I want to figure a simple way of being able to dial in on one work
number and then dial out on another work line.
The reason is that I want to be able to call international from my
cell phone really cheaply or free. So I want to make a local call to
my office and then reroute that call somehow through my VOIP phone to
wherever I want to dial. This way I get the benifit of really cheap
rates.
Thanks for any ideas.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The device you want is known as a
'call extender' or 'WATS extender'. The name comes mainly from many
years ago when long distance calls were quite expensive but using the
office 'WATS line' allowed a long distance call to be 'free'. Essenti-
ally, call in on a local line, get hooked either to a PBX-type line
from whence you would dial the WATS code (then out on WATS) or else
just connect direct to the WATS line itself. A smart user would always
have a passcode request in there somewhere, to avoid having the WATS
(or other network services) abused. I got one of these devices once
from Mike Sandman http://sandman.com and after a bit of tweaking it
worked reasonably well. You can adjust it via a capacitor on the top
so it knows when to answer the incoming line and how long to hold the
line open, and when to disconnect it. The prototype Mike let me use
was easy enough to adjust the cap for pickup and disconnect and wait
to restart. But the volume level was not very good, at least on my
prototype (some manufacturer was trying to talk Mike into reselling
these devices), and I do not think they ever got the volume level
adjusted as desired. It would not make a lot of difference on good
quality WATS lines or a decent PBX, etc. The transmission level would
go down a little, but you could live with it. However, I was trying to
use mine to connect landline, via a PBX to a VOIP line outbound, and
this was _before_ (or maybe still?) VOIP was able to share bandwidth
with computers, etc on internet and sound good quality. So I had two
problems: VOIP outbound (with the older style Vonage TA's) sounded
dreadful, IMO, and the 'call extender' didn't help it any.
Commercial or industrial grade call extenders used to be quite
expensive; you had to be able to amortize its cost versus your toll
charges; now the cost for a unit is almost nothing; but then again, so
are toll charges, even international ones. You might check with Mike
Sandman (mailto: mike@sandman.com) or check his web site http://sandman.com
and find out if the transmission quality problems have been corrected,
and does he still have those little units. (About the size of a
package of cigarette, weight a couple ounces; just plug an incoming
and and outgoing line into it.) PAT]
Chasman (xarush@omelas.com)