{tech}.Ben Buckman.net

I've been trying to figure out the best way to set up a cheap telephone system that reaches me wherever I am at the cheapest price. I've had a cellphone with Verizon Wireless for years which is my primary phone. For the last few months, I've had Google Voice forward to my cellphone, so I get transcribed voicemail, spam blocking, cheap long distance rates, all the other Voice features.

But calls to my cellphone via Voice use up expensive "minutes," so I've been playing with another piece of the puzzle: Skype. I use it often on my Mac anyway: the audio quality is excellent, I have a great USB headset (better than for my phone), it does video and group text chat, and it's encrypted. Replacing my cellphone with Skype (when I'm at a desk) could be very beneficial.

So I bought a bunch of Skype services: for $2.99/month ($8.52 for 3 months) I get a subscription that gives me unlimited Skype calls (to and from regular phones) anywhere in the US. For $12.05 (for 3 months) I get a Skype To Go number, which is a regular phone number for people to reach me on Skype. Then I add that Skype number to Google Voice, so all calls go to both my cellphone and Skype (when I'm connected). Finally I set the caller ID number on my Skype account to my Google Voice number.

Result: everyone can reach me at one number. When I'm at my desk I can pick it up with Skype and it doesn't cost any phone minutes, when I'm mobile I can use my phone. If I ever change my cellphone number it won't change the number people reach me at.

I also installed the Skype app for Android, which potentially adds direct Skype connectivity on my phone as well.

I ran into three problems worth noting:

First, the mobile app is pretty limited: it only works for domestic calls (so I can't use it when I travel abroad in a few weeks as a replacement for a roaming plan, as I was hoping), and it uses Verizon minutes for those domestic calls. It's really only good for making outbound long-distance calls; I guess Verizon doesn't like those anyway and is heavy to offload them.

Second, I ran into a bug with Skype's voicemail system. It comes as part of the subscription, and when I was offline, it would direct all calls (going also to my cellphone) to Skype voicemail (with a generic British woman's voice), not giving me a chance to pick up the call on my phone or go to Google Voice voicemail as it should. I was thinking I'd have to manually toggle the Voice-Skype redirect whenever I was at my desk, but I contacted tech support and it turned out to be a bug (or incomplete configuration panel) in the Skype program. The solution was pretty simple (for the Mac):

1. Open ~/Library/ApplicationSupport/Skype/YourSkypeUsername/config.xml
2. Add the line "<NoAnswerTimeout>XX</NoAnswerTimeout>" between <Call> and </Call> in the file, replacing XX with a number of seconds before directing to voicemail. (I set it to 300 seconds, which leaves plenty of time for Voice's voicemail to pick up.)

Apparently the application syncs its configuration to Skype servers when you're connected, because after making that change, then connected and disconnected once from Skype, the problem was solved.

Overall this seems like a pretty good setup, except for the lack of service abroad. I'll report here again if anything new comes up with it.

Update: Actually, the voice mail bug isn't fixed. It's now going to voice mail after 2 rings when I'm offline. I wrote to them again to see what else can be done, will update.