*phone hate*

[da]

I was heading out to lunch when my cellphone buzzed, saying I'd gotten a message. The message had been left 20 minutes previously, but I'm mostly in radio-silence inside my office cuz the concrete walls are too thick.

I extracted their number from the voicemail, but that was annoying because I can't type in numbers while I'm listening to the message; and I'd lost my pen. Unfamiliar area-code meant I couldn't remember the last digits properly. By this point I wasn't too happy with phones.

Just now I got a call from a number that started with "50-" which I'm assuming was melted_snowball. But I only got 10 seconds of (blank) air before the call was disconnected and my phone unceremoniously died from no juice. Boo. (Hope he can call me back, at my work #, or I could try and call him. Hey, I'll do that.)

I could port my cellphone number to vonage and have that ring me at work, cell, and home. Except I don't have a direct-dial number at work. Which means I'd need a soft-phone, or an expensive VoIP phone, and I don't even know if vonage's home service supports that.

Comments

[insaint.livejournal.com]

Pretty sure Vonage does soft-phones. At least, I remember them advertising that on their site. I never really looked further into it because their most basic service exceeds what I need to begin with, so I'm content to just stick to that. :)

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I think I've decided vonage thinks we're made of money. :)

...$12.99/mo. for a soft-phone addon (but! it comes with 500 minutes!) ...and requires /how/ little extra data transmitted?

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Hee hee. "I'm gonna tellll your stuuudents..."

Upsell: yeah. not fun. I'm thinking I might do this homebrew, and see what comes of that.

[insaint.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that about sums it up. Although from what I've seen of primary competitors (Primus, Rogers, and there was some other one, I think) last time I checked, the basic package Vonage beats them without trying. Just make sure not to want any extras. :D

[secretsoflife.livejournal.com]

vonage's rates aren't very good. for american numbers, have a look at http://broadvoice.com . they also do real SIP and not vonage's fakey SIP, so you can use them with any softphone or hardware VOIP phone. have a look at http://voipsupply.com for hard phones; they are cheaper than you think!

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

yep, you're right about other services; as I was writing "vonage" I was thinking I should just get unlimitel and hack on it myself, or primus like some other of my friends have suggested.

...voipsupply.com does have some under-100 phones; I could play around with one of those.

[secretsoflife.livejournal.com]

oh wait, i was thinking you're in the US for some reason!

unlimitel is great. go with them.

for hardware: http://voipdepot.ca/ is run by a friend-of-a-friend of mine. don't buy from voipsupply; they ship UPS and you'll get massacred on the duty.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Ha ha. Could you tell from my 'merkin typing accent maybe. But yes, I'm in Kitchener.

Yeah, http://voipdepot.ca is a URL I recognize from previous recommendations. :)

It's a matter of just getting the time to dive into the project. I've looked into it... oh, a few times.

[secretsoflife.livejournal.com]

oh also... i'll warn you that the sub-$100 budgetones have the nickname "crappytone" for a good reason :) they're fine for playing around with, but i wouldn't use one as an every-day phone.

[nobodyhere.livejournal.com]

Can't you just check voicemail from a normal phone? I just call my number, then hit #, then enter my pin to do so. (I'm with Virgin Mobile, so it may be different for you.)

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Yep, I did that.