Hacks and Hints TechieVarta

In my post on free VoIP calls to India I had discussed my setup for free VOIP calls to India. The setup discussed required PSTN caller the SIP broker number and then dial *010 followed by Voxalot extension to connect up to the VOIP phone. This works. However it is not very convenient. Also, the SIP broker number cannot be used as the number to forward your calls to. For example, if you were going to India and wanted to forward all your incoming cellular calls to your VOIP phone number in India, this solution will not work. You will be forced to use something like Reliance Passport Service.

Here is an update which allows one to have a normal USA phone number from Washington state for free. Also, you can use this number as the forwarded number for your regular cellular phone in the USA. Whenever one makes a phone call, the operator which handles origination of call, pays a part of their revenue to the operator which handles termination of the call. IPKall provides free Washington state regular phone number. They terminate regular phone calls to a PSTN-SIP gateway and forward it to SIP service provider of your choice. Their site says they can work with FWD and MutualPhone. However, they can work with almost any SIP service provider. In order to have a free incoming USA number, you can sign up with them. Once you sign up, and logon on to their site, provide your SIP proxy’s address and SIP extension number and you are all set.

Since IPKall earns revenue by handling incoming calls, if you do not receive an incoming call for an extended period of time they will terminate your number.

This entry was first posted on my Random thought blog . It is now extended and brought to more natural home.

At present I use Vonage phone in India to call between the India and the USA. I did not think Vonage’s price justified the use I have for the service.

I decided to experiment with other VOIP services. I bought a few unlocked VOIP phones. It was pain to find reasonably priced VOIP phones. Most VOIP phones are targeted towards business users and not home users. At last I ended up with SPA901. I bought it from BestBuy for Business.

I setup FWD and Gizmo for calling between the VOIP only phones. Using FWD I can call out to 411, 1-800 number etc for free. Also I can use Sip Broker to call from normal phone to my SIP phone.

The only thing I cannot do is to call from SPA901 to PSTN phones. For this purpose I subscribed to VoipCheap. VoipCheap service allows limited free calls to multiple destination.

SPA does not allow simultaneous service to multiple VOIP providers. I needed a method to use different service based on destination. Here comes Voxalot. It allows you to define call plan and use different service provider based on extension.

The VoipCheap service does not place any restriction on how many account a user can own. So you can keep signing up new accounts and configuring them at Voxalot as you run out of free credit at VoipCheap. You don’t need to make any changes to the SPA phone in India to activate new accounts @ VoipCheap. If you need call out service to Indian POTS phones. Go ahead and sign up with one of several reasonably priced VOIP service providers and configure appropriate dial plan at Voxalot.