Category Archives: Cellular Services

We recently showed how to use Bluetooth on your cellphone to manage your home or office phone so that calls would automatically be forwarded to your cell phone when you left your home or office carrying your Bluetooth-enabled cellphone. Justin Cramer sent us a note suggesting that it was just as important to be able to manage your cell phone calls unless you enjoy paying your cellphone provider 20¢ per minute to transfer all of your cell calls to the office number. Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T probably aren’t overly enthusiastic about your taking over their hubs to route your own cellphone calls… especially for free. But there is an inexpensive way to do it with Asterisk® or TrixBox, and today we’ll walk you through it. If you didn’t read our previous article on Bluetooth, start there to get up to speed on Bluetooth call routing in case you want to add that feature. But, frankly, you can automatically manage your cellphone from your Asterisk server without Bluetooth and without touching anything when you leave your home or office. Here’s how…

Ingredients. You’re going to need an Asterisk server to make all of this work. Well, not really, but we’ll save that for last. The easiest way to get started is to download one of our preconfigured TrixBox systems from the links at the top of this page. There’s a Linux flavor as well as Windows and Mac versions so pick your poison. They’re all free. The trick to making all of this work is that you’ll need a new phone number (DID) to give out for your cellphone calls. We’ll install this DID on your Asterisk server. Next, we’ll create an Asterisk extension to route calls to your real cellphone number. Finally, we’ll add some smarts to your server so that cellphone calls get routed to BOTH your home or office extension and your cellphone. That way you can pick up the incoming calls on a regular extension when you’re home and answer your cellphone when you’re away. Justin mentioned that he paid $42 to his cellphone provider one month just to transfer incoming cell calls to his office. The Asterisk approach we’re recommending today will cost you $3.99 a month for the incoming DID and almost nothing to route the calls to your cellphone if you’re using an all-you-can-eat VoIP provider or just over a penny a minute if you’re using a pay-as-you-go provider. See our recommended list of providers if you’re just getting started and need some suggestions.

Installing a DID. We’ve got to have a phone number on your Asterisk server that you can publish as your "cellphone number" for your customers. This is the number they will call to reach you on your cellphone. When a call comes in on this number, the Asterisk server will then ring both your real cellphone and one or more extensions on your Asterisk system. As an alternative, you can have incoming cell calls roll over to your office extensions after a certain number of seconds with no answer. But this will delay answering incoming calls at home which you may not want to do.

Our favorite DID provider is les.net. You can get a DID in numerous area codes with unlimited, free incoming calls with two simultaneous incoming trunks for $3.99 a month. Another option is a toll-free number from Vitelity. That will cost you 50¢ a month plus 1.9¢ a minute for each incoming call. Either approach works well for this application. Just keep in mind that each completed call to your actual cellphone requires two trunks, one for the inbound call through your published DID number and a second outbound call from your Asterisk server which patches the inbound call over to your cellphone.

Once you get signed up and choose your DID, you then have to configure an inbound trunk on your Asterisk system. Log into your account with your provider and use the recommended setup to add a SIP Trunk for les.net or Vitelity using freePBX on your Asterisk server.

Adding Cellphone Extensions. It’s really easy to add "extensions" which dial directly to your cellphones or phones in remote locations. Just create a new Ring Group, give it a Group Number specifying the extension number you want to dial to complete the call (e.g. 244), choose hunt for the Ring Strategy, enter your cellphone number in the extension field with a # on the end using a dial string that matches your existing outbound trunk requirements (e.g. 16781234567# if your provider requires a 1-areacode-number format), choose a ring time in seconds, and a destination extension if no answer. Make sure the time you enter is less than the time used by your cellphone provider to transfer unanswered calls to voicemail. A better approach we think is to enter your cellphone number AND several extension numbers on your Asterisk system to the call list. Now change hunt to ringall, and ALL of the numbers (including your cellphone) will be called simultaneously instead of sequentially. Save your Ring Group entry, click the Red bar to reload Asterisk, and then dial the Ring Group extension number from any phone on your Asterisk system to test it.

Creating an Inbound Route. Now that the cellphone ring group is working, all we need to do is tie this cellphone "extension" to the incoming trunk we set up previously. You do this in freePBX using an Inbound Route. Click Setup->Inbound Routes->Add Incoming Route. Enter the DID Number of your inbound trunk. Then skip down to the Fax Handling section and specify freePBX Default, Fax Detection Type: NVFax, and Pause After Answer: 3. This gives Asterisk time to set up an incoming call without losing any of the voice data. Finally, move down to the Set Destination section of the form and choose Ring Groups and pick the ring group number you set up previously for these calls. Click Submit and then the Red Bar to update Asterisk. Move your new Incoming Route up the list on the right so that it precedes the catch-all inbound route. Finally, test out the system by calling your DID from a phone that’s not on your Asterisk system. Both your cellphone and Asterisk extensions should start ringing. You may notice that the office extensions ring once or twice before the cellphone rings begin. This is a normal delay while your cellphone provider is setting up the inbound cellphone call. You now have a cellphone service in place that will ring your office phones whenever you’re in the office while still permitting you to answer the calls on your cellphone when you’re away. Enjoy!

The Low-Cost Alternatives. Last week, you may recall that we wrestled with a new product, MagicJack, which promises unlimited calling in the U.S. and Canada for under $20 a year. There’s also a $20 USB device you need to plug into a Windows XP or Vista machine to get everything working. After the developers read of our difficulties, they promptly contacted us and sent us a replacement unit. RHIP! That’s short for Reviewing Has Its Privileges! I’m happy to report that we installed the replacement unit without a hitch… in a Windows Vista machine with a patch from the vendor. Still no cigar with the XP machine, even with a powered USB hub which the vendor recommended. We’re still wrestling with it and will let you know when the problems are resolved. If you’re a pioneer and understand the risks, by all means get one. Once we got clean code on a functioning MagicJack, the product worked flawlessly and voice quality on the calls was excellent. Calls were crystal clear. Phones rang when a call arrived, and voicemail picked up when the calls went unanswered. That’s as good as it gets in our book, and you can’t beat the price: under $20 a year for unlimited calling in the U.S. and Canada.

One of the perks of the MagicJack is that you get a free phone number with the product. DIDs currently are limited to a handful of area codes; however, within the next few weeks, you’ll be able to modify your assigned number and choose a local number in any of the 31 largest American cities at no cost. Another scheduled addition to MagicJack is the ability to forward incoming calls to another number when you’re away. So now you see what all of this has to do with today’s article. You could also do much the same thing using Google’s GrandCentral, and it’s not vaporware. But you don’t get the outbound calling option. So, even without an Asterisk server, it’s entirely possible (or will be soon) to manage your cellphone calls solely through a MagicJack for under $20 a year or through GrandCentral for free. And you get unlimited, free outbound calls to anywhere in the U.S. and Canada as an added bonus with MagicJack. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to set up an Asterisk server to manage your cellphone calls, here are a couple of low-cost alternatives that may work for you.

Nerd Vittles Demo Hot Line (courtesy of les.net). You now can take a number of Nerd Vittles projects for a test drive… by phone! The current demos include (1) MailCall for Asterisk with password 1111 (retrieve your email by phone), (2) NewsClips for Asterisk (latest news headlines in dozens of categories), (3) Weather Forecasts by U.S. Airport Code, and (4) Weather Forecasts by U.S. ZIP Code. You’re not prompted for #4 yet, but it does work! Just call our number (shown in the left margin) and take any or all of them for a spin. The sound quality may not be perfect due to performance limitations of our ancient Intel 386 demo machine. But the price is right.

Nerd Vittles Fan Club Map. Thanks for visiting! We hope you’ll take a second and add yourself to our Frappr World Map. In making your entry, you can choose an icon: guy, gal, nerd, or geek. For those that don’t know the difference in the last two, here’s the best definition we’ve found: "a nerd is very similar to a geek, but with more RAM and a faster modem." We’re always looking for the best BBQ joints on the planet. So, if you know of one, add it to the map while you’re visiting as well.

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

"Well, of course, not!" You’re probably like us. Anything with Magic in the name and Free in the advertising usually makes us start scurrying toward the nearest fire exit. Well, not so fast, Tonto. magicJack is a brilliant idea: a $20 USB dongle that plugs into any Windows XP PC. Then for $20 a year, you plug in any garden-variety telephone, and you get unlimited, free calls to any phone in the U.S. and Canada. That’s not quite free, but it’s close enough in our book. Released in April at the TED conference, the device design has just about everything right. And it’s all done with VoIP technology. You get a real telephone number in your favorite area code. You use a real telephone to make calls. And incoming calls can ring on both your regular phone (plugged into the magicJack) AND your cellphone… soon.

The only prerequisite is that you have to have at least your main phone connected through the magicJack to a working Windows XP machine. Vista support is now available but we didn’t test it. With cordless phone systems supporting a dozen extensions, the Windows machine requirement with an attached phone is not much of a drawback for most folks. Let’s just tick off who qualifies as the perfect audience for a device like this. Grandma and grandpa, traveling sales people, teenage girls, schools, nursing homes, summer camps, bars, resort hotels, restaurants, college dorms, rental apartments, those with a second (or third) home, people that travel or live outside the U.S. and Canada that need to make calls back to North America at no cost. Remember, this works anywhere with an XP machine, a phone, and a broadband Internet connection. You can even dispense with the phone and use the included softphone if you desire. And the PC doesn’t have to be a Dell behemoth. It could be a tiny PC about the size of a stack of four CDs. The magicJack itself functions much like a Sipura SPA-1001 analog VoIP adapter with similar call quality except for the attached PC requirement. So now you’ve got the theory down. Let’s unbox the device and put it through some basic tests.

Installation and Setup. The hardest part of installation is getting the magicJack out of its packaging. If you love all those shrink-wrapped toys that cut your hands open when you try to pry them loose from the package, then you’ll really love the magicJack. It’s got two layers of the stuff. But, once you finally free the magicJack from its packaging, you’ll be up and running in under 2 minutes. Plug the cord of a regular telephone into the magicJack. Then plug the magicJack into a USB port on your (functioning) XP machine. It’ll automatically install itself in under a minute. Now reboot your machine. Once your PC comes back to life, unplug the magicJack and then plug it back in again (Bug #1). When prompted, you’ll need to authorize the magicJack to access the Internet through your firewall obviously. Then you’ll be prompted to enter your email address and set up a password. Once completed, you’re good to go. Well, sorta… The PC software, which is always running, is a combination of a softphone, a user interface to the magicJack, and a billboard where magicJack someday plans to host advertising. Now you can appreciate the main reason for the PC requirement. A terminal adapter doesn’t have a screen to display advertising. Of course, you can minimize this one so it’s not much of a distraction unless that functionality should change in coming months.

One Minute of Patience For A Lifetime of Savings. Great motto, but… it’s going to take more than a minute of patience once you get the software installed. We work with all sorts of phones and PBXs for a living so let us sum up the current state of affairs with magicJack: B-U-G-G-Y. The theory and design of the product are right on the money, but the software is just not yet reliable or even stable. We experienced frequent software crashes and glitches both at their end and at ours. Crashes on the Windows desktop require you to remove and reinsert the device. There’s really no other way to restart the device since it runs all the time when your PC is on. One call always seemed to work great in either direction. And the call quality was excellent with no echo. But then it was downhill from there. A surefire way to kill incoming calls was to dial your new number from the phone connected to the magicJack. You’re instructed to do this to reset your voicemail password. But once we did it, no incoming calls arrived until the PC was rebooted. All the calls went directly to voicemail. And that was hit and miss as well. You’d get a typical unavailable message, but then the system would abruptly hang up. And a dozen attempts to call the voicemail system from the device to reset the password all failed with three beeps and then nothing. It took us a while to figure out that this is what was killing inbound calls. This is a little puzzling since it appears they’re using a standard Asterisk® server at least for voicemail. Here was the From address on the email delivery of the voicemail message: Magicjack <voicemail@asterisk>. Another quick way to kill the system was to leave the PC idle for an hour, even without a screensaver. After that, nothing worked. No dialtone. No incoming calls. No softphone functionality.

The interaction between the PC softphone display and the POTS phone also was quirky. Sometimes the softphone would lose track of whether a call had been answered, and this typically killed the ability to receive any further calls. So you’ll want to stay close to your PC because walking around with a cordless phone would give you no clue whether a call had been properly disconnected. And, whatever you do, don’t try the Advanced User option to restart the software. That crashed and trashed just about everything necessitating (yet another) system reboot. If you loved Windows 3.1, then you’ll feel right at home wrestling with this software.

Bottom Line. We actually got the device from a friend with about as many cellphone stores as AT&T. My advice to him went something like this. Let’s give the developers another three months to get the kinks out. Then we’ll test it again before Christmas and see if things have improved. Our bottom line with telephone service is quite simple. When someone calls, the phone had better ring. And, when no one answers, the voicemail had better work. For pioneers, this is a terrific product for experimentation, but we wouldn’t choose it yet if reliable phone service matters. So our current comparison of the magicJack to our Asterisk system would be a no-brainer. We reboot our Asterisk system about once every six months. We rebooted the magicJack about a dozen times in the first hour, and all we were doing was placing less than a handful of test calls. You can click on the screenshot above to visit their web site. Stay tuned!

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

If impressing your friends happens to be your thing, then you'll enjoy watching them all wet their pants today after you show them this little trick. It's been almost two years since we first introduced Bluetooth Proximity Detection to the Asterisk® community. Because we can't seem to get enough programming torture lately, we decided to revisit Follow Me Phoning by taking it to a whole new level with an all-new set of devices. If you're new to all of this, what we're talking about is the ability to stroll out of your home or office and have your telephone calls follow you on your cellphone automatically... without touching anything. And, when you return, the home or office phones start ringing again just as if you never left. Won't your boss or spouse be thrilled? What makes all of this possible, of course, is Bluetooth which happens to be running on your TrixBox/Asterisk server and on your brand new iPhone.

Since our original article, TrixBox has replaced Asterisk@Home as the leading (free) turnkey Asterisk system. freePBX has replaced the Asterisk Management Portal as the best Asterisk shell on the planet. And, of course, the iPhone has blown the cellphone industry out of the water. For long-time readers of our column, you may recall that we whined that the Treo 650 used in the original article was lousy for proximity detection because you always had to turn the display on to activate Bluetooth. It also drained the battery quickly which is probably why Palm left it turned off most of the time. You won't have either of those problems with the iPhone. The iPhone Bluetooth Adapter is always broadcasting away assuming you have turned it on. And we left the iPhone near our Asterisk server for 8 hours with virtually no battery drain on the phone. So, yes, it's damn near perfect for this task... and so many others.

NOTE: This article has been updated. For the current article, click here.

Our plan today is simple enough. We want to design a phone system so that, when you walk into your home or office, the phones ring in the office when there's an incoming call. And, when you walk out of your home or office carrying your iPhone with Bluetooth, calls to your home or office extension ring on your iPhone. If you're using one of our turnkey TrixBox systems at the top of this page, this project should take you about 20 minutes to complete once you have a dLink DBT120 USB Bluetooth Adapter in hand.

System Requirements. As mentioned, you'll need a Linux-based Asterisk server (we're working on Windows and Mac support), and we recommend our turnkey system because it has most of the software you'll need for this project preinstalled. That includes loads of Linux utilities, the Linux Bluetooth software toolkit, freePBX, Asterisk 1.2.x, and WebMin. But any TrixBox server will work. Other than your Asterisk server, the only other hardware you'll need is a dLink DBT120 Bluetooth Adapter. They run $30-$40 from most electronics stores although many retailers put them on sale regularly. CentOS 4.2 and above (used in the TrixBox builds) comes with the Bluetooth software preinstalled. If you're using some other Linux flavor, consult our original article for installation instructions.

DBT120 Bluetooth Adapter Installation. Boot up your Asterisk server if it is not already running and log in as root. Plug the DBT120 into an available USB slot. Now issue the following command:

/etc/init.d/bluetooth restart

You'll probably be told that your system couldn't stop bluetooth (because it wasn't running) and then it'll restart. Now let's make sure everything is running that should be:

/etc/init.d/bluetooth status

You should see messages that look like this:

hcid (pid somenumber) is running ...
sdpd (pid somennumber) is running ...

If you're alerted that some other application isn't running, we don't care. Now let's be sure the system has found your bluetooth adapter:

hcitool dev

Assuming you get a response telling you the system found device hci0 with the MAC address of the adapter, you have successfully installed your DBT120. So it's time to move on.

Configuring Linux Bluetooth Software to Start Automatically. You don't want to have to manually start up your Linux Bluetooth software each time you reboot your server. The easiest way to automatically start it is to use WebMin which comes preinstalled with our TrixBox builds. While logged in as root, make sure WebMin is running:

/etc/webmin/start

Then point your web browser to port 10000 on your Asterisk server: http://192.168.0.108:10000/. When prompted for username and password, type root and the password you assigned the root user on your system. From the Main Screen of WebMin, click the System button and then the Bootup and Shutdown link. Find bluetooth in the list of applications and click on it. The Action Details screen should show that bluetooth is running. Now click the Yes button beside "Start at Boot Time?" and then click the Save button to reconfigure your server. That wasn't hard, was it? Go back to the command prompt on your Asterisk server and stop WebMin by issuing the following command: /etc/webmin/stop. No need to waste processing cycles for a tool we're not using.

Deciphering the MAC Address of Your iPhone Bluetooth Adapter. We're going to be communicating with your iPhone to determine when you're in and when you're out. In order to do that, we need the MAC address of the iPhone Bluetooth Adapter. Here's how to find it. Move your iPhone within 10 feet or so of your Asterisk server. Then put your iPhone in Bluetooth Discovery Mode by choosing Settings, General, Bluetooth from the Main Screen on your phone. Be sure Bluetooth is set to ON. Once you've done that, the iPhone will report that it is Now Discoverable. Put the iPhone down near your Asterisk server. Now jump back to your Asterisk server console and issue the following command. Try it several times until you get the MAC address of your iPhone's Bluetooth Adapter:

hcitool scan

The system will whir away for a few seconds and then will report back the Bluetooth MAC address and name assigned to the adapter. It's probably your name. Write both of them down. We'll need the MAC address in a minute.

[root@asterisk1 ~]# hcitool scan
Scanning ...
    00:1D:64:C9:58:BA      Ward Mundy


Proximity Detection Design. Now we've got all the hardware information we need to make proximity detection work. We'll download the Proximity Detection Software in a minute.But first, sit down with a pencil and write down the other information you'll need to configure the Proximity Detection Software. To make the software as flexibile as possible, we've reworked the code a bit since the original article. With the new code, it's possible to manage multiple extensions of multiple people with multiple iPhones. So what you'll need is the extension numbers of the people that want to use this and the iPhone numbers of those people. For example, you may want to forward extension 200 to 6782345678 and extension 202 to 6783456789. Just make sure that the forwarding numbers are in the correct format for the default outbound dialing rules on your Asterisk server. If your server expects numbers to always begin with a 9 or a 1, be sure to include it in the dial string, or the calls won't be completed when they are forwarded. Obviously, you'll also need the MAC address for each of your iPhone Bluetooth Adapters so just repeat the drill above with each iPhone until you have all of the addresses. Finally, you'll need to assign an 8-character (or less) name to each user. So make yourself a nice little chart:

WARD 00:1D:64:C9:58:BA 200 6782345678
MARY 00:2D:54:C9:59:AB 201 6783456789


Today's installment assumes you are using a single Asterisk server both for your phone system AND proximity detection. We're still working on a multi-server solution. The only drawback with the current design is that the iPhones need to be placed close to that server when you arrive at your home or office. You can experiment on the distance the iPhones can be away from the server. Different Bluetooth adapters and iPhones have slightly different ranges. The bottom line is you always want to leave the iPhones close enough to the server with the Bluetooth adapter so that the proximity detection works reliably all the time. And, yes, we know it would be nice to be able to do all of this using a VMware or Parallels build of TrixBox running on a Windows or Mac desktop. Then you could detect the iPhone at the actual desktop where you hang out most of the time. We're working on it, but we just couldn't get it done for today's article. Stay tuned!

Proximity Detection Software Installation. All that remains to be done is to download and configure the proximity detection script and then put it in motion on your Linux machine. Log into your Asterisk server as root and move to the /root directory to download and unzip the script:

cd /root
wget http://nerdvittles.com/trixbox123/proximity.zip
unzip proximity.zip
chmod +x proximity

If you're going to be setting up proximity detection for multiple people, just make copies of the proximity script, e.g. cp proximity proximity1. Then edit each of the scripts and fill in the data from the little chart you made: nano -w proximity

deviceuser=WARD
devicemac=00:4B:63:D5:62:AB
myextension=200
mycellphone=6783456789

Save your changes and exit the editor: Ctrl-X, Y, then Enter.

Setting Up the Crontab Jobs. The last step is to set up a crontab entry for each script so that it gets run once a minute during whatever hours each day you want to monitor your iPhone. While still logged in as root, edit /etc/crontab: nano -w /etc/crontab. Insert a line like the following at the bottom of the existing file. This code would monitor your iPhone from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day. To monitor your phone 24 hours a day, replace 6-21 with an additional asterisk.

* 6-21 * * * root /root/proximity > /dev/null

Save your changes and exit the editor: Ctrl-X, Y, then Enter. Repeat the drill for the other phones you want to monitor substituting the correct script names, and you're done.

Incidentally, if you ever want to disable the Proximity Detection System, just edit the crontab file and comment out the lines you want to disable by inserting # at the beginning of the line(s). If it happens that your calls are still being forwarded to your iPhone, you can cancel the forwarding from any Asterisk extension by dialing *74. Enjoy!

Nerd Vittles Demo Hot Line (courtesy of les.net). You now can take a number of Nerd Vittles projects for a test drive... by phone! The current demos include (1) MailCall for Asterisk with password 1111 (retrieve your email by phone), (2) NewsClips for Asterisk (latest news headlines in dozens of categories), (3) Weather Forecasts by U.S. Airport Code, and (4) Weather Forecasts by U.S. ZIP Code. You're not prompted for #4 yet, but it does work! Just call our number (shown in the left margin) and take any or all of them for a spin. The sound quality may not be perfect due to performance limitations of our ancient Intel 386 demo machine. But the price is right.

Nerd Vittles Fan Club Map. Thanks for visiting! We hope you'll take a second and add yourself to our Frappr World Map. In making your entry, you can choose an icon: guy, gal, nerd, or geek. For those that don't know the difference in the last two, here's the best definition we've found: "a nerd is very similar to a geek, but with more RAM and a faster modem." We're always looking for the best BBQ joints on the planet. So, if you know of one, add it to the map while you're visiting as well.

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest...

Last week Sprint announced the availability (beginning today!) of a new add-on for existing and new Sprint cellphone customers. For $5 more a month and a little Yankee ingenuity, you now can make unlimited FREE calls between your Sprint cellphone (or multiple PCS phones if you’re on a shared plan) and your residential phone number regardless of the wireline carrier. In short, your home phone service need not be with Sprint. If you have Sprint home phone service, then the new PCS to Home service will be free. In either case, no cellphone minutes will be assessed for inbound (read comments!) or outbound calls between your Sprint cellphone and your home number … ever. In fact, they’ll show up on your statement as PCS-to-PCS calls which are also free.

For Sprint business customers with a business plan of $50 or higher a month (that’s easy!), you can do the same thing with your business landline for $8 a month instead of $5. Later this year Sprint reportedly will offer business customers the opportunity to expand the plan to up to 30,000 business DID’s. Here’s a link to Sprint’s web site with a comprehensive FAQ and details on how to order the new PCS to Home service. Be aware that this is a new Sprint feature, and you now know more about it than most Sprint reps … so let the torture begin. The first rep we got indicated that it was $5 per PCS phone even on residential shared calling plans. The FAQ on the web site says otherwise, and you’ll probably need to walk them through it or ask for a supervisor.

You might be asking what all this has to do with Asterisk®. Well, plenty! Some of our regular readers no doubt have already figured it all out. For the neophytes, here’s today’s lesson. Connect your home phone line to your Asterisk server with a Sipura SPA-3000 (click here for our tutorial on how to do it). Better yet, switch your home phone line to a VoIP BYOD Plan (see below) and save a bundle. Next, add a little code (which we’ll get to shortly) to extensions_custom.conf to answer incoming calls from your cellphone to your PSTN line, provide DISA dialtone to make an outbound call, and PRESTO! You now can phone home with your Sprint cellphone by pressing a single pre-programmed button on your phone and make outbound calls to anywhere in the U.S. through your home VoIP service without eating up a single cellphone minute on your plan. Your Asterisk system will answer on the first ring and give you dialtone to make the call. It’s that easy!

Sprint PCS Residential Plan Costs. Here’s the math. A basic Sprint cellphone plan: $35. Sprint to Home service: $5. TelaSIP’s unlimited US48 VoIP calls: $15 a month. Home phone number transferred to BYOD plan at BroadVoice (here’s how) or AxVoice (here’s how) for unlimited incoming calls: $9. Unlimited nationwide Sprint cellphone calls: Priceless … and FREE. Total cost for residential home and cellphone service with unlimited nationwide calling: $64 a month plus about $4 in Sprint add-on fees. Remember this gets you unlimited nationwide calling BOTH from your cellphone and your home phones. And you can convert the BroadVoice BYOD plan to an all-purpose second line within your entire state for $4 more a month. This also provides some redundancy when one of your VoIP providers has problems. It happens! — Forrest Gump

Sprint PCS Business Plan Costs. A basic Sprint PCS business plan cellphone: $50. Sprint to Home Office service: $8. Penny-a-minute calls through voxee.com. Unlimited nationwide Sprint cellphone calls: 1.1¢ per minute. Local business line from Ma Bell Jr.: $50. Total cost: $108 a month plus tip and taxes and 1.1¢ per minute in 6-second billing increments.

It’s Not the NFL, But There Is A $25 Signing Bonus. So today your mission is to sign up for a Sprint PCS phone if you don’t already have one. Then sign up for the new PCS to Home service. Now we’ll show you how to hook everything up and begin enjoying unlimited cellphone calls with no per minute charges … ever. Just do us both a favor. If you sign up for new Sprint service, email us your new Sprint phone number the day after your service is activated. With Sprint’s Referral Program, we’ll both receive a free $25 debit card. Doesn’t get much easier than that to earn free bucks. And, if you tell us, we’ll keep your email address on file and pass along other user’s phone numbers for you to claim some referral credits if there are sufficient new subscribers to pass around once we exhaust our authorized dozen referrals for the year. Can’t help it. WE LOVE SPIFFS!

Prerequisites. Before we get started, here’s what you should have already done. Yes, you need a Sprint PCS phone with PCS to Home service. And we’re assuming you’ve already set up your Asterisk@Home server with an SPA-3000 connecting your home phone line as well as a working VoIP trunk (SIP or IAX2) from TelaSIP or some other provider. TelaSIP setup instructions are available here. Instead of an SPA-3000, you can use a $10-$20 OEM version of Digium’s WildCard X100P PCI card to connect your home PSTN line, but read this first. You get what you pay for!

Overview. Our Asterisk design to get this working goes like this. We’ll create a custom-disa context to manage our incoming calls from the Sprint cellphone. Then we’ll intercept all of your incoming calls and route them to this context to check and see if it’s a call from your Sprint cellphone. If it is, we’ll use a dialplan with the specific Sprint phone number to activate DISA and a dialtone for the caller. If it isn’t a call from your Sprint cellphone, we’ll pass it on to your default Incoming Call dialplan. If you’re using our Stealth AutoAttendant, you’d basically route calls which aren’t from your Sprint cellphone to the autoattendant. Otherwise, you let the custom-disa context process the call.

Building the custom-disa Dialplan. Using the Asterisk Management Panel (AMP) from your web browser pointed to the IP address of your Asterisk server, choose AMP->Maintenance->Config Edit->extensions_custom. Move to the bottom of the file and insert the following code:

[custom-disa]
exten => 6781234567,1,Answer
exten => 6781234567,2,Wait(1)
exten => 6781234567,3,Authenticate(123)
exten => 6781234567,4,DISA(no-password|from-internal)
exten => i,1,Goto(from-pstn-timecheck,s,1)

Replace 6781234567 in each of the four lines above with your Sprint phone number. If the little Mrs. has a Sprint phone, too, duplicate the first four lines and enter the next Sprint phone number for each of the four lines you added. Then renumber all of the lines so that they’re unique, i.e. 1,2,3,4 becomes 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. Replace the 123 password in each of the Authenticate lines with whatever you wish to use. Remember that it’s very easy to spoof CallerID numbers so you probably do want a password so you don’t sell the farm. If you prefer to live dangerously, delete the Authenticate lines and renumber. IT’S YOUR PHONE BILL! If you take out the Authenticate line, then you’ll get an immediate dialtone whenever you phone home from your Sprint cellphone. The exten=>i entry in the dialplan handles all the incoming calls that don’t match any Sprint phone number that you’ve entered in this context. So, if someone calls you from the White House (2024561414), the i entry in the custom-disa dialplan would process the call and send G.W. to your standard Incoming Calls context. Save your entries when you finish by clicking the Update button.

Rerouting Incoming Calls to custom-disa. There are two places we need to adjust to reroute incoming calls to the custom-disa context we just built. Using AMP again, edit the from-sip-external context in the extensions.conf file: AMP->Maintenance->Config Edit->extensions.conf->from-sip-external. Comment out all the existing lines with a leading semicolon. Now add the following new line and then click the Update button:

exten => _X.,1,Goto(custom-disa,${CALLERIDNUM},1)

Now edit or create an Incoming Route for your home phone number using your real number instead of 6781234567: AMP->Setup->Inbound Routing. Click the Submit Changes button when you finish and then click the Red Bar to reload Asterisk.

Testing Our Masterpiece. We need to make two calls to be sure things are working properly. First, store your home phone number in your Sprint cellphone so you can push one button to phone home. Now place a call to your home phone number from your Sprint cell phone. When prompted for your password, enter it and then make your first free call. Second, place a call to your home phone number from some other phone that is not specified in [custom-disa]. This call will be routed to your default incoming call handler or autoattendant. Enjoy!

Free Samples. Everybody loves free samples. Not sure about TelaSIP, you say. Well, take it for a test drive. Just call our Charleston number (shown in the inset) and wait for the fast busy to hang up. There’s no charge for the call because you’re never "connected." Within 15 seconds you’ll get a return call allowing you to make a FREE 10-minute phone call to almost anywhere in the U.S. All you have to do is key in the password you’re provided when you answer the return call. Keep in mind a few things. You have to call from a phone with CallerID so that we know where to call you back. Both legs of the call (to you and to the person you call) use GSM compression so you’re seeing TelaSIP at its most efficient but not necessarily with the best voice quality. You can set it differently on your own system if you like. And one final note. TelaSIP’s web site doesn’t rate as the fanciest on the planet, but they do have great VoIP phone service at rock bottom prices. And that’s what this drill is all about. But, if you’re still not sold on TelaSIP, check out our other VoIP Provider Reviews.

Quick Tip. Here’s a final little trick. When you set up your TelaSIP account, tell Gene that you’d like your account set up on gw4.telasip.com so that you can only make calls in the 48 states covered by the free unlimited plan. That’s the way the One Ringy-Dingy service works. Once this is done, it’s pretty safe to remove the password from the DISA script which saves some dialing when making outbound calls from your cellphone. Then it’s just a matter of watching your call logs (AMP->Reports) regularly to make sure no one is spoofing your CallerID number to take advantage of free calling from your server. In short, free calls won’t hurt you financially, and it will take a pretty bright creep to figure out your cellphone number, your home phone number, and to know that you’ve got Asterisk configured to do this in the first place. HINT: Don’t brag about it! In reviewing the logs, if you see someone is spoofing your CallerID number and regularly making calls to places you don’t recognize, then you can always reinstate the DISA password step in your dialplan.

A Word About Web Hosting Providers. You’ve no doubt seen the BlueHost ads on our site lately. And, as many of you know, we don’t advertise things we don’t believe in. We switched hosting providers for Nerd Vittles about a month ago. So let me just say BlueHost Rocks! If you’ve ever thought about building your own web site either for your business or for your family, do it right with the very best tools, servers, bandwidth, and price. BlueHost has all of that plus a special ingredient that really sets them apart: nice people. Read their ad if you want technical details. But let us save you hundreds of hours and hundreds of dollars comparing literally thousands of providers hoping to find just the right one. You can’t and won’t go wrong with BlueHost. Yes, we’ll be living it up Friday night if you sign up through our spiffy ad links. But, if vendor commissions bother you, go to their web site and sign up directly. It won’t hurt our feelings a bit. They’re that good! And you can get every dime back within 30 days if you’re not a happy camper. They say that professionalism is contagious in an organization. Have a look at the BlueHost CEO’s blog, sign up, and judge for yourself. You won’t be sorry.

Another Move in the Works. Not to bore you with personal stuff, but … we had so much fun moving Nerd Vittles last month that we’ve decided to move the entire Mundy clan to the Charleston, South Carolina area. As a former Army brat, I was accustomed to annual moves, but we’ve called Atlanta home since the dawn of the PC era 25 years ago. So this one’s a little tougher. But the move gets us closer to my big girls, a great school for our little girl, an hour from the beach house, and an incredible neighborhood that was built the way all neighborhoods should be. Between now and June 1, we have three home closings and lots of packing and downsizing to do. And the Nerd Vittles articles may become (more) sporadic for a bit. But hang in there. We’ll keep our sense of humor, and one day soon everything will get back to normal … whatever that is.

Nerd Vittles User Map. Nerd Vittles now supports well over 5,000 visitors a day. Two-thirds of you still use Windows. Try this! Over 1,000 a day find us in a Google search result. And about a third of you hang around for over an hour each visit. Wow! Who woulda thunk Asterisk and little Nerd Vittles could grow this big this fast. THANKS for visiting! We hope you’ll take a second and add yourself to our Frappr World Map compliments of Google. Australians and New Zealanders, don’t be shy! In making your entry, you can choose an icon: guy, gal, nerd, or geek. For those that don’t know the difference in the last two, here’s the best definition we’ve found: "a nerd is very similar to a geek, but with more RAM and a faster modem." The map still isn’t quite representative of where all of our visitors are coming from, but we’re getting there. Give it another week or two. Finally, we’re always looking for the best BBQ joints on the planet. So, if you know of one, add it to the map while you’re visiting as well. We’ll check it out one of these days.

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…