4 ms·

Whats a good GV alternative? I dont mind paying for a service as well

dheera 5y ago
Twilio. I send all idiot 2FA websites to a Twilio number and forward to Slack. You can also forward to e-mail or pretty much do whatever you want. Twilio's also great because I can set it up to answer known 2FA voice calls and hit the # button automatically to confirm. I also use it to play endless loops of hold music for unscheduled calls to teach businesses to stop calling me without making an appointment and e-mail me instead.
- urda 5y ago
  > I also use it to play endless loops of hold music for unscheduled calls to teach businesses to stop calling me without making an appointment and e-mail me instead. I feel ya. I have a public line that does the same thing, but instead if you call or text it just lets you know that I'll contact them, not the other way around. Question: why do you not terminate the call? Do you not get charged for the usage if you make them hold?
  - dheera 5y ago
    > Question: why do you not terminate the call? Do you not get charged for the usage if you make them hold? It's only something like $0.0085/min. On their end though if someone stays on hold for 15 minutes it wastes the company's 15 minutes worth of that person's salary time and they learn to not do it again.
    - urda 5y ago
      Ah gotcha, thanks for the tip.
- bbarnett 5y ago
  Lenny, a bunch of sound files for asterisk, is great for this. Nothing beats a confused, talkative old man, when it comes to wasting a caller's time. I'm sure you could adapt the files / logic. (If you love hearing telemarketers experience stress and annoyance, search for lenny examples youtube...)
zootboy 5y ago
I've been pretty happy with voip.ms. They have a bidirectional SMS/MMS to email system that works well enough for my purposes.
- jasonjayr 5y ago
  I'll second voip.ms. I use it as my primary "land line" in my home. I wish they had VM transcription too. My biggest gripe is that some online account verification systems refuse to use VOIP numbers as 'valid' phone numbers.
  - 29083011397778 5y ago
    > I wish they had VM transcription too Yet another Voip.ms customer here - I can only guess that's voicemail transcription, a feature I've been using (and evangelizing) for months now. Every message is transcribed and emailed to me, with a confidence level of accuracy, and even the original audio so I can verify or listen myself. Considering how many features they've rolled out, I can only imagine how easy it could be to miss though.
nfoz 5y ago
https://jmp.chat https://jmp.chat is basically open-source google-voice afaict Another mentioned on HN recently is https://www.unlistedmobile.com/ https://www.unlistedmobile.com/

Twilio. I send all idiot 2FA websites to a Twilio number and forward to Slack. You can also forward to e-mail or pretty much do whatever you want. Twilio's also great because I can set it up to answer known 2FA voice calls and hit the # button automatically to confirm. I also use it to play endless loops of hold music for unscheduled calls to teach businesses to stop calling me without making an appointment and e-mail me instead.

urda 5y ago
> I also use it to play endless loops of hold music for unscheduled calls to teach businesses to stop calling me without making an appointment and e-mail me instead. I feel ya. I have a public line that does the same thing, but instead if you call or text it just lets you know that I'll contact them, not the other way around. Question: why do you not terminate the call? Do you not get charged for the usage if you make them hold?
- dheera 5y ago
  > Question: why do you not terminate the call? Do you not get charged for the usage if you make them hold? It's only something like $0.0085/min. On their end though if someone stays on hold for 15 minutes it wastes the company's 15 minutes worth of that person's salary time and they learn to not do it again.
  - urda 5y ago
    Ah gotcha, thanks for the tip.
bbarnett 5y ago
Lenny, a bunch of sound files for asterisk, is great for this. Nothing beats a confused, talkative old man, when it comes to wasting a caller's time. I'm sure you could adapt the files / logic. (If you love hearing telemarketers experience stress and annoyance, search for lenny examples youtube...)

zootboy 5y ago

I've been pretty happy with voip.ms. They have a bidirectional SMS/MMS to email system that works well enough for my purposes.

jasonjayr 5y ago
I'll second voip.ms. I use it as my primary "land line" in my home. I wish they had VM transcription too. My biggest gripe is that some online account verification systems refuse to use VOIP numbers as 'valid' phone numbers.
- 29083011397778 5y ago
  > I wish they had VM transcription too Yet another Voip.ms customer here - I can only guess that's voicemail transcription, a feature I've been using (and evangelizing) for months now. Every message is transcribed and emailed to me, with a confidence level of accuracy, and even the original audio so I can verify or listen myself. Considering how many features they've rolled out, I can only imagine how easy it could be to miss though.

nfoz 5y ago

https://jmp.chat https://jmp.chat is basically open-source google-voice afaict Another mentioned on HN recently is https://www.unlistedmobile.com/ https://www.unlistedmobile.com/