FYI Any Google Account As An Outgoing Trunk

[Jay Deal]

Maybe this was already known in these circles but it was news to me, I just read somewhere else that you can use a Google account to make calls without needing to have a Google Voice DID. So with that, you can use it as an outgoing trunk in FreePBX. This is for outgoing only so you will have to make up a DID for routing purposes. The outgoing CID will be whatever Google makes it. This ability may be related to the new Hangouts integration into Android and with that the need to no longer forward calls to any number at all. I tested this with two accounts without GV DID's and they both connected and made test calls. YMMV but hopefully works for you.

Edit: The CNAM you will receive for calls made from you Google acct (without a GV DID) will come with a CNAM of "Google Guy". WTFTMs. Tell all your friends.

 

[w1ve]

How do you configure a trunk to make this work in PIAF?

 

[Jay Deal]

I setup a GV (motif) trunk as you normally would using a Google account without a GV DID. For the account I created, I used a dummy GV number of 1235551212. It connected to the Google servers as usual. I then setup an outgoing route that matched the dummy CID so that it used the motif trunk. It was that simple.

Now that I think about this more, I would think that this ability is related to the fact that a motif trunk uses XMPP Google chat / talk protocol and I believe you have always been able to make a Google Voice call (without a GV DID) from a chat or talk client or in Gmail. Like I said, it may not be a new discovery but it was news to me. And this will probably go away once Google shuts XMPP down.