Phone number change
Thought of writing a blog post on this because the way I restuctured my phone lines could be useful for others too.
Summary:
The published new number is "My contact number". It is not my Cell phone number, it is not my Office Number, it is not my LAN phone number. When you contact me using this number I can pick up where ever I am available. If I am at office, I can pickup office phone, If I am home, I can pick up home lan phone, If I am travelling, I can pick up my cell phone. As a caller, you need not worry where am I.
How it works?
When registering for "Google Voice", they give you a virtual phone number. Then using the google voice settings you can add how many ever real physical telephone numbers to map to provided single virtual phone number. In my case I added three, My office number, My home Lan phone number and My prepaid cell phone number. Now you are all set, you need to publish your virtual phone number to every one.
When ever some body calls to the virtual phone number, google will make all my phones ring. I can pick up which ever phone I prefer to pickup the call. When I pick one phone to attend a call, ringing in all other phones gets disconnnected. simple.
Outgoing:
Option1: Pick any one of your telephones and make a call. it still works. But if your friends will see your real physical telephone number instead of google voice number.
Option2: Use the make a call link in the google voice online inbox and make the call. Google voice will then call to the phone you prefer to use for your call. When you pick your phone, the call will get connected to the destination you selected to.
Features that influenced me to select this structure
Cost Effectiveness:
Vonage: Free phone calls @ $33/month to India and Australia; countries which my family needs to make frequent calls.
Tracfon: $20 for 120 minutes where validity lasts for 6 months.
Google Voice: Free service
Portability: I can modify the physical phone lines behind the scenes any number of time, but the virutal number will not change so the change is abstracted from outside world.
Fun features:
-- Set separate voice mail greeting for individual callers. Google voice will recognize the caller and greet with the personlized message set for that caller.
-- Call barring, if there is an annoying spam caller, you can block in the google voice level, those call will then not even make the phone ring.
-- Voice mail transcription, if the voice mail I received happens to be in English, I get an mp3 of the voice mail as well as converted text to my gmail inbox.
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