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> [...] Only then would the authenticated caller be passed through to me. Of course, such a protocol does not require a physical secretary. The job could be don

by mkl95 4y ago

> [...] Only then would the authenticated caller be passed through to me. Of course, such a protocol does not require a physical secretary. The job could be done by a virtual secretary, an app on my phone. And yet this is not how telephones work. Well you could implement a virtual secretary with Twilio incoming call webhooks or some similar service. How it works is up to you. A transcription streaming service would be nice. Think of a webhook but based on some streaming protocol (websocket?) instead of HTTP requests. I'm not aware of any commercial or free API that supports this.

genewitch 4y ago
I run a 3 year old install of 3CX on a public IP; last year i got tired of the weird spam calls coming in on my 15 year old phone number i route through the pbx; so i set up a simple IVR. Each phone i have connected to my extension does a quick "blip", the first part of a ring, so i added a second of silence to the ringtones on phones that don't automatically go into DND. I get the flash of a notification that someone has dialed my public phone number, but unless they actually know who i am and push the number the IVR says, they get routed to the operator, who is never there and just records a voicemail, that i can't access. I can see a log of all calls, obviously, so i don't miss calls, but i also avoid 99.9% of all spam, ever. I can't even think of the last time i got a spam call on that number routed to a phone i can answer. my VoIP line costs ~$23/month, the PBX is nominally free (3CX software didn't cost anything and i don't pay for rackspace/VMs at the datacenter i use for it), but it could be hosted anywhere. the best part of a public IP PBX (and 3cx in particular) is that you can have your most common contacts download the app and scan a QR code, and now you have presence, texting, voicemails, etc on a "secure line" that never goes out on any real phone network[0]. We don't use this feature anymore, but prior to the lockdowns in 2020 it was a nearly daily thing while we commuted or whatever. Now if we need to call we use Matrix or just regular cellphone calls. [0] this also works for children who don't need or want a SIM enabled phone with all that entails. Kids can call grandma on an app that doesn't require a phone number to register for...

by mkl95 4y ago

genewitch 4y ago

I run a 3 year old install of 3CX on a public IP; last year i got tired of the weird spam calls coming in on my 15 year old phone number i route through the pbx; so i set up a simple IVR. Each phone i have connected to my extension does a quick "blip", the first part of a ring, so i added a second of silence to the ringtones on phones that don't automatically go into DND. I get the flash of a notification that someone has dialed my public phone number, but unless they actually know who i am and push the number the IVR says, they get routed to the operator, who is never there and just records a voicemail, that i can't access. I can see a log of all calls, obviously, so i don't miss calls, but i also avoid 99.9% of all spam, ever. I can't even think of the last time i got a spam call on that number routed to a phone i can answer. my VoIP line costs ~$23/month, the PBX is nominally free (3CX software didn't cost anything and i don't pay for rackspace/VMs at the datacenter i use for it), but it could be hosted anywhere. the best part of a public IP PBX (and 3cx in particular) is that you can have your most common contacts download the app and scan a QR code, and now you have presence, texting, voicemails, etc on a "secure line" that never goes out on any real phone network[0]. We don't use this feature anymore, but prior to the lockdowns in 2020 it was a nearly daily thing while we commuted or whatever. Now if we need to call we use Matrix or just regular cellphone calls. [0] this also works for children who don't need or want a SIM enabled phone with all that entails. Kids can call grandma on an app that doesn't require a phone number to register for...