I currently carry a dual-sim phone to have two numbers, private and work each. I am not entirely happy with this setup however:
- Dual sim phones aren’t common and cost more when I have to upgrade.
- I need call recording for business, but android phones aren’t very clear when it comes to call recording support. I had to try and return several new devices.
- I would love to have additional temporary phone numbers for privacy (e.g. retails).
And here’s my situation:
- Google Voice is not available in my country. Plus, it’s Google.
- Prepaid SIM cards are cheap and easy to acquire where I live.
- I have a bunch of old spare android phones.
I was thinking, could I leave the SIM cards for private and work at home, inserted to phones/devices that are managed by a call-forwarding server, which transparently forward the calls to a third device I am actually carrying?
Self hosted Google Voice is what I would love to have.
Asterisk / FreeSWITCH. Not sure why you insist on having a SIM card, it’s possible with both of these using cellular modems, but it’s a lot easier to just get a DID from a VoIP provider.
This is the route I’d go. I use FreePBX for all this, but my voip provider could do most of the work (voip.ms). There are decent softphone apps (Zoiper, Linphone, etc.) to initiate calls from and porting a number to the voip provider isn’t too difficult.
VoIP.ms is clearly the connaisseur’s choice in this thread 👌
I was thinking about preserving my phone numbers and all that. From what I’m reading, all it takes is a voip provider routing calls directly instead of my own equipment?
Yes, you can also let the provider do all the work if you prefer.
> Google Voice is not available in my country. Plus, it’s Google.
Also, Google Voice takes my top pick for the next round of Google product executions. It receives no updates: no RCS, no fake iMessage support (parsing the
Liked "prev message"stuff), and it’s buggy as shit.I’d gladly even pay for GVoice if it meant it got a renovation and it was going to outlast Google’s attention span. Telephony is something I just don’t want to self-host because there’s no way telecom companies will make it easy.
> Telephony is something I just don’t want to self-host because there’s no way telecom companies will make it easy.
Actually VoIP is mindboggling easy (or I should say can be, it can indeed get incredibly complex if you want it to, the same software is used to host thousands extensions PBXs in call centers), and has been a thing in the self hosting community for decades…
I looked at those a few years back but never could figure out how to have an actual phone number instead of just internal sip lines. Where would one get an actual phone # from on those?
Any number of SIP Trunks DID (Direct inward dialing) providers.
https://www.voip-info.org/did-service-providers/
One of my favorite for north america has always been https://voip.ms/ small business that’s been around for 15+ years they offer both fully hosted and self hosted options.
I want to second voip.ms. I’ve had a number with them for years and I’ve been nothing but happy with the service and cost.
Thanks! I hadn’t heard of voip.ms but just signed up. Looks perfect for my needs.
So I would have to contact one of those providers if I wanted to keep using my current phone numbers, then?
Yes, number portability extends to compatible VoIP providers.
I have a FreePBX virtual machine hosted at home. I use VoIP.ms which covers most North American numbers and many numbers abroad. I use it to provide phone service to my parents house and cottage and my house and cottage. I put in about $40 a year to cover all these places with their own DID number.
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Not everyone here uses the actual dual slot. Some are single sim model variants advertised as dual sim, or one of the slotz have their imei on a blacklist.
