I recently received some help in the help forum, so, in the interest of giving back, here are some tips on international travel utilizing freepbx and local prepaid SIM cards.
First, before you leave, you might want to identify the local prepaid SIM you will purchase at your destination. www.prepaidgsm.net is very good for this, they have listings of prepaid SIM offerings in many countries around the world. This site is very helpful especially because the mobile provider websites tend to be in the local language only.
Many places in Europe have SIM cards with very favorable international rates for calling back to your home country. For example, in Germany, the Ortel card (http://www.ortelmobile.de/index.php?lng_id=EN) offers calls to the US for 9 Euro cents per minute with a 15 cent per call charge. The Lebara company has similar deals from other countries in Europe (e.g., see http://www.lebara-mobile.nl/en/).
Incoming call in most countries outside the US are free to the mobile phone owner (assuming you have a local SIM and are not roaming) and do not decrement your balance, which is why calls to mobiles outside the US are more expensive than calls to landlines.
If you want to allow people from your home country to call you for free, you can get a local DID in your home country, or even have an option in your IVR. Then, have a ring group, and in the extension list for the ring group put in your mobile phone number followed by a # which tell freepbx to call a number outside your system. The incoming call will forward to your mobile based upon the outbound route dialling rules you have set up in freepbx.
That's the basic info, some refinements follow.
If you check the box for "confirm call" in the ring group, then the call will come into the mobile, and you will have the option of hitting 1 to accept the call, or 3 to have the caller ID read to you. This is useful because frequently the caller ID info is not passed on the international call. I also like this system because if I do not answer, the call does not go to the mobile voicemail, but instead it goes to a voicemail box that I have set up in freepbx. I then have the pager notification send an SMS to my international mobile using www.bulksms.com. This also means that you don't have to figure out how to set up the voicemail on the foreign SIM which can be difficult if it is not in English.
Finally, I have found that www.poivy.com has some very cheap rates for calls to mobile phones in many countries so I usually route the calls from freepbx to the mobile utilizing that service.
Oh, one more thing - you can use the pager notification and www.bulksms.com to receive notifications when you have voicemails in other voicemail boxes that you want to check in your home system.
First, before you leave, you might want to identify the local prepaid SIM you will purchase at your destination. www.prepaidgsm.net is very good for this, they have listings of prepaid SIM offerings in many countries around the world. This site is very helpful especially because the mobile provider websites tend to be in the local language only.
Many places in Europe have SIM cards with very favorable international rates for calling back to your home country. For example, in Germany, the Ortel card (http://www.ortelmobile.de/index.php?lng_id=EN) offers calls to the US for 9 Euro cents per minute with a 15 cent per call charge. The Lebara company has similar deals from other countries in Europe (e.g., see http://www.lebara-mobile.nl/en/).
Incoming call in most countries outside the US are free to the mobile phone owner (assuming you have a local SIM and are not roaming) and do not decrement your balance, which is why calls to mobiles outside the US are more expensive than calls to landlines.
If you want to allow people from your home country to call you for free, you can get a local DID in your home country, or even have an option in your IVR. Then, have a ring group, and in the extension list for the ring group put in your mobile phone number followed by a # which tell freepbx to call a number outside your system. The incoming call will forward to your mobile based upon the outbound route dialling rules you have set up in freepbx.
That's the basic info, some refinements follow.
If you check the box for "confirm call" in the ring group, then the call will come into the mobile, and you will have the option of hitting 1 to accept the call, or 3 to have the caller ID read to you. This is useful because frequently the caller ID info is not passed on the international call. I also like this system because if I do not answer, the call does not go to the mobile voicemail, but instead it goes to a voicemail box that I have set up in freepbx. I then have the pager notification send an SMS to my international mobile using www.bulksms.com. This also means that you don't have to figure out how to set up the voicemail on the foreign SIM which can be difficult if it is not in English.
Finally, I have found that www.poivy.com has some very cheap rates for calls to mobile phones in many countries so I usually route the calls from freepbx to the mobile utilizing that service.
Oh, one more thing - you can use the pager notification and www.bulksms.com to receive notifications when you have voicemails in other voicemail boxes that you want to check in your home system.
Phone System 