Skype: Dealing with poor phone reception at home.
Unfortunately for me, my Samsung Omnia 7 has terrible reception where my desk is located at home (I work from home a lot so this is important). Strangely it doesn’t seem to be purely a tower coverage issue as my wife’s iPhone works pretty well without any signal strength problems.
Anyway, until I get my next phone, I thought I might try out a Skype Online Number. So here is what I have done:
- Get a Skype Online Number at $80 per annum.
- Set-up call forward on my phone for missed and busy calls, redirecting to that number.
- Set-up voicemail on Skype.
- Set-up caller ID for outbound calls from Skype so it looks like it comes from my mobile.
My next step is to get a decent Skype handset/headset for home. Ideally something that will work of a wireless connection, or off our living room PC which is almost always on.
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Hardware for Skype is a little thin on the ground (and many require a PC to be on) compared to SIP-based services (Pennytel, MyNetFone etc), but the upside is that Skype is much more tenacious in getting through firewalls (not so useful when at home, but more useful when you want to use it more broadly).
I’d probably lean towards hardware like http://club.dealextreme.com/forums/Forums.dx/threadid.941260 (so you can plug a standard cordless phone into it). http://club.dealextreme.com/forums/Forums.dx/threadid.581461 would be OK, but you are locked into that specific phone.
An alternative is something like http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/RTX-Dualphone-3088-Landline-Skype-Cordless-Phone-AUS-/110788646317?pt=AU_Networking&hash=item19cb8495ad#ht_1766wt_1139 – these devices are pretty rare, but allow a single phone to work for both Skype and landline calls. It is the Skype equivalent of devices like https://www.mynetfone.com.au/portal/buynow/ShopFront.action?kitId=C470IP-REG .
Matthew Wills
December 8, 2011 at 5:36 am
Doesn’t your Omnia have Skype installed? Why not just sign in to Skype on your phone and then you’ll get two goes at answering on a mobile handset
Andrew Harcourt
December 8, 2011 at 2:39 pm
Hi Andrew,
I’ve got a Windows Phone 7 device (Samsung Omnia 7). Skype doesn’t appear to be available yet, but it is coming.
Mitch Denny
December 8, 2011 at 11:50 pm
Thanks for the pointers Matthew! Appreciate it. I’ll check those out.
Mitch Denny
December 8, 2011 at 11:50 pm