I would like to have our main phone line that is pstn to transfer to an available voip line and keep the pstn line free for other calls. Is this possible?
Sounds like you want to call forward your PSTN line to your VOIP serivce line.
Get call forwarding.
That makes sense. I guess I was thinking to hard about it and missed the obvious. Thx
But call forwarding is to forward a call to another extension right? It doesn’t transfer the pstn right? For instance if i call from pstn to the asterisk server, can the line be shifted to voip without using the PSTN line? Is this possible? confused …
Um… No. You’re thinking of internal call forwarding. (Calls to my extension ring to another extension.)
Troystarks specific problem isn’t one of an Asterisk configuration. It sounds like they need to keep the PSTN line open, increase the incoming calling capacity by using the VOIP service line, but not have to tell everyone a new phone number.
To the PSTN, the destination of the incoming call is the PSTN line. If you want incoming calls to reach the VOIP phone number you would simply have to put the call forwarding feature on the PSTN line, and then activate the call forwarding to send it to the VOIP number.
Calls would not ever ring in on the PSTN line, but would instead come through on the VOIP line, even though the callers dialed the PSTN phone number.
The incoming callers wouldn’t know it, but their call would be passing through a VOIP service, and the PSTN line would remain free for the Asterisk system users to place calls.
The only downside is that there may be increased cost from the PSTN for the forwarded calls. The leg between the PSTN line and the forwarded to destination is traditionally chargable to the owner of the PSTN line. Even if that “forwarded-to” destination is local, the PSTN line owner may incur a per-call service charge for each forwarded call.
I have researched the option of forwarding the PSTN line and the downside is definitely cost. There is a charge for every minute of every conversation that is transfered. Whereas there would be no charge for incoming calls to a PSTN line(no forwarding). Hmmm…bummer
To give a little reasoning behind my delima, I wanted to have the PSTN as a backup in case of dsl, or voip service outage. that way we could just forward the pstn lines to our answering service if our isp or voip providers go down.
I came up with another solution. I think if I could find a voip provider that would allow us to keep our main numbers, then I will just convert over to all voip lines. and in doing this we could also save the extra money that we pay to our answering service and just create a bit more sophisticated auto-attendant.
my only hesitation is the QOS of voip lines when the internet experiences “bad days”. It would only take a few instances of lost or bad calls for me to become a target.