If you just need call forwarding to a few numbers, plenty of SIP providers offer that out of the box, no need for Asterisk. You can also typically register a S

If you just need call forwarding to a few numbers, plenty of SIP providers offer that out of the box, no need for Asterisk. You can also typically register a SIP phone or softphone directly with the provider. I have used Asterisk for 15+ years for my e-commerce business, so it is familiar. Asterisk can be overwhelming at first, and it can be difficult to find current information (there's a lot of old info out there that no longer applies). You would want to use PJSIP these days, so if you can find a guide for setting that up you should be good. If you have basic experience setting up Linux servers then you should be able to provision a basic asterisk server instance in a couple hours. I forward my main personal number to several cell phones with cheap plans where I can't disable voicemail, so to make that work I configured it so that I press one to accept the call. It also recognizes when I call in from one of those numbers and gives a dialtone, so I use a prefixer app to route outgoing calls through my Asterisk server as well. None of that is necessary if you use a softphone, but I'm often in the mountains where data is spotty. I enjoy the challenge of setting things up and learning new things, but I don't see this as the right route for everyone. I think you should be able to find commercial offerings similar to GV these days, so I would start by looking around for that. If anyone wants to start a business with me to offer a good GV alternative, I might be into that.