Setting up VOIP - providers, telephone etc...

waqasahmed

I figured, considering that line rental is around £12 - £16 usually, it's probably better if we get a VOIP phone (We're on VM)

And I was looking at sipgate, and also looking at getting a VOIP phone, and also I guess people would ring the landline by simply ringing the number given to us by a provider like sipgate (Though a never changing number would be nice!)

We very, very rarely use the landline. I often use it to ring 0845 numbers (Not THOSE sort of 0845 numbers ) - and occasionally, my parents ring to Pakistan (via a calling card)

Looking at sipgate's prices to Pakistan, I think it'd be cheaper for my parents to continue ringing out to a UK number via calling card

Basically, Im looking for some guidance, on how to go about it

Provider?
Ease of installation?
And the telephone itself I guess

For the above 2, I guess adaptors would work?

OR perhaps get a "proper" VOIP phone and configure it through the router

Graham1

Many people use two VOIP providers, one such as sipgate for a "free" incoming number and one for outgoing calls at the best rate or quality. This, of course, is easier to do if you have a real VOIP phone (It's worth looking at ebay from time to time as people sometimes sell end of stock, new, VOIP phones at low prices). I use DIDLogic for outgoing calls, they have good rates and almost ISDN-like quality. There are many others to choose from. Callwithus are 8.75¢/min to Pakistan, but U.S. based which adds a bit to the latency. All VOIP providers charge a lot more for 0844/0845 calls than regular calls and more than the cost from a land line.
Another option for routing calls to different providers according to the number is the "free" PBX service from PBXes.com, this is configured through web pages so you don't have to know about Asterisk.

waqasahmed

Graham1 wrote: »

Many people use two VOIP providers, one such as sipgate for a "free" incoming number and one for outgoing calls at the best rate or quality. This, of course, is easier to do if you have a real VOIP phone (It's worth looking at ebay from time to time as people sometimes sell end of stock, new, VOIP phones at low prices). I use DIDLogic for outgoing calls, they have good rates and almost ISDN-like quality. There are many others to choose from. Callwithus are 8.75¢/min to Pakistan, but U.S. based which adds a bit to the latency. All VOIP providers charge a lot more for 0844/0845 calls than regular calls and more than the cost from a land line.
Another option for routing calls to different providers according to the number is the "free" PBX service from PBXes.com, this is configured through web pages so you don't have to know about Asterisk.

TL;DR below

Thanks, and it's getting a little bit more confusing now. Im after the cheapest way to ring any where

My guess is to try and figure out how this PBX system works and:

Route all incoming calls via Sipgate

Route all outgoing UK calls via DIDLogic - though it is confusing by what they mean by:
(Im going to use 1.6 GBP to USD as the exchange rate)

• United Kingdom - NGN - Local 6.77 p/min
• United Kingdom - NGN - 870 9.20 p/min
• United Kingdom - NGN - National 13.24 p/min
• United Kingdom - Mobile - Value Added 17.00 p/min

ie: what numbers they are, because Siplogic, have the following prices:

• United Kingdom 0843 25.00 p/min
• United Kingdom 0872 25.00 p/min
• United Kingdom 0844 5.00 p/min
• United Kingdom 0845 3.00 p/min
• United Kingdom 0870 7.51 p/min
• United Kingdom 0871 10.00 p/min

Found some rates:
https://didlogic.com/sipaccounts/forbidden

tl;dr

So, route all outgoing UK calls via DIDLogic, except:

0800 via Sipgate
0808 via Sipgate
0844 via Sipgate
0845 via Sipgate
0870 via 18185 (via a freephone number)
UK Landline via Voipcheap


I wonder what on Earth "services" are

And route all outgoing Pakistan (mobile) numbers via callwithus?

Graham1

I think "services" are UK 03 prefix, 0300, 0345 etc. numbers.
Those are two companies I find have good price/quality and low top-up minimums. Some people also like the various betamax companies which give a certain number of "free" days to low cost destinations after a top-up, but the rates per minute after that are not so good. http://progx.ch/home-voip-prixbetamax-3-1-2.html compares the rates of their brands.

waqasahmed

Graham1 wrote: »

I think "services" are UK 03 prefix, 0300, 0345 etc. numbers.
Those are two companies I find have good price/quality and low top-up minimums. Some people also like the various betamax companies which give a certain number of "free" days to low cost destinations after a top-up, but the rates per minute after that are not so good. http://progx.ch/home-voip-prixbetamax-3-1-2.html compares the rates of their brands.

Thank you Graham! Ah that makes sense Tbf, with the likes of cheapvoip and voipcheap, they offer 200/300 minutes free/week, and there's no way in hell, that we'd ever go over that amount, because we do rarely use the telephone

Ill definitely try and get my head around PBX and PBX systems and how to configure it

At the end of the day, Id want the cheapest, yet reliable /stable way of calling someone

CaptainHaddock_2

We have kept our BT line for incoming calls but use Localphone almost exclusively for outgoing calls via VOIP. We have a Gigaset N300A base station (DECT, combined IP phone and landline with answering machine) and two A510 handsets and it all works great.

Localphone isn't majoring in their advertising on their IP telephony offering, but it has worked great for us. Some rate examples (incl. VAT):

UK landlines: 0.5p/min
UK mobiles (Vodaphone, O2, T-Mobile, Orange, and Three): 1.8p/min
UK toll free: FREE
UK 0844: 9.8p/min
UK 0845: 9.8p/min
UK 0870: 5p/min
USA landlines and mobiles: 0.5p/min
USA toll free: FREE
South Africa landlines 0.2p/min

You can also buy bundles to get those prices down, e.g. USA landlines and mobiles cost 0.2p/min if you pay a monthly subscription of 57 pence.

If you are thinking of signing up with Localphone, see my post on the referrers board.

waqasahmed

CaptainHaddock wrote: »

We have kept our BT line for incoming calls but use Localphone almost exclusively for outgoing calls via VOIP. We have a Gigaset N300A base station (DECT, combined IP phone and landline with answering machine) and two A510 handsets and it all works great.

Localphone isn't majoring in their advertising on their IP telephony offering, but it has worked great for us. Some rate examples (incl. VAT):

UK landlines: 0.5p/min
UK mobiles (Vodaphone, O2, T-Mobile, Orange, and Three): 1.8p/min
UK toll free: FREE
UK 0844: 9.8p/min
UK 0845: 9.8p/min
UK 0870: 5p/min
USA landlines and mobiles: 0.5p/min
USA toll free: FREE
South Africa landlines 0.2p/min

You can also buy bundles to get those prices down, e.g. USA landlines and mobiles cost 0.2p/min if you pay a monthly subscription of 57 pence.

If you are thinking of signing up with Localphone, see my post on the referrers board.

Thanks, though localphone seem pretty expensive for the most part. And I have no use to call the USA (normally) Thanks however!

waqasahmed

Graham1 wrote: »

Many people use two VOIP providers, one such as sipgate for a "free" incoming number and one for outgoing calls at the best rate or quality. This, of course, is easier to do if you have a real VOIP phone (It's worth looking at ebay from time to time as people sometimes sell end of stock, new, VOIP phones at low prices). I use DIDLogic for outgoing calls, they have good rates and almost ISDN-like quality. There are many others to choose from. Callwithus are 8.75¢/min to Pakistan, but U.S. based which adds a bit to the latency. All VOIP providers charge a lot more for 0844/0845 calls than regular calls and more than the cost from a land line.
Another option for routing calls to different providers according to the number is the "free" PBX service from PBXes.com, this is configured through web pages so you don't have to know about Asterisk.

Hey!

Just wondering if there are any suppoer forums for PBXes.com (Aside from their own, which doesnt have much), and calling them costs €1/min! !!!!! :mad:

Basically, I want to:

Route ALL incoming calls via Sipgate

Route:
0800 via Sipgate
0808 via Sipgate
0844 via Sipgate
0845 via Sipgate
UK Landline via Voipcheap
Pakistan (mobile) via callwithus

All other UK numbers via DIDLogic

I understand the SIP trunks, and how add them in. It's just the dialing rules which seem a little confusing

Does any one know of any support forums perhaps?

And I hear something about "stripping the zero" Not sure what that really means

Graham1

Have you tried Help Forum
or Help Wiki Getting Started

You basically need an incoming default route which it will call /
and direct that to one of (or your only) extension.

In your non U.K. based trunks you'll probably want dial rules like this:
00441+01|XXXXXXXXX
00442+02|XXXXXXXXX
00443+03|XXXXXXXXX
00447+07|XXXXXXXXX

or, for U.S. providers, ditto but 01044

For you outbound routing custom dial patterns like
01XXXXXXXXX
02XXXXXXXXX
03XXXXXXXXX

for UK calls

maybe diferent one for mobiles
07XXXXXXXXX

and a different one again for freefone nos, select
"Numbers starting by"
0500
0800
0808

and other routes for your international calls

Arrange your routes in the order you want them examined.

At the end there is a Default route to use if none of the others match.

So, for your requirement you could just default to Sipgate and have one rule for calls to Voipcheap and one for calls to callwithus, but I would suggest something a bit more explicit like above so that mis-dials do not call a very expensive destination.

redux

If you have one of the Gigaset VoIP models as mentioned above (A580IP here), you can log in to the device control panel and set up to register a number (e.g. 6) of SIP accounts.

Then it will receive calls for any of the accounts. For outgoing calls the default setting can be either to dial as a landline call or the favourite VoIP account, and other providers are selected per call with a #n suffix on the dialled number

So you could do most stuff just with that, then figure out pbxes later

waqasahmed

Graham1 wrote: »

Have you tried Help Forum
or Help Wiki Getting Started

You basically need an incoming default route which it will call /
and direct that to one of (or your only) extension.

In your non U.K. based trunks you'll probably want dial rules like this:
00441+01|XXXXXXXXX
00442+02|XXXXXXXXX
00443+03|XXXXXXXXX
00447+07|XXXXXXXXX

or, for U.S. providers, ditto but 01044

For you outbound routing custom dial patterns like
01XXXXXXXXX
02XXXXXXXXX
03XXXXXXXXX

for UK calls

maybe diferent one for mobiles
07XXXXXXXXX

and a different one again for freefone nos, select
"Numbers starting by"
0500
0800
0808

and other routes for your international calls

Arrange your routes in the order you want them examined.

At the end there is a Default route to use if none of the others match.

So, for your requirement you could just default to Sipgate and have one rule for calls to Voipcheap and one for calls to callwithus, but I would suggest something a bit more explicit like above so that mis-dials do not call a very expensive destination.

redux wrote: »

If you have one of the Gigaset VoIP models as mentioned above (A580IP here), you can log in to the device control panel and set up to register a number (e.g. 6) of SIP accounts.

Then it will receive calls for any of the accounts. For outgoing calls the default setting can be either to dial as a landline call or the favourite VoIP account, and other providers are selected per call with a #n suffix on the dialled number

So you could do most stuff just with that, then figure out pbxes later

Absolutely awesome! Thanks both of you! That's pretty awesome being able to register 6 SIP accounts

Graham - I looked at the getting started guide, and it wasn't massively detailed, so I looked elsewhere on the internet

Im considering getting this:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/390467427002
(Siemens SL785)

If Im going for VOIP, why not go all out (Considering that it's cheaper in the long run any way)

Though Im also looking for a phone that does caller block by caller ID. That'd be pretty cool (As well as a voicemail function)

I saw one, but I think it was an analogue one

Graham I can't see why you jumped from 3 to 7 here?

00447+07|XXXXXXXXX