Using FlowRoute while traveling abroad - save your cell phone # and forward your calls
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Prior to leaving I signed up for FlowRoute.com which is a VOIP (Voice over IP) provider that does both SIP trunking (think advanced Skype connected to a business phone system) and call forwarding. SIP allows you to make free phone calls using the internet. The call forwarding feature allows you to forward all incoming calls to any US/International # (ie a foreign cell phone).
To get started you will need a phone number that FlowRoute will accept inbound calls for you. They call this a DID (Direct-Inward-Dialing Number). This can either be a number you get from them ($1.39/month) or one you have transferred from your existing provider ($25/number and 1-2 weeks). In my case, I was looking to cancel our existing T-Mobile accounts but I wanted to save our numbers for when we returned.
Now that you have a number that can be called and they are managing that number, you can setup the routing. Do you want it to go to your computer or Wifi cell phone (using a SIP client program) or forwarded to your cell phone. You can also pick a primary route and a failover route (ie use SIP to call your computer and then failover to your foreign cell phone if no answer or no SIP connection).
We purchased Movistar cell phone SIM cards (A$22=US$6, they call them "chips") for each of our unlocked phones and charged them with a few dollars. Calls to our Oklahoma phone numbers will be routed to our local Buenos Aires cell phone number. In additional to a small monthly fee for our DID, we pay both a inbound and outbound fee for this.
$1.39/month per DID for the Per-Minute Rate Plan (a $6.95/month flat fee option is available, but you would need to talk more then 460/month for it to save you any money)
Inbound $0.012/min for receiving the call at FlowRoute (you can eliminate this if you chose flat fee option)
Outbound $0.075/min for forwarding it to our cell phones (their website has a massive list of what the outbound charge would be for all around the world. This is eliminated if we use SIP)
If we end of moving to Santiago, Chile in a few months all we need to do is pickup a new SIM card with a local number and change where FlowRoute points our number.
Another side benefit is that you could use our computer or Wifi cell phone to make outbound calls through FlowRoute (not using our traditional cell network). We would then pay only the outbound fee and our number will appear on the caller ID however we want it to show.
To get started you will need a phone number that FlowRoute will accept inbound calls for you. They call this a DID (Direct-Inward-Dialing Number). This can either be a number you get from them ($1.39/month) or one you have transferred from your existing provider ($25/number and 1-2 weeks). In my case, I was looking to cancel our existing T-Mobile accounts but I wanted to save our numbers for when we returned.
Now that you have a number that can be called and they are managing that number, you can setup the routing. Do you want it to go to your computer or Wifi cell phone (using a SIP client program) or forwarded to your cell phone. You can also pick a primary route and a failover route (ie use SIP to call your computer and then failover to your foreign cell phone if no answer or no SIP connection).
We purchased Movistar cell phone SIM cards (A$22=US$6, they call them "chips") for each of our unlocked phones and charged them with a few dollars. Calls to our Oklahoma phone numbers will be routed to our local Buenos Aires cell phone number. In additional to a small monthly fee for our DID, we pay both a inbound and outbound fee for this.
$1.39/month per DID for the Per-Minute Rate Plan (a $6.95/month flat fee option is available, but you would need to talk more then 460/month for it to save you any money)
Inbound $0.012/min for receiving the call at FlowRoute (you can eliminate this if you chose flat fee option)
Outbound $0.075/min for forwarding it to our cell phones (their website has a massive list of what the outbound charge would be for all around the world. This is eliminated if we use SIP)
If we end of moving to Santiago, Chile in a few months all we need to do is pickup a new SIM card with a local number and change where FlowRoute points our number.
Another side benefit is that you could use our computer or Wifi cell phone to make outbound calls through FlowRoute (not using our traditional cell network). We would then pay only the outbound fee and our number will appear on the caller ID however we want it to show.
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