Free Call Forward from VoIP number to mobile phone

Vinay presents a sophisticated solution which makes use of Voxalot as PBX and PhoneGnome as VoIP provider.

Its purpose is to let your mobile or PSTN phone ring whenever somebody calls your VoIP number. It also makes use of Sipbroker's access numbers so that friends from wherever in the world can call you for the price of a local call.

Although you can tell from the comments to Vinay's blog post that his solution is a quite difficult to understand, it's definitely worth reading. I would like to add that Vinay's solution rocks even more when you extend it with more inbound numbers from Tpad and Gizmo Call.

Another elegant solution for the same purpose could be the GSM gateway from 4S newcom:

Redirection of fixed office numbers to mobile phones works by routing an incoming call to an employee's desk phone to the employee's mobile phone, using the appropriate GSM channel on the above-mentioned GSM module. The call will then be completed at no cost.

The PBX from 4S newcom receives the phone call and forwards it to the cell phone over a built in GSM device which holds a SIM card with flat rate tariff, as you can read here.

Tpad to involuntarily offer free phone calls worldwide?

It seems that the fellows at Tpad are eager to open the telecommunications industry's Pandora's box a little bit more. If they really follow this trail, it will be one step more to a worldwide breakdown of phone call margins. A sickness that's highly contagious from VoIP companies to incumbent carries to even mobile operators. I sometimes feel like an epidemic doctor and today I found another sign of deterioriation at the patient: Tpad, which offers local break in numbers for its VoIP services in many countries, wants use toll free numbers now.

Do you know what that means?
Free phone calls from nearly every country to every country!

Jajah, Rebtel, Truphone, Vonage and the like can go home then. And Tpad pays the phone bill. No need for a computer, a Wifi phone or an ATA. Just plain 0800 numbers that everyone can call for free from his landline or cell phone. Even people who don't have a computer or technical skills can make their calls for free.

The setup is quite easy. Just define your Tpad account as incoming number in a hosted PBX, which you can get for free at PBXes.com. Or you install the free Asterisk in your webspace. Unfortunately my preferred company Voxalot doesn't provide the necessary features yet, but they are working on it.

For the outgoing calls I recommend Voipstunt, which offers free calls to 40 countries, or another company of their mothership Betamax. After that you can virtually throw away your computer, ATA, Wifi phone or whatever you have used for VoIP. Just call the toll free Tpad number of your country, then dial your Tpad account number, your PBX calltrough PIN and the number you want to call. The call enters on the free Tpad number and will be connected for free via Voipstunt.

Well, I admit that this seems a lot of numbers to dial. But you can automatize it by installing the mobile callthrough manager from Runningmobile on your cell phone. Just tell the program once your account numbers and then start making your phone calls. The cell phone behaves as always, only that it dials in the background some more numbers, which you don't notice.

You can even share this free service with your friends. Just tell them which toll free number they have to dial and how it works! Of course you should setup some rules in your PBX to prevent that someone calls a country that isn't free. I for instance have as of today 248 freedays in my Voipstunt account. This means 248 days of free calls to any regular landline in: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong (+mobile), Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Puerto Rico (+mobile), Russian Federation, Singapore (+mobile), South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the United States (+mobile). And the rest of the world they offer quite cheap.

If that's not enough and you also want to do free calls to mobile phones then install Tpad as incoming number in a PBX with free calls to cell phones, such as 4S newcom's. They can equip their IP PBX with SIM cards of all mobile phone providers of your country. Of course with flat rate tariffs, so that you can call all mobile phones for free.

In fact the described free calling service is in itself nothing new. Vonage also offers similar toll free numbers, but only for subscribers of their service, which costs 25 dollars a month. Tpad's accounts are free.

Reviewing this scheme I start to doubt that Tpad will really implement these toll free numbers. I understand why they are planning it: So that people can use Tpad for their calls without even having a computer. Tpad is very strong in countries like Pakistan and India where many poor people live. The company counts on that these clients will use Tpad also for the outgoing calls to the PSTN. And therefore they sponsor the toll free number.

But that's not necessary if you know to creatively use the SIP standard.

More tricks for free phone calls

Yesterday I told under the headline „Why mobile and landline phone calls will soon be free“ my outlook on the future of telecommunications. I am sure that per minute charges for landline and mobile phone calls will soon be a thing of the past. Even a 29 dollar monthly flatrate for all calls will seem too expensive. But not because the companies change their business models. It's the clients who find ways to circumvent the paid networks. They leverage their phone costs by using the SIP standard which can be seen as a Pandora's box to the industry.

Today I want to show you some other examples how I would do it. I'll also try to explain how the companies try to avoid these tricks. Skype and Truphone for instance try to stay out of the rat race by avoiding to implement the whole functionality of the SIP standard. Skype more than Truphone, obviously. Rebtel tries to tie up their clients to pay 1 Dollar a week for their incoming numbers. Jajah wants you to deposit at least 5 dollars on your account to charge you for their callback service. But they all can be beaten.


Connect Skype to a normal phone:

Skype relies on its own closed communication standard and until now there were no easy ways to use Skype on your normal phone. But maybe these days are over.

The VoSKY Exchange from abpTECH alleges to be the world's first product to seamlessly bridge an existing PBX to the Skype network. It adds four Skype lines to your PBX, and extends the benefit of Skype to every extension in your office.

At CeBIT the Italian company PCService presented in march their Linux software Skip2PBX, which serves as an addition to a company's existing PBX. Installed on a Linux machine, which can also be virtual, it controls up to 30 Skype accounts at one time, using different sessions of the Skype program. When a Skype call arrives it's being redirected to a phone. The Users can call their Skype contacts for free by using short numbers on their phone.

But the easiest way is certainly to use Fring on a mobile phone. Why hassle with the PBX when there is a phone software that communicates with all kind of messengers and SIP phone networks? Fring works on Wifi and 3G.


Get a cheap incoming phone number for Truphone:

Truphone has another interesting way to assure their income. They give free calls to 40 countries worldwide until end of June, but maybe this special offer will last forever. It's not only a marketing gag, they just have another source of income. The Truphone numbers in the UK are mobile phone numbers. To call them is quite pricey and Truphone takes its share from the incoming calls, as a Truphone network engineer affirms.

But there is an easy way to avoid these costs:

Install Sipgate as a second SIP provider in your mobile phone. So people can call you on your free Sipgate landline number. You can even set up a call forward from the Sipgate number. Just install Sipgate on Voxalot and make a call forward to your Truphone SIP address which has the form 447624XXXXXX@truphone.com. Your friends can call you always on your Sipgate number, but poor Truphone (which you will probably use for the free outbound calls) will not earn on the inbound leg from PSTN anymore.

Truphone always tried to prevent this kind of tweaking by not showing to their costumers their own SIP password. Truphone's software leaves it encrypted on the Nokia mobile phone to prevent that people use the service on other devices, circumventing the Truphone network. So do the Sipgate workaround! Calls between Sipgate and their partner networks are free, that's understood.


Get lots of inbound numbers like at Rebtel:

One business of Rebtel is to give you local incoming phone numbers in many countries and charge a dollar a week for that. But why should you pay when there are free incoming numbers? I, for instance, have dozens of SIP accounts with their respective inbound numbers from different countries concentrated at Voxalot. No matter which number you call, they all ring on the same phone. The thing gets even more funny because my Voxalot account works with Sipbroker and Tpad. They have inbound number in nearly every country of the world. You can call them at a local rate, dial the account number and my phone will ring.


Free Jajah like web callback:

Voxalot even has a Jajah like web callback. But other than Jajah these calls can cost you nothing if you use free VoIP providers on both legs of the call. There is also a version for cell phones at mobile.voxalot.com which costs nearly nothing for the mobile data. Enjoy your free calls!


Of course the described services also work on mobile phones outside Wifi, using an IP PBX with GSM SIM cards as 4S newcom offers.

4S newcom converges fixed, mobile and internet telephony

Now that's a press release I like: 4S newcom, inventor of the blue4S, "the world's slickest PBX", running on a blue Apple Mac mini, do it again: On the on the occasion of the CeBIT, the world's largest computer expo from 15th till 21th of march 2007 in Hannover (Germany), they start to sell the software running on the blue4S on a bigger scale. It can be used for many purposes: to substitute an expensive hardware PBX in a big company, to save on mobile communication costs or to even build up an own VoIP telephony provider.

They let mobile phones make free calls via their PBX, using Wifi to connect them or flat-rate tariffs for dial-in. Especially I like the "intelligent redirect: a user is given a set of local telephone numbers, which are redirected to international destinations of his choice". That's a little big like the free Break In numbers from Tpad, that my Peruvian friends use, but much more nifty.


4S Fixed, Mobile and Converged: 4S FMCd

Berlin-based 4S newcom introduces its new product range for fixed, mobile converged VoIP. The new software suit "4S FMCd" integrates PBX functionality with a carrier-grade prepaid system to offer high-level IP Centrex functionality to mobile users.

In addition to providing a feature-rich hosted class-5 IP PBX to VoIP users, the software provides full functionality and cost savings to mobile handsets as well. Making use of WLAN-enabled handsets or flat-rate tariffs for dial-in, call-through and call-back, users can use their mobile handsets as PBX system phones with almost no costs on the mobile phone’s bill.

"With this suite, 4S newcom offers providers and business users full fixed-mobile convergence as value-added functionality", says Harry Behrens, founder and director of 4S newcom. "We rely on dual-mode mobile handsets as well as flat rate tariffs increasingly offered by mobile operators". By connecting platform users to VoIP trunk circuits and configuring dial plans, optimal, e.g. least cost, routing plans can be configured at very fine granularity.

GSM connectivity is added by connecting 4-channel GSM extension boards by junghanns.NET to the system server’s PCI extension slots.

Two example scenarios are free redirection to mobile phones and international calls from mobile phone at VoIP prices. Redirection of fixed office numbers to mobile phones works by routing an incoming call to an employee’s desk phone to the employee’s mobile phone using the appropriate GSM channel on above mentioned GSM module. The call will then be completed at no cost.

"Another very useful setup is what we call intelligent redirect: a user is given a set of local telephone numbers, which are redirected to international destinations of his choice. For example by calling a Berlin number from my mobile phone (for free) I am connected to my parent’s phone in London and can talk to them using my mobile phone at zero cost to the mobile’s bill and a grand total of less than 1 Euro per hour! Basically we are arbitraging between mobile rates and VoIP rates"

A trial run for a limited number of users will be launched on March 19th 2007 at http://www.4snewcom.de/fmcd/. This trial run will allow registered users full use of the system based on two simple tariffs, one being a flat rate.


About 4S newcom:

4S newcom focuses on delivering carrier-grade software platforms to VoIP providers, ISPs and enterprises. 4S newcom delivers system, components and know-how along the full VoIP value chain: carrier grade class-4 "dial tone systems", on-premise IP PBX, hosted PBX as well as IP Centrex. Its two product lines are the carrier grade 4S ITSP Solution and the 4S IP PBX.
4S newcom last hit the news with its slick Mac mini-based IP PBX blue4S.


Press contact:

Maja Schneider
press@4snewcom.de
Tel: +49-30-79 70 87 71