Trying out a SkypeIn phone number
A few months back I wanted to get a separate phone number for the home office so that I wouldn’t have to use the home phone for calls.
At the time I checked Skype to see if I could get a phone number for Cork. For whatever reason it wasn’t available at the time. The other day it popped back into my mind so I checked Skype, they were available again!
I’d love to be able to set up a number that would spell out ‘ewrite’ but it wasn’t meant to be. All the Cork (021) numbers available started with 2348***.
The number I ended up buying is 021 2348553. It cost €57.50 including VAT for one year. 3 months is also available for €17 or so.
To try it out I phoned the new number from the house phone, it worked just fine except for a little echo of my own voice. Later in the day I received a couple of calls using the number and it all work flawlessly, grand sound quality.
Caller ID isn’t available for these Irish numbers from Skype however. If I call someone now from Skype it will show my mobile number as the caller ID, which is fine with me. It takes 24 hours for this caller ID to kick in.
So now with my new number and my trusty Binatone cordless phone / internet phone (€44.99 from Argos) I can make and receive calls from Skype without clocking up the home phone bill.
Tags: phone number, skype
August 21st, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Thanks for posting this up Gordon.
I’m moving house next month and want to get off on the right foot by using a full VOIP service. I’ve been looking at the SkypeIn service for a while now. Blueface also looks pretty interesting.
One of the great things I read about the Skype service is you can have the number redirect to any other number or pc when you’re out of the house, so you can be reached no matter where you are (assuming you want to be!).
Oh and thanks for the tip off on the Binatone phone. Does that connect directly into a WLAN router?
August 21st, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Hi Iarfhliath,
Yah, it can redirect to another number, but you’ll be charged for the forwarding, I don’t know the exact costs I’m afraid.
The Binatone phone is basic, it connects to the PC using USB so the PC needs to be turned on. I bought this first to see if I’d actually use it day to day. The plan is to move on to a wireless internet phone that will connect to the wireless router but the computer is always on anyway so it doesn’t make much of a difference.