Those of you who have phone reception during work may be reaping the benefits of Google Voice. One of the shortcomings of distributing your Voice number, however, is that outgoing calls from your cellphone or office still display the number in use. That is thoroughly confusing for your clients, especially if they save your “outgoing number” on their caller id’s. To avoid this issue, Voice has an outgoing calling option that requires you to dial your Voice number, and enter it through a menuing system. This is the same procedure for using its international dialing service, which is relatively inexpensive.
Fortunately for smartphone users (a la Blackberry, iPhone, and Android), Google has a suite of applications for Voice that use your data line, saving your monthly minutes. After you download the app, using it is self explanatory.
For those still stuck on a voice-only cellular plan, there is still an option with outgoing calls via Voice. As I can recall from my limited phreaking knowledge, voice lines all have a pause signal that you can deliver to the telephone stream. This can be invoked to automate your responses through a menu. Depending on the model of your phone, this pause signal can be represented by a number of symbols which may include the following:
- comma: “,”
- pause: “P”
- asterisk: “*”
- plus: “+”
My Samsung flip-phone has a dedicated pause signal that is invoked from the plus key when held for 1 second. With the pause signal in mind, dialing out with Voice is simple, albeit slightly slower with so many keystrokes.
For instance, to dial out Andrew via Voice, I program this into my address book:
XXX-XXX-XXXX P YYYY P 2 ZZZ-ZZZ-ZZZZ
“X” is my Voice number. “Y” is my PIN. The number ’2′ is the option to dial out via Voice. “Z” is Andrew’s number. The pauses are spaced out so as needed so that your keystrokes are registered. I’ve discovered that I do not need to deliver a pause signal after the ’2′ option. Again, no spaces are needed.
The entire process takes about 3 seconds to make the connection, but it is a reliable work-around for those of you without a data plan.
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