Morning all,
I require an out of area telephone code to enhance my business, i.e. one in a town as opposed to our rural code. Twenty years ago a colleague had one set up by BT at a considerable cost, but it has paid him back handsomely. Apparently BT no longer do this, but they have advised me that if I subscribe to their Broadband, their equipment (router) has an additional port where one can plug in a ‘phone and they will issue us with a virtual line which can be any area code. That ‘line’ then stays on permanent divert (if I wish) to my home ‘phone.
A. Has anyone here any experience of this and B. Do any other B/band providers do the same thing?
Regards to all,
Martin
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I had a virtual line from BT (via their Homehub)and yes (although I didn't bother) it can be set up to any geographical STD code and placed on permanent divert.
Last edited by: Pugugly on Sat 31 Jul 10 at 08:18
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I had a Vonage VOIP account for a bit which was cheap to set up and maintain, and from memory your primary number came from a selection of towns, including abroad. You could also have other virtual numbers routing to the same primary number (at a cost) so if your girlfriend lived in Seattle you could have a Seattle number for her to call on a local call which would route to your Vonage box. The box plugged directly into tyhe router so no need for a computer on all the time, and all landline calls anywhere were free or very cheap - ISTRC they had different packages which gave different groups of countries for free. They also had all the premium services like caller id, answerphone, conferencing etc etc either free or cheap. If you were going somewhere with suitable internet connection you could take your box and phone with you too (although you had divert features as well).
www.vonage.co.uk
Last edited by: smokie on Sat 31 Jul 10 at 08:22
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I think that you will find a significant number of people are very wary about buying services from an outfit that has virtual, out of area phone, numbers. The businesses tend to advertise themselves as 'local' ( in the likes of Thompsons, Yellow Pages etc), but are actually based in low cost remoter areas. This certainly applies to double glazing, garage door, and conservatory companies, advertising on the northern periphery of London. But they only actaually exist in Lincolnshire and rural Norfolk.
Said firms also have a reputation, for employing only subcontract labour, poor quality control, and a certain here today, gone tomorrow reputation.
It maybe useful if you can use a small town adjacent to your rural area, however normally that would have the same std code anyway!
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>> It maybe useful if you can use a small town adjacent to your rural area, however normally that would have the same std code anyway!
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Indeed not. Our 'Rural' code cover a vast area taking in a huge number of Villages and outlying areas and we are on the Western periphery of that code. 200yds away there is another code pertinent to our local small town and 1000yds away the code for a much larger town (the area hub) commences. Things are very territorial here in North Devon with people from one area not considering calling outside their area. The hub we want to hit has it's centre about eight miles from our base so your assumptions do not apply here. Been trading in the same name for 34 years so ain't running off any time soon.
Best..M
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Could you afford to have an 0800 number? If they're territorial then they might be tight wads and a free call might swing it even better :)
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Thanks TB, but they are quite suspicious. I am sure the code I seek will be the way to go. And yes, tight wads for sure, but to be fair, probably through necessity.
Best.......M
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Area phone code - R.P.
