are right that if you forwarded calls from your cellphone to some international phone number you would bear the expense. Plus it might be some ridiculous rate because it is a cellular service and they seem to like to screw you whenever you step outside what your normal service plan allows. I don't know anything about Grandcentral so I can't add my opinion about it; however, I do have a fair amount of experience with Asterisk. Right now I use Asterisk in my home and business with a four port card [2 pots lines (FXO), 2 phone lines in the house (FXS)], a per minute voip account, and I'm currently experimenting with bluetooth connectivity to a cellphone. It is definitely easier to setup Asterisk for use with a VOIP service provider than with a landline because all you need is a high-speed internet connection which is something you've probably got already. Going on the idea of strictly using a VOIP service to interface with Asterisk, you would need to forward your cellphone number to the voip phone number. A call from Canada to the U.S. would probably be no biggie since most VOIP companies charge the same fee for calls to Canada as the U.S. Because you ultimately need to terminate the call to a mobile number you would configure Asterisk to forward that incoming call to your current cellphone number as an outbound call via the same VOIP service or some other VOIP provider else that will terminate the call to your destination for less. 1. Incoming call on Canadian cell number == Forward to local VOIP number 2. Incoming call to Asterisk server == Forward to Current Cell number through cheap VOIP service I was under the impression that most US cellphone providers allow calls from the U.S. to Canada. Time used would be deducted from your minutes but no extra charges are incurred. Better check that out with your provider. If you can forward the call for no extra expense to a US# then you could just forward the Canadian cell# directly to the U.S. cell# while you are stateside. I imagine you would just be losing minutes on both cellular accounts. You would probably want to forward your incoming calls through a VOIP service if you are going to the EU because I think those folks have to pay for just about every second they use a phone including local calls. I also think it is more expensive to make international calls to EU mobile numbers than an EU landline. There are VOIP plans that are Per Minute (what I use since I use very little minutes) and plans that are Unlimited. Careful with unlimited plans because I've read on forums that companies monitor the frequency of calls and the randomness of the numbers. They might deem you as abusing that plan and charge you a different rate/fee. CallCentric, Telasip, Teliax, Voicepulse are just a few of the VOIP providers that support Asterisk. If you are going to be in a hotel or office with access to a high-speed connection it might be good to use a cheap ATA from Linksys or Grandstream and pair it with a regular telephone. You could then configure the ATA to communicate directly with your VOIP provider and eliminate the extra cellular minutes and long distance fees. You could also use a PC or laptop with a softphone. You could install Asterisk as a virtual machine on your home computer if you don't have a spare pc to dedicate to it. Any management of the dial plans on the Asterisk system could be done remotely over the internet.
[H] Auto call forwarding
I'm going to be spending the better part of a month traveling in the US for 2 weeks and then Austia for a week. Right now I have a Canadian cell phone. So I plan on getting prepaid SIM cards for the US and Austria so I don't have to pay roaming charges. But this introduces the problem of letting people know my new numbers. Instead of spamming my new numbers to all my contacts I'm looking for a more elegant solution. One way would be to record a voicemail greeting on my Canadian cell saying that I'm traveling and list my new number. But I think there could be a better solution. My dream solution would be to have calls made to my Canadian cell number automatically routed to whatever prepaid card number I am currently using. Since I am going to be taking the Canadian SIM out of the phone to swap in the prepaid it needs to work without the actual phone being on. I've heard a lot about GrandCentral and was wondering if anyone on the list had experience with it: http://www.grandcentral.com Can anyone think of another way to solve my little dilemma? --- Brian
Re: [H] Auto call forwarding
Do I have to base everything off the Grandcentral number? I would prefer to have a system that used my current number instead. I guess I could get a US Grandcentral number and then forward that to the prepaid number. The problem with that is people that are in Canada and call my Canadian cell would not get forwarded. On Jan 10, 2008 4:34 PM, Robert Martin Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I use Grandcentral. If you give out a grandcentral number to everyone you can forward it to mulitiple phones, or to single phone and change which number it forwards to whenever you like. While your gone forward to your cell and when you get back change forwarding number to home phone again. This is nice because if you move residence you still use grandcentral as the number and forward to the new phone. It's been very reliable. I use grandcentral paired with gizmo on PBX-in-a-Flash from nervittles, to provide a separate free number (VOIP) for my step daughter that goes to her room. All the phone calls every evening were bugging me and now they can talk all they want (incoming is free, outgoing is cheap via Callcentric Les.net) lopaka Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm going to be spending the better part of a month traveling in the US for 2 weeks and then Austia for a week. Right now I have a Canadian cell phone. So I plan on getting prepaid SIM cards for the US and Austria so I don't have to pay roaming charges. But this introduces the problem of letting people know my new numbers. Instead of spamming my new numbers to all my contacts I'm looking for a more elegant solution. One way would be to record a voicemail greeting on my Canadian cell saying that I'm traveling and list my new number. But I think there could be a better solution. My dream solution would be to have calls made to my Canadian cell number automatically routed to whatever prepaid card number I am currently using. Since I am going to be taking the Canadian SIM out of the phone to swap in the prepaid it needs to work without the actual phone being on. I've heard a lot about GrandCentral and was wondering if anyone on the list had experience with it: http://www.grandcentral.com Can anyone think of another way to solve my little dilemma? --- Brian
Re: [H] Auto call forwarding
I've used them in a couple countries, New Zealand and China. Yes, they are just as expensive for international calls but local calls are much cheaper. And that's what I will be using them for. Spending 2 weeks in the US working I will need to use my phone and won't always have Skype. Most of the calls will be to US numbers so if I have a US SIM it will be great. Ditto for the week in Austria. I've used Telestial in the past for getting foreign SIM Cards and they do list some US ones: http://www.telestial.com On Jan 10, 2008 4:35 PM, Ben Ruset [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Be careful with pre-paid SIM's. When I was in Aruba, admittedly this was in 2003, I was seeing US$1/min rates with them. I don't think I've seen a pre-paid SIM in the USA. Brian Weeden wrote: I'm going to be spending the better part of a month traveling in the US for 2 weeks and then Austia for a week. Right now I have a Canadian cell phone. So I plan on getting prepaid SIM cards for the US and Austria so I don't have to pay roaming charges. But this introduces the problem of letting people know my new numbers. Instead of spamming my new numbers to all my contacts I'm looking for a more elegant solution. One way would be to record a voicemail greeting on my Canadian cell saying that I'm traveling and list my new number. But I think there could be a better solution. My dream solution would be to have calls made to my Canadian cell number automatically routed to whatever prepaid card number I am currently using. Since I am going to be taking the Canadian SIM out of the phone to swap in the prepaid it needs to work without the actual phone being on. I've heard a lot about GrandCentral and was wondering if anyone on the list had experience with it: http://www.grandcentral.com Can anyone think of another way to solve my little dilemma? --- Brian
Re: [H] Auto call forwarding
Not neccessarily. What you want to do is possible to do but you'd need an asterisk box or vmware image configured to recieve and forward calls from home to the new number. Setting this up could be a major project though, if you haven't used asterisk/freepbx before. You might be able to have the phone company do a temporary call forward to the new number during your trip lopaka Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Do I have to base everything off the Grandcentral number? I would prefer to have a system that used my current number instead. I guess I could get a US Grandcentral number and then forward that to the prepaid number. The problem with that is people that are in Canada and call my Canadian cell would not get forwarded. On Jan 10, 2008 4:34 PM, Robert Martin Jr. wrote: I use Grandcentral. If you give out a grandcentral number to everyone you can forward it to mulitiple phones, or to single phone and change which number it forwards to whenever you like. While your gone forward to your cell and when you get back change forwarding number to home phone again. This is nice because if you move residence you still use grandcentral as the number and forward to the new phone. It's been very reliable. I use grandcentral paired with gizmo on PBX-in-a-Flash from nervittles, to provide a separate free number (VOIP) for my step daughter that goes to her room. All the phone calls every evening were bugging me and now they can talk all they want (incoming is free, outgoing is cheap via Callcentric Les.net) lopaka Brian Weeden wrote: I'm going to be spending the better part of a month traveling in the US for 2 weeks and then Austia for a week. Right now I have a Canadian cell phone. So I plan on getting prepaid SIM cards for the US and Austria so I don't have to pay roaming charges. But this introduces the problem of letting people know my new numbers. Instead of spamming my new numbers to all my contacts I'm looking for a more elegant solution. One way would be to record a voicemail greeting on my Canadian cell saying that I'm traveling and list my new number. But I think there could be a better solution. My dream solution would be to have calls made to my Canadian cell number automatically routed to whatever prepaid card number I am currently using. Since I am going to be taking the Canadian SIM out of the phone to swap in the prepaid it needs to work without the actual phone being on. I've heard a lot about GrandCentral and was wondering if anyone on the list had experience with it: http://www.grandcentral.com Can anyone think of another way to solve my little dilemma? --- Brian
Re: [H] Auto call forwarding
You have one cell phone and you were going to switch the sim during the trip correct? Grab a pay-per-minute phone (Fry's has cheap ones for $14 every other week). Put the sim from your phone in the cheapie and plug it into the charger and set it to forward all calls to the new number. Leave it turned on a plugged in while your're gone and all calls should go to the new number until you get back and change it back. lopaka Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have looked at Asterix before and never got around to setting it up. The problem is that I don't have a landline - just my cell phone. And the SIM card will not be in that cell phone as it will be traveling with me and have another country SIM. So I'm not sure how Asterix would get the calls and forward them as I am under the impression that it needs to be connected to POTS somehow to do that. Maybe I'm wrong. And normally I would just have the phone company forward the number but I am guessing that forwarding my Canadian number to an American number would cause some sort of sizeable fee. I'm discovering quite a few snags with trying to be internationally mobile in this modern world. Most of these snags seem to come from this antiquted notion of national borders and that people decide to live inside one and never leave. And that the world is a completely different place once you cross said national borders even if you just moved across a bridge. For example, my car insurance rates went from $500/6 mo to $1000/6 mo when I moved to Canada (for 2 cars with 2 drivers). Part of the reason is that I have no driving history in Canada and for some reason the 14 years of driving without filing a claim in the US doesn't count. Guess they assume you go stupid when you cross the border. On Jan 10, 2008 4:47 PM, Robert Martin Jr. wrote: Not neccessarily. What you want to do is possible to do but you'd need an asterisk box or vmware image configured to recieve and forward calls from home to the new number. Setting this up could be a major project though, if you haven't used asterisk/freepbx before. You might be able to have the phone company do a temporary call forward to the new number during your trip lopaka Brian Weeden wrote: Do I have to base everything off the Grandcentral number? I would prefer to have a system that used my current number instead. I guess I could get a US Grandcentral number and then forward that to the prepaid number. The problem with that is people that are in Canada and call my Canadian cell would not get forwarded. On Jan 10, 2008 4:34 PM, Robert Martin Jr. wrote: I use Grandcentral. If you give out a grandcentral number to everyone you can forward it to mulitiple phones, or to single phone and change which number it forwards to whenever you like. While your gone forward to your cell and when you get back change forwarding number to home phone again. This is nice because if you move residence you still use grandcentral as the number and forward to the new phone. It's been very reliable. I use grandcentral paired with gizmo on PBX-in-a-Flash from nervittles, to provide a separate free number (VOIP) for my step daughter that goes to her room. All the phone calls every evening were bugging me and now they can talk all they want (incoming is free, outgoing is cheap via Callcentric Les.net) lopaka Brian Weeden wrote: I'm going to be spending the better part of a month traveling in the US for 2 weeks and then Austia for a week. Right now I have a Canadian cell phone. So I plan on getting prepaid SIM cards for the US and Austria so I don't have to pay roaming charges. But this introduces the problem of letting people know my new numbers. Instead of spamming my new numbers to all my contacts I'm looking for a more elegant solution. One way would be to record a voicemail greeting on my Canadian cell saying that I'm traveling and list my new number. But I think there could be a better solution. My dream solution would be to have calls made to my Canadian cell number automatically routed to whatever prepaid card number I am currently using. Since I am going to be taking the Canadian SIM out of the phone to swap in the prepaid it needs to work without the actual phone being on. I've heard a lot about GrandCentral and was wondering if anyone on the list had experience with it: http://www.grandcentral.com Can anyone think of another way to solve my little dilemma? --- Brian
