I remembered Asterisk and finally looked more into it.Īccording to Wikipedia), Asterisk is an open source PBX (Private Branch Exchange). I checked out Phonebooth but it didn’t really do what I wanted to or is very limited either that or I didn’t know how to set it up. Searching for “free auto-attendant” or the likes yielded a few services.

I recently wanted to set up an auto-attendant with GV so my youth group’s main phone number could be routed to the specified person when parents need to speak with us I really don’t like to give out our personal phone numbers, not because we don’t want to talk to parents, but because they still call you (thinking you’re in charge) when other volunteers have taken over your position at the group. Most recently, you can even receive and call any US number for free! If you use an Android phone, you get the GV app that let’s you read voicemails and text messages, send text messages and call using the GV phone number. The voicemail transcription is just awesome I even set my personal cell phone to use GV as it’s default voicemail application over the network provider’s. You get a free phone number that you can forward to different phones, including the VoIP provider Gizmo5. The only “fancy” thing I did with these services was receive Google Voice calls on Gizmo5 and using the voicemail feature for parents in my local youth group to leave messages (so I don’t have to release my personal phone number or talk to them…I am a busy person).īefore I continue, I just want to say that I really like Google Voice as a service. Most of these services allow you to receive unlimited phone calls for free you just need to register the service using a sip client, such as Ekiga on Linux, telephone on Mac OS X, sipdroid on an Android phone with unlimited data. I’ve heard about Asterisk for some time now since using VoIP services such as Google Voice, Gizmo5, Sipgate and Skype.

How to install freepbx and google voice