PhoneGnome Links with Grand Central
I previously poo-pooed GrandCentral, but when I had read in PhoneGnome's blog that PhoneGnome could interface with GrandCentral, I figured I'd give it a try. It sort of eliminated the excuse I had: one more phone number.
On the PhoneGnome side, they do a couple of things: turn your "Find-me, Follow-me" feature into a simple web-based Call Forwarding–something PhoneGnome should expose as a feature anyway. Second, you get a second SIP URL that does not get call forwarded–something PhoneGnome could also easily expose as a feature. The third thing they do is take what looks like a number from IPKall and have it point at your "non-forwarded" SIP URL. They also provide you instructions for configuring Grand Central to use this new phone number.
I will say this, the PhoneGnome people really seem to get it. They will allow me to interface my PSTN line with anyone and everyone. For $100 or so for the PhoneGnome and some VoIP minutes from Voxee from time to time, I am definitely getting more than my money's worth here.
One problem that GrandCentral has is that they currently only allow inward interfacing through the PSTN. This means that inbound calls to your PhoneGnome number will use VoIP minutes from your PhoneGnome-registered ITSP. It raises the cost of having GrandCentral in this configuration as a result.
One problem on the PhoneGnome side is that calls that come into my PSTN line and then are redirected to GrandCentral and "come back" to the landline handset are going back and forth over the Internet.
More on this topic a little later after I've had more time to play with it, but I think I can see why Andy and some others like it so much.
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Comment by Remy
If you have to pay for call forwarding, why not just forward your landline to your Grand Central number especially if you can get a Grand Central number in your local area code? I think this is partly the Grand Central business model as they will make money sharing the interconnect fees with their DID carriers on all these inbound calls to these Grand Central numbers. From my perspective Grand Central is ideal for mobile phone users. We are going to test a setup with Phonegnome, (Tellme Dialtone 2.0, Grand Central and a FX-300 GSM Call Director. The goal is to have voice dialing, virtual receptionist, on your mobile phone all for free (or a small fee for the Tellme service) including free calling time on your mobile for all your inbound and outbound calls.