I know, I know

I know, I know was Originally Posted on October 1, 2012 by lavarock

A short post that will not interest most. I have been cleaning house so to speak, technologically. As you may know, I have a *TON* of phone numbers and connections; almost every one free. I also resell per call services which I have not really done anything with.

So between Google Voice and their free long distance and Callcentric with their free inbound phone and/or fax service and the free telephone numbers I can have in the U.K. and the free Sipgate numbers, I have like 14 numbers around the world in use at the moment.

Keeping track of them is a bit of a problem, but consolidating them got a bit easier with PBXes.Com. This is an onlibe PBX (private branch exchange) that operates just like a smart telephone switchboard. There are hardware and software solutions for that too, but this does most of that online and for free.

So I have an Obi telephone adapter that connects to the internet and a phone. It costs about $50 or more, depending upon the unit. It will accept a couple to 4 service providers (think telephone companies not unlike Sprint, ATT, MCI) to give me telephone services. Some of these special voice providers offer free inbound calling where they give me a telephone number in some city and I can have people call and their service routes the call to me for free. Another service (Google Voice) gave me a telephone number and free inbound and also free long distance to the US and Canada. Another service gave me a free telephone number in New York City (where they make that picante sauce) and I can forward calls from that number to myself or have it answer with a fax tone. The company will accept the fax, convert it to a PDF and email it to me.

With the exception of the cost of the adapter box, all the above is free.

This all started when I wanted to save on my phone service and got a non-traditional service called VOIP (Voice Over IP). If you have a piece of equipment and a high speed internet connection, you have a phone. I opted to use this service from Atlanta as my outboud long distance company and retain my local Atlanta telephone number. To save my Mom some money, when I signed up for this service, I chose a Florida telephone number in her town as the number for the account. That way, when I moved to Hawaii, Mom could still dial a local number (for free) and reach me.

Over the years I moved and found free telephone numbers in the towns I was leaving. I grabbed a number and now friends in those areas can call me for free. I admit that most people reading this are shaking their heads. Cellphone calls can be cheap or free and most don’t need more than 1 number. Still, not all numbers are used for real calls. I have one number in San Francisco that allows me to upload my own answering message. That message is specifically tailored for telemarketers who ignored the DONOTCALL list. I may change it later, but for now it says that “Due to the hurricane (or is it the earthquake) in the area you are calling, we are unable to complete your call”. Once I identify a telemarketers phone number, they are directed there.

I have registered a number of internat domain names like “xyz.com” and those registrations require a phone number and address. When you put a real phone number there, you get telemarketer spam calls like “Hi, we work with Google and want to help you get your website higher in the rankings”, or “We offer cheap credit card processing services”, etc. Since I want NONE of these calls, I have a specific phone number dedicated to domain registrations and the like. It plays a message and accepts a voice mail. That voicemail is automatically transcribed and emailed to me. You should know that most of those spam type calls don’t leave a message, thus I am protected from lots of irritating calls.

Of the services I have, one I set up for my Sisters friend whose parents live in Scotland. There is now an inbound number in their town that they can dial and it rings in Florida (where my Sisters friend lives) and those calls are all free as is the phone number. If she wants to call out to Scotland, I do not have a free service for that. However, her calls cost all of 7/10’s of a cent per minute, so an hour on the phone costs her all of 42 cents or so.

The consolidation I was talking about, the virtual PBX, allows me to have one adapter and many services and control which ones can call me and when. It too is free.

When people ask me about all thiss, I find the hardest part is me figuring out how to best suggest a service for them that will be free and do what they want.

I do all this in my spare time