[ivoxilla]

hello,

i would like to know whether phonegnome 2 could fit SMB needs for both national & international calls (landline & mobile).

we (are hosted in Europe and) plan setting up an asterisk server (± 120 posts) & use voip.

1. now, if i understand well, both the caller and called person need to set up a phonegnomeaccount. But what if we put all of our adress book as my personal phone numbers, including all our clients (f.ex. in a mysql asterisk database). Wouldn't phonegnome bridge these calls between them for free?
Obviously, we can't sollicitate all our clients to put our phone numbers in their phonegnomeaccount (which they need to create for the occasion)?

2. if the latter case is true, is there a way to check whether the called person actually HAS a phonegnome account before bridging the call? If negative, the call would be routed thru another ITSP ou even the pstn.

3. what's the codec used for bridging the call? Libc? Speex? (i.e. low quality codecs)? Can we chose codecs. I would like to use G711 & G729.
Is calling to mobiles as good a quality as calling landlines?

4. how about mobile roaming? If i understand well, i would just pay the roaming costs of the communication?

5. any (time) limit to this? I mean, once you've registered you can allways call for free?

6. what's the catch? Seems to be too good to be true really. Phonegnome seems to just have beaten services like JAJAH and GIZMO who have similar offerings but restricted to ACTIVE users (lots of debate going on on their forums concerning the conditions to be met in order to be "active")....

thanks for any feedback

[PhoneGnome]

PhoneGnome is designed to be a service for humans interacting with each other. Call all your friends and associates free. That's a pretty generous offer, we'd say. The "catch" is that we expect PhoneGnome users to be real people doing practical things that ordinary people do.

There must be a real person or entity associated with every individual PhoneGnome Free account. We assert that the person setting up the account has access/control of the phone number of the account being established and is the actual user of that number. It is a violation of our rules to a setup accounts in absentia or on the behalf of someone else. PhoneGnome accounts belong to real people and are intended to provide value for a specific real individual.

Ultimately, what we're talking about is that in order for PhoneGnome to be able to offer this free service, we require that each customer is a viable potential consumer of additional for-pay services. We do not require that they subscribe, but we must have some confidence there is a valid potential there (i.e a real person). We consider that to be quite fair.

The standard PhoneGnome service is intended for individuals not businesses. However, that being said, we know that many professionals and SOHO users do use the PhoneGnome services. In the future, we may introduce more specifically business-focused services.

Also bear in mind that, while we strive to improve our international support, today all communications and the PhoneGnome website etc. are all in english only and therefore we require that PhoneGnome users be english speakers at this time.

[ivoxilla]

thanks for the precisions.

we require that each customer is a viable potential consumer of additional for-pay services.

Obviously, we're not just putting aside the paid services of phonegnome. We just want to see how it can fit our SMB needs and architecture.

There must be a real person or entity associated with every individual PhoneGnome Free account.

that's correct. Every single phoneline is associated with a single employee.

I understand that phonegnome (for the time being) can't offer businessaccounts (hope you will though in future), but is it possible to set up more than one phone number by person (one phonegnome account). I.e. tying both the office landline of the employee as his mobile number.

I guess that even for "ordinary people" this would be a valuable option.
Is it possible?

Many thanks. Keep up the good work!

[PhoneGnome]

Originally Posted by ivoxilla

I understand that phonegnome (for the time being) can't offer businessaccounts (hope you will though in future), but is it possible to set up more than one phone number by person (one phonegnome account). I.e. tying both the office landline of the employee as his mobile number.

It depends on what you mean by 'typing together'.

Currently, each number has a separate 'account' but one person can have one account for each of their numbers. Using the optional multi-ring feature (part of the Power Suite bundle at $24.99 per year) with the PhoneGnome box, calls to one number can ring to all the other numbers.

[ivoxilla]

but one person can have one account for each of their numbers

sure, but i guess he also needs a different email address for each of the accounts? This is difficult for us, as not every employee has a personal email address and obviously we can't force them to use their home email (which would also be against your policies). So my question is: is it possible to set up different user accounts (each one having one phone number) under the SAME email address?

Using the optional multi-ring feature (part of the Power Suite bundle at $24.99 per year) with the PhoneGnome box, calls to one number can ring to all the other numbers.

so this would be a RING-GROUP feature? We would really like to keep apart mobile & landline- numbers. One number per phone.

with the PhoneGnome box

is this feature not available on the webactivated service? As we're planning to set up an * server keeping our good'ow analog phones, we don't plan to put any ATA for every phone.

thanks

[PhoneGnome]

Originally Posted by ivoxilla

is it possible to set up different user accounts (each one having one phone number) under the SAME email address?

Yes.

Originally Posted by ivoxilla

so this would be a RING-GROUP feature? We would really like to keep apart mobile & landline- numbers. One number per phone.

This sugggestion was in response to your statement of "tying both the office landline of the employee as his mobile number" and presenting one example of how numbers can be 'tied together'. We're still trying to understand what you mean by this notion of tying them together so we can see if PhoneGnome can give you want you want.

Originally Posted by ivoxilla

is this feature not available on the webactivated service? As we're planning to set up an * server keeping our good'ow analog phones, we don't plan to put any ATA for every phone.

The Power Suite feature is available either way, but IF people want those services to apply to calls to their EXISTING POTS LINE, they need the box for that. I.e. without the box, we cannot impact the behavior of calls placed by PSTN users to the POTS line number associated with the account.

I feel that we are running in circles here. Perhaps you can start again to describe your objectives rather than details of your assumed means to get there. Or even better, why don't you just try the service on a few numbers and to see how it works for yourself and then ask questions based on that rather than all this guessing.

[ivoxilla]

Or even better, why don't you just try the service on a few numbers and to see how it works for yourself and then ask questions based on that rather than all this guessing.

ok, followed this advice. Set up two accounts under the same email (all's ok, enterd PIN etc). Waited a day to be sure and then tried to phone to the other number but always get the same msg saying that user is not registered with phonegnome...

Is it because the two accounts have been set up using the SAME IP ADDRESS (which is our static corporate one)?

thanks for any help

[PhoneGnome]

Originally Posted by ivoxilla

ok, followed this advice. Set up two accounts under the same email (all's ok, enterd PIN etc). Waited a day to be sure and then tried to phone to the other number but always get the same msg saying that user is not registered with phonegnome...

Is it because the two accounts have been set up using the SAME IP ADDRESS (which is our static corporate one)?

thanks for any help

We'd have to look at the details. It sounds like the account creation never completed. Are you sure you received the email and completed the callback verification?

This is an issue for PhoneGnome support. Provide the details at the following form and they will help you: PhoneGnome :: Trouble Report

Be sure to provide both phone numbers.