Voip, landlines, regional numbers, where do you start?

[Magrisk]

Hi folks

As per comunity rules I should introduce myself and describe what I do.

Names Jeff, I am a Risk, Health and safety consultant, working as a sole trader from home. I have just started up.

Phones. I have searched the forums and read a lot about regional numbers, voip etc but am missing a bit in the middle which is still confusing me.

Basically, I want a phone number for my business.
When someone rings it I want a phone to ring in the house which is not my family landline.
I do not want the expense of a second BT line.
I would not like excessive charges for me or my customers. either them ringing me or me ringing them I would like the charges to be reasonable ( I will use my bundled mobile minutes to minimise costs where practicable).
I want to get a number today as I am having business cards printed this week. Was just going to go with the mobile number on the card then found out yesterday that virtual numbers was something that was possible. Technology innit.

So to recap
Need a number
Need that number to ring a phone, different than my family phone.
Don't need it to have excessive charges either way.
Possibly also need a pixie and a magic wand seing as I'm in the wishing mood.

Any advice, prods, rants, hallelujahs from the mountain top all greatly received.

Jeff

 

[Magrisk]

Woops

Should add, 3 miles from the exchange, copper all the way, upload speed about 100kb download about 700kb, broadband is not a complete dog though despite low speeds e.g. youtube videos play without buffering at 360p.

Jeff

 

[Faevilangel]

voipfone.co.uk

£2 + vat per month for a local #, and you can do the following with the number:

- redirect to a mobile (11p a minute, charged to you)
- redirect to a landline (1p a minute, charged to you)
- Use a piece of software on your pc, with a headset to answer calls (no call charges)
- Use a voip phone, plugged into your PC / broadand router, from about £90 from Voipfone here (no call charges).

Been a customer for 2 years+ now, use them for my "landline" number, support is excellent and Colin is the very helpful owner.

The Voip phones come assembled and set up for your account, so you can plug and play, no messing with settings.

 

[Magrisk]

Thanks for the reply Faevilangel.

£90 for a desk phone seems dear but then again I don't know what I'm talking about.

Free software sounds....well Free. Which is always a plus. I take it your PC has to be on all day to receive calls unless you have a divert on the number as you suggest.

I suppose an option is
1)get a number
2) set it to divert to my mobile
3) if I find this is getting expensive buy a voip fone.

Does that sound sensible?

Thanks again.

Jeff

 

[Faevilangel]

Exactly how I was doing it, it was costing me £20 a month (ish) in call charges to my mobile so I went for the voip phone which limits the costs.

£90 is expensive but it's not a traditional phone, when I bought mine, I looked around at prices and the cheapest was only £10 less but I would have to configure the phone myself.

For the softphone (aka software) method, your pc would need to be on when you want to receive calls (you can set your account to redirect to a number, if the main connection doesn't respond (which I do) so you could do best of both worlds.

Thanks for the reply Faevilangel.

£90 for a desk phone seems dear but then again I don't know what I'm talking about.

Free software sounds....well Free. Which is always a plus. I take it your PC has to be on all day to receive calls unless you have a divert on the number as you suggest.

I suppose an option is
1)get a number
2) set it to divert to my mobile
3) if I find this is getting expensive buy a voip fone.

Does that sound sensible?

Thanks again.

Jeff

 

[Magrisk]

Your a cool dude/dudette thanks for the quick and friendly support.
Appreciate it.

Had a quick glance at the website and see there are adapter options so you can use a normal landline phone with your router. That's pretty useful.

Do you pay for things like voicemail to email on top of the £2 a month system you use Faevilangel?

Jeff

 

[Nomis Connections]

Hi Magrisk - hosted VoIP sounds good for what you've described.

It works through your broadband connection - so no expense of a second BT line - and all the features are managed through an online portal (including mobile twinning - so your work phone and mobile ring at the same time when someone calls your work number). You get a Cisco phone as part of the package.

Happy to help you talk through some options in a bit more detail - feel free to pop your details over.

 

[Faevilangel]

Your a cool dude/dudette thanks for the quick and friendly support.
Appreciate it.

Had a quick glance at the website and see there are adapter options so you can use a normal landline phone with your router. That's pretty useful.

Do you pay for things like voicemail to email on top of the £2 a month system you use Faevilangel?

Jeff

Nah, I don't have any extras like that.

Basically my set up is if my landline doesn't get answered, it's redirected to my mobile, and if I don't answer that then they can leave a voicemail.

It's a free setting in the admin panel to set the redirect number so really easy to do and saves a few ££'s.

 

[Magrisk]

Thanks folks i have just registered with Voipfone.

Jeff

 

[Spapro]

We are with voipfone and very, very happy.

If I was you I think using voipfone and just directing the number initially to your mobile is a great way to go.

See how you get on and then you could look at the voip phone side of things later.

We use gigaset (siemens) wirefree phones. Not expensive - you need a base station which plugs into your broadband router then you buy as many handsets as you need.

I was a bit overawed by the whole thing but voipfone have been great - helping with the setup of the base station etc so everything was up and running pronto.

Good luck with your business, exciting times !

 

[cjd]

I'm a bit late here .... But anyhoo -if you get stuck, just give us a call, 020 7043 5555.

 

[The Mutz Hut]

have sent you a pm

 

[BusinessTeam]

Jeff

We would recommend www.voicehost.co.uk - you can divert to your house phone at certain times of the day, and if you have caller ID you can set it to show on the screen that its a business call.

If you want an individual phone you can use a VoIP phone. VoiceHost have lots of options and they are very reasonable.

If you need any assistance please let me know.

Richard

 

[Cyborg Industries]

we use skype with a skype-in number. it costs pennies and if you're away from your office for any length of time you can use it with your mobile device or laptop over 3g or wireless.

There are hundreds of accessories too, from headsets connected to your pc to phones which don't need a computer. You can also use it for video calls too.

We've even given some of our support clients a skype phone which lets them call us for free, we don't pay for these calls either!

if you want to check out the call quality on your connection you can join for free and give it a go.