VoIP provider with dial in number in the US w/o monthly fee

Check out

premium plans give you a number reachable from PSTN. The number will be 4 digits longer than traditional, but quite functional. (if you use your PC for VOIP) I believe there is a setup fee, then your paid minutes are good for 2 years, and are refillable.

If you use a hardware solution, we will need to keep looking.

You can get a free US number from

that can be routed to most SIP systems, I have one that routes to my UK Sipgate account

This does need an existing SIP account though and the numbers are area code 360 (Washington State) which may not be where you want it but it's free and it works, so is ok for me..!

Ivor

Hi,

you can open an account and get a German dial in number at

for free. The dial out fees in this case aren't too attractive, but you can upgrade to an account with monthly fee and very attractive per minute rates.

I'm looking for a similar provider in the US, but it seems that everyone charges a monthly fee if they provide a dial in number. Same is true for "Skype-in". Does anyone know one w/o such a fee? I'm willing to pay a one-time setup fee.

Christian

: "Virtual Numbers are US or UK phone numbers that your friends and family can dial using any phone, i.e. Receive calls from the PSTN world to your SIPphone. *As low as $5.88/ month.*"

I was looking for a provider *without* a monthly fee.

Christian

What's the catch? Offering up incoming PSTN numbers can't come without at least some sort of fee.

There are services available to access SIP numbers through PSTN.

For example. Sipphone has an agreement with PointOne for this service:

"This is the latest list we've gotten our hands on of free PSTN to SIP access numbers. Dial the number, and listen to the prompt. Enter 1 for SIPphone. Next, when asked for your IM id, enter the SIPphone number you wish to call."

Other numbers are available from Telesthetic

Pepperoni

can forward PSTN calls to just any provider in the world (either free or not). But the number can be cancelled if it's not used for more than one month.

Enzo

No catch that I have yet found. Only drawback for some might be the area code 360 (Washington State) but if that doesn't bother you it works fine. They do reserve the right to withdraw the number if it isn't used in any

30 day period but I've not had that happen yet.

Ivor

I knew someone would object this. That's why I mentioned the free personal dial-in number from sipgate.de in my initial posting.

"Pepper> There are services available to access SIP numbers through PSTN.

Not exactly what I initially wanted, but a very interesting alternative.

Does someone know other, international access numbers?

Christian

It is entirely possible for some local telco (Local Exchange Company or LEC) to offer free incoming service, say, transferred to, say, a voice mail account or perhaps VOIP, doing so based on settlement rules if they can get enough incoming traffic to justify the cost of their Internet connectivity or (voice mail system operation) plus some profit.

Realize that for every call that is terminated into a number, the LEC for that line is allowed to collect a fee from MCI/ATT/Sprint (the long distance carrier or Inter-exchange carrier or IXC) if it is a long distance call. If it is local and terminated from another LEC, the sending LEC pays a small fee to the receiving LEC which is charged against return calls from the receiving LEC, and at the end of the year at settlements time, the two carriers determine who had more outgoing calls and that carrier pays the other one.

Actually, settlements are generally done on almost all interconnections between carriers and local telcos. Basically if you call out using MCI/ATT/Sprint or some other IXC, you are billed by them for your calls (or the local phone company pays the IXC at a discount then bills you). What really goes on is that your IXC and your LEC calculate the number of minutes of incoming calls from the IXC to the LEC's phone lines, add to that the number of minutes of outgoing phone calls from the LEC's phone lines, charge the incoming and terminating charge (let's say that's .002 or 2/10c per minute), then from that, subtract the price per minute the IXC is charging for calls placed onto its network (let's say that's .05 per minute.)

If the total amount of incoming and terminating call charges exceeds the amount of charged minutes the IXC has received on its network, the IXC would pay the LEC the difference. If the total amount of incoming and terminating charges is less than the amount of charged minutes the IXC has received on its network, the LEC pays the IXC the difference.

In some cases the LEC buys the IXC's recievables at a discount then bills the customer directly. In some cases the LEC will include the bill from the IXC as part of its bill, charge the IXC a fee for doing the billing for them, and then pay the IXC as the customer pays the LEC.

Where the LEC is either charging the IXC for billing or the LEC is buying the IXC's receivables, settlements are being used. If the IXC is billing directly, then settlements would not be used.

In any case, incoming calls to a carrier are worth something to that carrier, as a revenue source. What it basically comes down to is most LECs want more money for lines so they decide that getting only incoming termination charges is not enough.

In some cases some IXCs would pay very large customers (universities with dormitories, for example) to be allowed to directly terminate into their facilities because they can pay less to terminate there than what they would pay to an LEC even after settlements.

Settlements can be done as often as they choose, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or once a year.

Under the old Bell System, AT&T and its local operating companies did settlements once a year, because it was basically all paper numbers as AT&T essentially owned all of the local companies and thus any money changing hands was from one part of the company to the other.