

Ask HN: Best way of having a phone number? - martinald

A lot of people have hit this problem. I&#x27;d like a landline phone number for a product we&#x27;re launching, but we&#x27;re not able to man a phone all the time (often in meetings, flights etc).<p>Does anyone have any suggestions on how they deal with it?
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babygoat
-Forward landline to cell -Hire a receptionist -Use voicemail -Ignore the call

I think voicemail would work for most situations.

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doctorshady
Most landlines come with call forwarding features now, you could simply use
that. There's also things like [http://kall8.com](http://kall8.com) that allow
for time of day based routing.

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Terretta
+1 for kall8, set up to route if no answer to phonetag.com aka simulscribe
with its impeccable transcriptions.

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xchaotic
I have a Skype In number. Most of the time I am able to take the call on one
of Skype clients - on the desktop, laptop or mobile. For the case this still
doesn't work, this gets forwarded to a Skype Out number - in this case my
mobile. Finally if I still don't respond or decide to ignore the call, this
goes to my Skype voicemail.

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gumby
We use phonebooth.com which gives you a phone number, call tree, voice mail
etc. We just have the dial-by-name directory forward to mobile phones and
forget the voice mail feature.

They have a free version (which is what we use) but seem to have slowed down
invitations (you used to be able to simply sign up). But the nonfree version
doesn't look that expensive.

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cdvonstinkpot
I have an Ooma VOIP phone. I like it because I only had to buy the converter
box & pay for it once. It's free forever after that. Includes voicemail I can
check from a web interface, & unlimited local & long distance calls. The only
caveat- no license for business usage.

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pastycrinkles
Isn't "pay once for lifetime service" by definition a Ponzi scheme?

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sova
ponzi schemes are pyramid schemes where you use the investments of future
clients to pay dividends to existing clients, giving the illusion of "work"
\-- not sure how this applies to a service that actually does something for
you

~~~
dubwubz
I think he may have been misusing the term, and simply trying to ask how they
could possibly guarantee to provide that "for life", instead of "for however
long the company still exists".

That being said, Ooma tends to sound terrible anyway.

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lozf
Many VoIP numbers can be either forwarded to any otehr number for a small fee,
or routed to any SIP endpoint, or Voicemail. Cheaper and more flexible than
paying for PSTN infrastructure too.

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grok2
grasshopper: [http://grasshopper.com/](http://grasshopper.com/) \-- you can
get a phone line and voicemail service to take calls and forward to a number
of phones as needed or go direct to voicemail -- relatively inexpensive, not
free

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marvy
never tried this, but: [http://matt.might.net/articles/switching-to-skype-to-
save-mo...](http://matt.might.net/articles/switching-to-skype-to-save-money-
on-cell-phone-bills/)

