Hello! We are open to the possibility of changing our business telephone number shortly. This will most likely be necessary due to a physical move, changing providers and a few other reasons. However, we woud like this to be the *last* time we need to do this. Ever. No matter what. Is that possible?
On the Internet, you get this power with domain names. We "own" our domain name, so even if we move around the world, change connections, change Internet providers, grow, shrink, etc. we keep the same domain name. This is a wonderful thing. Is there such a way to do this with a telephone number? Is it possible to "own" a telephone number, such that even if we change telephone providers or move from POTS to ISDN to T1 to VoIP and back a dozen times we can keep the same number? We would like to have this power with both a normal telephone number and a toll-free number. According to our current provider (SBC in Michigan), the only way we can keep our current number is to convert it into a "virtual circuit" for almost $30/month (basically the same cost as a "real" circuit), and then forward all calls from that line to another number. If the number is not local, we'd have to pay for long-distance to that new number. I know that with VoIP numbers we can move and change Internet connections, but if we change VoIP providers, we lose the number. With a combination of the two, we could buy a virtual circuit from SBC and forward it to a local VoIP number that might change if we changed providers, but that seems like a fairly expensive way of doing it. Is there an alternative? And what if we didn't want to use VoIP, but wanted to forward to a number that was long-distance? Obviously, that gets expensive! Also, we're currently looking into toll-free service, but the alternatives seem to be much the same. At least nobody is telling us if there is a way to lock in a certain number even if we change providers. They've all told us that the number we receive is theirs, and if we change providers we lose the number. I'm sure 1-800-Flowers, et. al. are not being held hostage like that... I would love to know what ideas you might have for getting a telephone number with the ability to stay with us even as the underlying infrastructure changes. Is this even possible? Thank you, Tim Massey _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
