I recently described the OBi110 ATA that makes regular phones work with VoIP. What makes the OBi110 special is that it supports Google Voice (GV) out of the box and that it’s cheap!
Because of this device, I finally I decided to port my landline number to Google Voice, which has been in my family for 20 years (I always wanted to port it to GV to have more control over the number). Since landline porting is not currently supported by GV yet, I had to follow these steps in order to port the number, which took about a week to complete and a cost of about $10 (AT&T Go Phone) + $15 (Go Phone balance to port a number to the Go Phone) + $20 (Google Voice porting fee) = $45. The long wait was from porting landline to mobile; mobile to GV only took a day.
Like this post mentions, GV does not support 911 service. I signed up for a CallCentric pay-as-you-go for calling out service (no phone number included). I had to put in a $5 balance to get started. I opted for the E911 service which will cost me $1.50 a month. Since GV is on my sp1 line on the OBi device (default line), I configured Callcentric on my sp2 line per these instructions. Basically,
- Service Providers -> ITSP Profile B -> SIP -> ProxyServer : (Callcentric Proxy Server)
- Voice Services -> SP2 Service -> X_ServProvProfile : B
- Voice Services -> SP2 Service -> AuthUserName : (Callcentric Username)
- Voice Services -> SP2 Service -> AuthPassword : (Callcentric Password)
Per these instructions, I set sp2 as the default line whenever 911 is dialed. Basically, change
<pre class="example">{(<#:>|911):li}
to
<pre class="example">{911:sp2},{(<#:>):li}
in the “Phone OutboundCallRoute” option under “Setup Wizard”. I did receive a confirmation from Callcentric saying E911 is active but did not schedule a test call with the local emergency station because I don’t who to contact to get it started. Here are additional notes. Oh, I also opened a ticket with Callcentric to change my caller ID to my GV #.
Now, I have phone service that costs me $1.50 a month.
What’s left is to figure out the dialplan or digitmap features of OBi so that I can do 7 and 10 digit calling automatically. This and this talks about it.
Caveat: After porting your landline # to a mobile service, you still might not be able to port the # to GV. In that case, your best bet is to simply forward calls to your GV #. That will wind up costing about $8/mo, if you don’t talk too long on incoming calls.
Google Voice has been in your family for 20 years?
@Frank of course not. I was referring to my original land line phone number.