Home office telephone number forwarding

[danw]

Hi. A team of three of us often work shifts for providing out of hours support etc. We don't have a huge number of calls, but can anyone recommend any solutions for providing 1 support telephone number that can be routed to any one of us to our mobiles or home numbers regardless of which of us is on call?

I was trying to find out if an 0845/0870 number can be controlled by us to divert to a residential line or mobile? Or some other solution.

Thanks!
Dan

 

[Stationery-Direct]

This company offers a non geographical number free of charge including free re-direction to your own telephone number, this number can be changed online, far as I know nothing is to stop you doing this on a regular basis, they even pay you 0.4p a minute when anybody calls you.

The website address for further details is:


http://www.miura-communications.co.uk


I have not tried this company yet but have heard some good reviews about them.

 

[Trident]

There are a number of options available, depending on your current setup, or whether your going to set this up from scratch.

Quite a simple and cost effective solution if you dont have a phone system is, to use BT's star services (call diversion) function, once setup on the line you can divert your calls to any number using a code and the telephone number, when you then return to the office in the morning you can cancel the divert. Although be aware that you do pay for the diverted part of the call.

If you do have a phone system dependant on the make and model you should be able to program a night service function to divert to an external number. Quite simply putting the phone system into night service should allow differant ringing plans, these can be either automatic or on a manual basis. Again you will have to pay for the diverted part of the call, and you will requir two lines for this to work.

Hope this helps

Dan

 

[cjd]

You could use our service.

Take a number from us (it can be 056 free, 0870 free, 0845 £1.99/month, geographic ie London, Cardiff etc £1.99 or 0800 tba).

You can then divert calls coming into that number to any other number anywhere by simply inputing the new number from the website - anytime and as often as you like. Calls to the diverted number will cost about 1p per minute to a landline. If any of you have broadband internet access calls to the diverted number will be free.

So if you're lucky it's possible to get what you want at zero cost

You can see a short description here:

http://www.voipfone.co.uk/PB_Call_Divert.php

 

[multilingual]

When we go out of the office we just key in a divert on the handset:

*21*yourmobilenumber#

It works from our 0870

JB

 

[danw]

Thanks for all your replies - very helpful.

What is quality of internet phone services like? Do they require a lot of bandwidth (in the sense - we're probably online/sending email and the phone is competing for use of the line) ?

Dan

 

[cjd]

Thanks for all your replies - very helpful.

What is quality of internet phone services like? Do they require a lot of bandwidth (in the sense - we're probably online/sending email and the phone is competing for use of the line) ?

Dan

External calls use about 64- 80kb/sec.

If you have a normal broadband connection downloading stuff whilst making a call is not noticeable.

If you upload stuff (unusual) it can get a bit jittery unless you have a router with QoS (Quality of Service) - most do now - it prioritises voice traffic over other traffic.

Quality of call is dependent on the quality of your connection, your telephone (the new SIP hardware phones are fabulous (CD quality) - the free softphone are ok) and your VoIP provider's network.

Best thing to do is just try it and see how it works for you - it's all free until you start doing the fancy stuff.

 

[Chris Martin]

www.switchboardfree.co.uk

Completely free virtual switchboard service. Route a free non-geographic number to your land line or multiple locations.

Have your own switchboard with caller intro, pick your on hold music, voicemail to email function, we even mail you your customers number should you miss their call.

Completely free, no rental, no set up.

WWW.SWITCHBOARDFREE.CO.UK