On 13/12/17 02:43 PM, ken wrote:
Fritz isn't offering anything special.
It's always good to keep an open mind, and I'm doing that. So what hardware and software do you think it would take to accomplish everything a person gets with a Fritzbox?
First: As someone pointed out you need a service provider of some sort to provide the connection to the world wide telephony system. This lets you map a phone number to the mechanisms discussed below. Please note: I'm perfectly well aware that you can do this yourself with additional hardware running Asterisk https://www.asterisk.org/ and connectivity yourself, in effect being your own service provider. People do that. It is not a minimalist solution. As I've mentioned, I make use of voip.ms but there are other service providers. Every trade show I go to there are the latest fly-by-nights. Some seem to last longer, some make it to google: http://landing.thinktel.ca/SIP-trunking/ Google for those nearest you, but do check out voip.ms for comparative cost. Second, given that you have an internet based VOIP service, please realise that service is accessible ANYWHERE you can get internet connectivity. This might be: - at home, wired - at home, wifi - at a friends house, wifi - on the street using municipal wifi if your city supports that - at Starbucks or any number of coffee shops or restaurants that supply wifi - in the waiting lounges of airports and train stations where wifi is available - in libraries - in pay-for-use internet cafés Given connectivity you might take any one of the following options: at home, I have an internet/Ethernet connection from my cable router to a Linksys ATA box that cost me $35 at a local store. That has a regular RJ45 plug. I can either plug a standard phone set into that or connect it to my existing household phone wiring (after disconnecting at the connection to the Bell wiring into the house) and have the phone service at all the regular phones though the house. at home, my cable router also handles wifi and I can access the service provider for phone calls from any device that has wifi: my Samsung phone, my tablet, for example. With my phone I can configure it so that the dialler that is built into that handset can also make voip calls over wifi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ9lOp5L7sU I have mine set to 'ask for each call'. Strictly speaking, you don't even need a service provider for you cell phone. You can use the wifi-to-SIP alone. That is what I do with my tablet. I run Zoiper, https://www.zoiper.com/ one of a wide number of VOIP applications for Android, and I believe it runs on other platforms PC/Windows, PC/Linux, PC/OSX and IOS. My tablet does not have GSM or LTE - NIX. only wifi. By using Zoiper and my voip.ms account I can make calls from anywhere I can get a wifi connection. That included the town hall of a small town in rural Wales[1]. So it you want to be minimalist, the least hardware you need is that free 7" tablet that the bank gave you when you signed up for an account. All the rest is software. OBTW: if your service provider cooperates you can send SMS TXT messages over VOIP. [1] Although I was using the London node so as to eliminate echo, to the people I was calling in Toronto it seemed as if I was calling from home. no long distance feel to the call. Their immediate reaction was "Oh, you're back early!". -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org