Internet Phone Secrets

By Paul Jenkins

Despite the current downturn – causing people to slip into anxiousness about the present and future, there are many things to be optimistic about . One of the most exciting is the freedom that recent changes in technology have enabled .

Many of these changes have made it possible to be more footloose and fancy free – or to live the vagabond lifestyle, as I like to call it.

1. Cloud Computing

Even for the little person, all documents can now be easily stored for free on-line with Google Docs, and there are other cheap on-line storage facilities. This way you don’t even have to keep them on your hard drive if you don’t want to. The days of carrying around important documents or storing them in some old filing cabinet are long gone.

2. Cheap Computers

The loss of a computer for whatever reason and for all practical purposes, for the average user is in the range of hundreds of dollars. A few years ago it was likely in the thousands. This means if someone rips you off, your computer crashes, or whatever else – it is no longer a huge catastrophe. You can walk into a big box store (and these have proliferated globally), and pick yourself up a replacement. Then you can get your backups off a cheap usb memory stick, hard drive, or the web with a backup system – and you are back up and running within 24 hours.

3. Portable Entertainment Systems

Nowadays, the list of stuff that your laptop and even your smart phone can do for you means that in many cases you are carrying your own entertainment systems with you. Listening to music, renting DVD’s or better yet downloading them – you name it – entertainment options are becoming more and more accessible. You can set up a Slingbox at home and have access to your home’s cable system anywhere. And in addition you can travel with an HD TV tuner that’s the size of an oversized matchbook if you are in a country where you speak the language. And of course there is always YouTube for when you can’t find anything else on. I never feel the loss of entertainment options. Just a decade ago, when you were living abroad you had to make friends in the neighborhood, spend time at DVD rental places, in short get out of your bubble. But these days, with online access to your favorite newspapers and periodicals and the ability to download a book to your favorite reader in a minute – you can stay in your cultural rut just like you never left your bedroom at home! Of course you should get out there and live, but it’s always good to know that you have options.

4. Easy, Accessible and Cheap Printing

The one thing I don’t carry for obvious reasons is a printer. First, if I want to print something from my computer, I now generally print it to PDF for free. Then if I really need a physical copy – I go to an internet cafe. If you need to print something substantial, you can buy super cheap printers almost everywhere. In fact, they are so cheap nowadays that the cartridges cost more and so you won’t feel bad abandoning them. Better yet you can sell it or give it away – e.g. to your landlord or whoever else. Many people are still locked into the way of thinking that physical stuff is worth something.

5. Easy to Stay in Touch

Not only can you stay updated with what’s going on in the world, but you can also keep in touch with loved ones or even business associates for that matter. The Internet brought us email, making it faster to communicate with people, and of course now we even have online social network groups that bring people together. Cell phones made it easier for people to talk on the go. But now, even cheaper than cell phones we have internet phones. Wherever you have an internet connection you can have an internet phone.

I can think of so many uses to have a real phone ring with a local number no matter where in the world you are. Can you? Could you take a mini-sabbatical? Could you take care of business better by having your phone ring anywhere? Are you a traveller or a person that likes to live part-time in another place or country?

If you have been doing this, maybe you’ve already been using VoIP or internet telephone technology. But let me ask you this – does your provider let you install the software on your own devices so that you can have a regular phone ring or use it from a soft-phone (software telephone) on your computer? Or does your provider let you install the software on your smart phone – iPhone or Android phone – and is the sound quality always good? If it isn’t, do you know the factors to make it good?

Not quite a Vagabond?

Maybe you aren’t at the stage of life to be a vagabond. Maybe you are happy in your home, at your cottage, and with your routine. But still there are so many opportunities to use the liberation of internet phones. Whether you work from home a day a week and want to be able to answer your home phone at Starbucks. Whether you want to answer your home phone from the cottage so your boss thinks that you are as miserable as he is (while you bask in the sunshine). Whether you are self-employed and need to be available by telephone to your customers. Or whether you want just want a number where you can cheaply and easily reach your loved ones. For whatever reason, with an internet phone you can keep your personal and business affairs humming along, wherever you are.

Question
My husband and I have been planning to go to Portugal for a couple of months. My husband is a graphic artist so he can work from anywhere. He has had the same business number for the last 20 years and we are hesitant to switch it over to an internet phone as we have concerns about reliability – what if we get to Portugal and the sound quality is so bad that we can’t use it to make calls? We’re also concerned about the 911 issues.

B.R
Toronto, ON

It’s Always Wise To Be Cautious.
These are great questions and a lot of people have them. First of all, I think your caution is wise as this is a business number and your livelihood depends on it (indeed I have a caution in my book in the disclaimer about the potential of loss in porting business numbers – although this is mostly to cover myself legally – most line number transfers are fine).

I Don’t Recommend Porting Your Number Across Just For A Couple Of Months.
If it were me, I wouldn’t transfer a phone number over to a VoIP number for just a couple of months. There are still a few ways to use the power of internet phones and save tons of money without risk. I’ll get to those in a second.

My best guess of whether your internet phone will sound good in Portugal – 3G will probably be fine.
You may not want to waste too much time without having a rough idea of whether this is going to work for you. If you are going to use the 3g network for your smartphone – it probably will. Most people are able to make it work. Although the initial delay makes it a bit funky at the beginning, so you may want to read my blog about hesitating when first greeting someone.

For A Solid Business Line, Direct Access To The Modem Is A Prerequisite.
As far as high-speed goes, you really should have control of your internet – because this is an important line as your livelihood depends on it. If you were sharing an internet connection, things might be fine for casual long distance conversations or the occasional business one, but if you need rock-solid connections you are really going to need to control the network (have direct access to the modem). And if it is a funky connection – aka lousy bandwidth, you’ll need a specialized router (I go into this in some detail in the ebook) that also manages phone calls. If you can get internet as fast as we get here in North America, then a different type of router is in order a consumer wireless router that has special functionality built in – QoS. These day’s most electronics’ power adapters handle all power sources around the globe (100- 240v) so all you will probably need is a special wall plug adapter.

Every Internet Phone’s Enemy – Latency And How To Test For It.
Use www.dslreports.com’s excellent smokeping tool to test for latency.The real problem that everyone faces these days is latency – delays. This has been getting worse recently. The best way to test for this is to get an IP address of someone in the place you are going to visit and ping it continuously for a couple of days using www.dslreports.com’s excellent smokeping tool. This will tell you how bad or good your connection is. How to get an ip address? Well the easy answer is to get someone living there to go to www.whatismyip.com and read to you the big numbers that they see in front of them.I am about to release a post about my experiences using this in Toronto and why my internet connection in Toronto will never make for a stable internet phone platform.

There are two ways to use Internet Phones without porting your number to an internet phone.
So here are the two ways of using internet phones without even disconnecting your business number, if it is just going to be for a couple of months:

Set up a local internet phone number and forward your present business line to it while you are gone.
The first is to get an internet phone line in the same area code (not long distance) from your first phone number. And then forward your regular phone number to it. And set that line up either on a hard internet phone or on a smartphone.

Use the internet as a free extension cord.
This is a more geeky way – you can set up a device at your office so that when your phone rings there it also turns your call into an extension cord and then you set up another device or set up your smartphone to receive the call. This, apart from the set up equipment is free. I am including this set up in my upcoming eBook, More Internet Phone Tricks, but if you want it now, I’ll be happy to forward this section to you. It is not that hard but it is a little more complicated than other setups.The main benefits of going this way, is to save on the forwarding costs that you may have to pay your business line provider and to be able to use your business number for your caller id (when you are in Portugal, you phone through your business line which remains set up in Canada).

There will be travel in your future.
Swami Paul looks into the big crystal ball and sees…you will become addicted to living around the globe as digital nomads or even the more reviled… internet vagabonds. You will become the secret envy of all people yearning for travel and excitement. They’ll envy you wishing that they too could throw caution to the wind, envious of your ability to geo-arbitrage, and ignoring the hard work, stress, and dedication that goes with it. Hey don’t tell them about the hard stuff – keep the myth alive.That being said, if you start pursuing the digital nomadic lifestyle even if it is going to be for just part of the year – you are probably going to want to transfer your number and here is some info on how to do that.

All Service Providers Must Surrender Your Phone Number.
In the US and Canada it is basically against the law for the present holder of your number (cell, internet, landline number) to not allow your next service provider take it. This doesn’t mean it is a high priority for them, but they generally treat you right because nobody needs another enemy and hey, you may even come back to them someday.

Check to see if the company will take your present phone number and has experience with your present company.
I would also check to make sure that your next phone service provider will take it and hopefully has some experience porting over from that service provider. The only problem is that the number can get lost in the bureaucratic shuffle, and both sides will blame the other. There are horror stories on the internet of the number being lost for a couple of months and the worst I am personally familiar with was 3 weeks – but that was years ago. Of course, if it happens to you, inform your regulatory enforcement agency – they record all these complaints. But generally I guess it will happen within a 48 hour window and not cause you too much down time, but I still don’t recommend it just for a couple of months.

There are strategies if things get delayed in the port and they are in the eBook.
There are strategies of what to do if things go poorly in my eBook. Every problem is an opportunity and there are ways to turn this problem into an excuse to contact customers – which may not be a bad thing to do, if you are going away for a while anyway – freshen up the relationship.

The 911 (really 112) Issue.
112 is the emergency phone number for Europe and according to the European Commission 112 can be used from any cell even those not registered. So, I would forget 911 when I am there and take or buy an old cell for emergencies. Here is a link to the EC’s faq on 112 on Portugal http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/112/ms/pt/index_en.htm

You can always go back.
I don’t think it should come to this, but as a business person you should always be aware of the worst case scenario and have a fall-back position. So here is one: you can always transfer your internet phone number back to a regular business phone line again. Another option would be to forward your internet phone to a regular phone (for free this time because call forwarding is free with internet phones) if you are temporarily living in a place without a decent internet connection but you have a good phone line (or cell phone).

Summary and Conclusion
Use smokeping to see if you stand a decent chance of making your internet phone work before you arrive in the country. 911 or 112 isn’t much of an issue – don’t count on your North American number to work at all using 911, but rather count on your cell (just remember to keep it charged). Don’t port your number to an internet number for just a couple of months, but forward the number to your new internet phone number. If you decide to make a go of living in different places maybe it is time to consider porting the number over. And it is better to do this while you are in town in order to facilitate any problems, but I am probably paranoid, as well as I recommend that you be.

In Part 2, I’ll cover specific recommendations, like hardware, software, and service providers…

Connectify is either a great lifesaver; a piece of free software that will enable you to have solid WiFi in problematic places and save you tortured disconnects and weak coverage, or it’s completely useless for you because you have no network problems. However, even if it is useless right now, tuck it away as part of your mental toolkit in case you ever run into problems in the future.

Connectify Can Turn Your Computer Into A Hotspot.
To get to the heart of what Connectify does – it turns your Windows 7 computer into a hotspot. If you have a cellular connection to a netbook, for example, you can share that connection with a bunch of other computers by turning your computer’s wireless card into a router – with a wireless network name, etc.

Connectify Can Turn Your Computer Into A WiFi Repeater.
Or use it as a repeater. Your computer’s wifi’s ability can be set up to both receive and broadcast wireless data – at the same time. So, I can connect my laptop to a wireless network and then set it up to, in effect, re-broadcast that signal. I use that for when I’m in the basement and my house’s wifi just doesn’t quite reach.

Connectify is really simple to set up - everything is done from this one page.

But Wait, Can’t Routers Be Configured To Do All This?
Well, yes some can. And the ones that can be set up to act as repeaters are tricky to use. Third party firmware like DD-Wrt needs to be installed first and then configured. It’s quite techy. Connectify could be set up by my dad – my litmus test of the ease of things.

And Connectify Offers One Big Advantage Over Routers…
It normally runs on laptops which run on batteries. Think about it…going out to the garage or spending the evening in the basement or another place that doesn’t get WiFi and need to put in a repeater in a place that doesn’t have electricity – no problem. Tweak your power options in the control panel a bit – program the screen to turn off after a few minutes so that you get maximum life out of the battery and … happiness!

How Connectify Enables Me To Work At The Library.
Toronto, where I am living as I write this, has the largest public library system in North America. It is busy…and also the Wifi is usually terrible. The good thing about the terribleness of it, however, is that usually you can’t even connect in, especially in the afternoon (sometimes you can get in, in the morning).  In other words it’s so bad that you don’t even have to wonder if it’s working. I suspect that their biggest problem is that WiFi was never really designed to be used to allow large numbers of people to connect. There is an article in the New York Times describing this problem with WiFi overload at meetings here.

Anyhow, as a writer, I love the library. Surrounded by nerds and fellow information lovers, it has enough action that I don’t feel isolated and enough noise police to allow me to be productive. Also, I grew up immersed in books, and although the internet has replaced my addiction to books for the most part, the library makes me nostalgic for a better time (thank you memory, for doing your job and erasing all the bad stuff). If I’m not in the library, I’m probably at a coffee shop, and have been limited to the more expensive ones that provide free wifi.

So what was I to do. I didn’t want to invest in a three year plan for data but luckily I found a local deal for $22.50 for unlimited data through a 3g (cellular) network – for the first six months, without a contract. $100 for the USB stick. I wanted to share the network connection however to multiple devices – so I could make internet phone calls, etc. I had one choice – buying a $200 MiFi type 3g router – it lets you share your wireless connection among 5 devices . These devices are increasingly popular (read price drop) as they allow you to buy iPod Touches and use them as iPhones by making internet phone calls, etc. Also, you don’t have to pay all the extra costs to 3G to enable everything (like iPads) but you get to share your one cellular data connection.

Connectify Turned My USB Stick Cellular Data Plan Into a Shared Cellular Data Plan.
But… the cellular router I was looking at may not work for other countries – I haven’t had time to research it all yet. And considering I don’t know where I’ll be next month – as in which country, I want to minimize my expenditures on things that are only relevent to  limited counties. So Connectify came to the rescue. I don’t leave it set up when I am walking around but it works great at all the restaurants, libraries and cheap coffee shops I set up in. And I use my iPod Touch to make phone calls through it and it is fine (actually it is slow setting up the call, but once the call gets going it is fine – on the g.729 codec)

I Use Connectify To Extend My Home Wifi Network, Too.
According to the Connecify’s website you can extend the range of your WiFi network just be setting up Connectify to use your WiFi Connection and then to rebroadcast it using the same name (SSID) and password. I’ve had enough grief with those kinds of arrangements that I’m a bit gun shy. You can run into problems when you move around with hand-offs between WiFi access points – it may be the computer’s fault, but it becomes one more thing. I just use a fresh SSID and password – and it works great. If you try using the same SSID and password combo, let me know how it works…

Software name: Connectify

Website: Connectify.me

Cost: Free (advertising supported)

Supports: Windows 7 Only

Here is a slideshow presentation by a fellow Torontonian. I completely relate to the digital nomad lifestyle and use many of the same tools. I agree with her conclusions although I prefer to think of myself more as a vagabond – I just have a strong association with nomads and camels – which I dislike.
The downside – and it is a big one, is that this lifestyle causes isolation and I would like an App for that. I envision a social network app that you could set your status and a few preferences so that when you are sitting in a Starbucks and need a little virtual water cooler time, you could see if there is anyone around who would also like to take a ten minute chat break. Maybe such an app already exists or could be used like this. If so, let me know. I hate people interrupting me when I am on a roll and so am cautious to do so with others.
With no further ado here’s the presentation: