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Skype Gateways for Local Calls?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the long-distance-local-calls dept.

cgenman asks: "My girlfriend is currently living abroad, but needs to make calls here in the States. I'm investigating Skype to phone gateways, but none seem to allow the person who is trying to Skype in remotely to initiate calls on the local phone network. What experiences have people had with Skype gateways which give remote people full local access? Are there other setups better suited for this purpose?"

6 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. What are you trying to do? by alienw · · Score: 3, Informative

    Have you heard of SkypeOut? If you don't like it, SIP phones work a lot better and give you a wide choice of providers. So get something like a SIP softphone, set it up to work with a service (say, nufone.net or whichever one you like), and make phone calls. Works real well, and you can even set up an incoming toll-free number.

  2. Vonage or SkypeOut by pv2b · · Score: 4, Informative

    Your girlfriend probably want to subscribe to something like Vonage, SkypeOut, or some other Internet telephone provider. Sure, she'll have to pay for her calls, but it's definitely a lot less hassle than having to set up a gateway.

    Plus, she gets her own phone number people can call her on, if she gets a service that does that.

    On the more geeky side, if you want to be your girlfriend's telephone operator so you can give her free calls (I don't know, maybe that kind of thing turns you or her on), you definitely want to play around with Asterisk, the free open source PBX, and get an account with a tinkerer-friendly SIP provider. Using that setup, and a SIP softphone program on the computer, or a hardware SIP telephone adapter or SIP telephone, you can do pretty much anything you can imagine.

    Don't bother trying to do anything clever with Skype though, it's not an open system, and you're a lot better off with an account from some kind of tinkerer-friendly SIP provider. Not living in the US, I can't give you any specific recommendations.

    Hope this helps.

  3. SkypeIn is a good solution by Hammerikaner · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've been living in Germany for 8 months now and generally use SkypeIn to call people. Well, actually, SkypeIn gives you a local number in whatever area code you want and then people can call you on your computer. It costs 10 euros for 3 months of service or 30 euros for a full year. Basically, when I want to talk to someone, I call them with SkypeOut (~2 cents/min) and have them call me back (free for me, and whatever costs for them to call my local number in the states--generally just using up cell phone minutes). It's worked out very well for me and I have probably saved $50-100 on phone calls since I have been here.

  4. Straight Commercial VoIP by Gates82 · · Score: 2, Informative
    Use AT&T VoIP for 30 bucks a month, she can plugged in the VoIP gateway into any broadband connection and call out, regardless of where she is in the world. No long distance and people can call a local number to get ahold of her.

    --
    So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's siter?

  5. Asterisk@home by sacbhale · · Score: 3, Informative

    setup an asterisk@home box at home. Let her install a softphone instead of skype.
    you can do all sorts of funky routing you want on ur home gateway and
    She can call whoever she wants using your landline as a gateway.

  6. Teleon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://www.teleon.net/product1.html

    Never tried it, but maybe it's what you're looking for. Found it by Googling around just now.