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Skype Gateways for Local Calls?
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?"
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.
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.
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.
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So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's siter?
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.
[Sorry for ranting a bit off-topic. Must be the late hour.]
I'm using Gizmo from gizmoproject.com. It's a SIP phone, cheaper than skype for dial in and dial out services, plus a pretty usable ui for linux as well. I'm using both dial-in and dial-out services.
it is me
It is not worth it to blow money on a device just to use such quirky proprietary software to set up VOIP-to-PSTN communications. Skype uses the compressed (lossy) iLBC codec, which is lower quality than the G.711u codec most of the mainstream SIP VOIP providers use for their phone calls. Skype also requires you (or your girlfriend rather) to either talk to the person on the phone using a mike and headphones or some kludge like a "phone" that hijacks the audio in and audio out from your soundcard. Finally, SkypeOut is actually more expensive per minute to North America than the better SIP providers.
I suggest checking out the comments found on voxilla.com and its very active forum community for advice on setting up her (and no doubt eventually yours too) VOIP connection, and work out all the details like whether you just want outbound-to-PSTN calling or if she needs a DID number as well for being called at, whether you need an IP phone or an ATA, what providers suit your needs and what is the best way to configure your software or hardware.
Vonage has worked great for me in every country I've tried it, and I've never heard of a place where it didn't work, provided that you've got halfway decent bandwidth and are willing to tinker with your settings on their web page to suit your circumstances.
The only caution I'd offer on that count, many local Telco's are government run monopolies, and may not be in love with VOIP. This may mean you need to run through an SSH tunnel or something (depending on how strongly they feel about it and how much you are worried about getting caught) and that can add latency to your connection, in addition to the statutory latencies that may be imposed if you are caught. As always, think carefully before deciding to break laws (unless of course you happen to be the Commander in Chief of the world's only remaining super power, in which case, no worries, just do whatever you want).
--MarkusQ
Who lets these people in here?
It depends on who you mean by "these people". If you mean the person that asked the original question, the most cogent answer would be Cliff, who posted the story. If you mean me, I signed up for an account years ago, just like you did. If you mean Bush, the answer would be the American electorate, with a little help from big oil, Diebold, the supreme court, etc. If you mean the people in various countries who try to outlaw VOIP, there would be a whole host of answers, depending on the country.
Hope that helps.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. If you were serious, I suggest you take your sense of humor in for a tune up. If you catch these problems at the stage where you're just missing occasional jokes or letting parenthetical comments distract you from the topic at hand, it's generally much cheaper than if you wait until you are such a complete sour puss that you need a full overhaul.