After a couple months of part-time tinkering, I have finally switched the foundation of my personal communication strategy over to VoIP, SIP, and Asterisk; away from relying on mobile carriers. With this new system, I am retiring my old Verizon 978-505-1789 number: send me an email if I overlooked you in my mass mailing of new info.
Here’s what I did. The new number is registered with Broadvoice, the most enlightened of the VoIP providers in that they accept and encourage a BYOD approach to the user agent. I make use of the Broadvoice simultaneous ring capability, to ring several mobile devices, my home Asterisk switch, and my SkypeIn account (Broadvoice can ring up to 10 phone numbers). If I’m near any of my phones, I have the ability to get the call and answer.
If I’m in the home office, or at my PC, I will pick up with either a hard SIP phone, Xten-lite on my laptop, or SkypeIn; thus incurring no airtime minutes. If I’m out, I can answer via any mobile device that I happen to have with me. If I can’t answer at all, then Asterisk voicemail will pick up, record a message, and email it to me (optionally, I can call in and get it).
I also adjusted my mobile strategy, to use GSM phones, so that I can switch SIM when travelling overseas, e.g. to use my old Italian number while in Italy. I can also switch my SIM to the device appropriate for whatever I am doing — something small like the RAZR if I’m going out. My steady Nokia if I need 8 days of standby time, or a blackberry or TREO if I want a big browser screen.
A big motivator in this new config is reducing the amount that the MNOs “own me”. With this setup:
- They don’t have a phone number that I care about — I can change carriers, phones, phone numbers, devices, at will; without disrupting the 10 digits that the world uses to reach me. The only service provider I am really relying on is Broadvoice — and I’ll take them over a MNO any day.
- I’ll use fewer airtime minutes
- I don’t need the crappy mobile carrier voicemail service, that you can only retrieve by clumsily dialing in and using DTMF, even if you’re sitting in front of browser and have broadband.
- I can use a wifi SIP phone at a hotspot, again, incurring no airtime minutes (btw, I have a Pulver WiSIP phone on loan from Libretel, very nice!)
- I can give out just one phone number to my contacts, and not bother them with different numbers for mobile devices, VoIP lines, Skype numbers, etc.
- All I expect from the MNO is the SIM, thank you.
Drawbacks are a) when I dial from a mobile phone, people will see an unfamiliar caller ID, and b) SMS messages sent to my main number won’t find me. I thought long and hard about this second point, and finally decided that here in the US almost no-one uses SMS. So I’ve switched to a blackberry (topic for another post), email is now my SMS.
Now that I’m switched to this architecture, there are numerous future improvements that I will work on over time, including a SIP URI, FWD integration, SIP forwarding of my Lavalife extenstion, additional inbound numbers from other georgraphies (e.g. Rome), etc. The ultimate goal is to give people a variety of means to reach me, that go through a centralized Asterisk, and then branch out through any of my devices. All optimized for low cost. I’ll keep you posted.
I did get nailed with one last parting shot from the MNO (Verizon in this case). I had picked up my new Cingular account a few months ago to start working on this setup. I put in a LNP request, to port my Verizon number to Broadvoice. In order for the port to work, I had to keep the Verizon plan open, at $130 per month. Any change to the plan requires a new 1 year commit. Well, after three months of waiting for the port, I was just told that Verizon Wireless has stopped doing LNP ports to VoIP carriers. Grrrr, cost of leaving my Verizon phone up for 3 months = $390.00. OK Verizon, you got me this time — I’m now leaving your service and you won’t be seeing me back. Think I’ll send a paypal donation over to the guys at Illinois working on wireless mesh.
[...] Steve’s Tech Journal”. Hey, wait a minute, that’s me!! Sure enough, my entry from a couple weeks ago is #17 overall in the list of these terms. Hmmm, I w [...]
I’ve built a similar set-up and also can’t get around your two drawbacks. I could set-up Asterisk so that I could dial in from my cell phone and then dial out, using my main line.
I’m just waiting on VoIP providers to provide SMS forwarding.
If you get a chance, perhaps you could share your Asterisk settings.
Just wanted to warn you about VOIP phone numbers…
I used Broadvoice for a while and was unable to port the number to another service. Something about me never really owning the number. I’m guessing it’s similar with other VOIP services also. You actually own the phone number on your cell or landline, but not with VOIP. Just a thought to keep in mind.
Cheers
In your experiments, be sure to try out bluetooth presense! It might be just that extra bit of geeky (and yet tastefully practical) coolness factor you’ve been looking for.
mark
Thanks for all the comments so far, here’s some replies:
To Aaron — good point, and your thought about VoIP providers adding in SMS messaging is dead on. I have discussed this with a few of them, and I think they are looking at it. I know the guys at Broadvoice, and will continue to press for this capability. It’s not really that hard to work through a SMS aggregator these days. Hmmmm, Broadvoice meet m-Qube.
To Ryan — thanks, good point. LNP rules really are a mess in this country right now. I think I am likely in the same situation you were therefore I have traded my dependence on the mobile operators for a dependence on Broadvoice. Still not the ideal, is it.
To Mark — cool, bluetooth presence is on my list. First I need to find a good bluetooth dongle that has Linux support, for my laptop.
If you really want a number that you “own” as much as possible, consider using an 8xx toll free number in the US. Yes, you will pay an extra $0.02 or so per minute for inbound calls, but the rules for “portability” are MUCH clearer and longer established…
or for maximum “continuity” get the 8xx from a major carrier with delivery to the local number of your choice and point that at the VOIP inbound number that works for you today. If the VOIP “carrier” falls over, pick a new one and reconfigure the delivery number of your major carrier 8xx…
Any chance there’s a (lengthy) howto coming? Your setup sounds close to ideal but very complicated….
there is another way of doing this, if you want an incomming number buy a pay as you talk mobile phone and put the sim card into something like Ateus VoiceBlue then sms’s are not a problem, the dissadvantage of this is of course that it is a mobile number not a land line but thats not a big problem, then use a free voip provider for making the outgoing calls, thats basically how i have mine set up
an addendum to my previous post, i should have pointed out that you can use asterisk to forward the incomming call through something like voipbuster you can get it to ring multiple devices for free in the us and canada this includes mobiles
‘thinking out loud’…
Possible ?? when on the road to dial into home 2line asterix setup and have it give you dial tone to dial out.
I have Lingo VOIP at home. $20p.m. US/Canada and Europe.
I’d like to be on the road and dial home phone #1 and have it give me tone to dial out on Lingo line to Europe for basically ‘free’.
Great comments — Jamie, I will look into what you are suggesting. SMS is going to be a problem, already had a work colleague try to SMS me, thinking that my “mobile” number was a real mobile number.
DavidB — what you suggest is imminently possible. All it takes is a little work with the Asterisk dialplan. Many people have set up similar configurations, and it’s on my list to do so when I have the time.
[...] o, as part of a large rework of personal communication strategy last month that I’ve previously talked about — I ditched it all. All historical, painstakingly cr [...]
i’ve not yet attempted a wireless->voip lnp request but intend to try- but your post makes me anticipate trouble. one thing that might help is the fcc’s lnp complaint process:
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/NumberPortability/
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/wirelessportability.html
there was actually another link somewhere too that had exact instructions within a faq.
i’m with you 100% and it appears we have similar efforts. while i empathize with wireless carriers in having to deal with fcc regulation and fraudulent customers- i _emplore_ their incessant and relentless efforts to keep me in contract. …if i’m calling with problems- why would i want to upgrade my phone and obligate myself to another year of potentially inconsistent service? prove yourself as reliable and i’d be happy to sign up for 5 years!
[...] Yesterday many people were unable to reach me via my Asterisk-based unified number system.  They could call, but all they would get was dead air. It’s back up now, but it was certainly inconvenient. I called tech support at my VoIP provider (Broadvoice), and was told that there was an “issue” with a “third party carrier”, that affected “all customers in a very wide area”.  My number had been off the air since Wednesday evening, and didn’t come back for approximately 24 hours. [...]
hi there, please provide some tech detail about what you did with asterisk.
[...] been thinking about setting up an environment similar to the one described in Steve’s Tech Journal » New Asterisk-based personal communication approach and need to get a sense of when the time will be right to jump [...]