Fone Forum

Dealers were unconcerned by the suspension of O2's Mobile Landline this week after the Go Hello platform collapsed.

O2 informed relevant partners that it had temporarily suspended Mobile Landline via email on 21 January.

The email said: 'Due to the uncertainty regarding one of the current suppliers of the service, we've made the tough decision to temporarily suspend Mobile Landline sales.'

Dealers were selling the product, which allowed customers to divert their landline to their mobile, as part of O2's converged package, 'Joined Up'.

However, dealers told Mobile that the product had not been selling very well.  One dealer said: 'We had done one or two contracts, and I am sure O2 will re-establish the service.'

Another added: 'It was a good product, but from my perspective it was not selling that well.  We were about to start ramping up the volume.'

However, another dealer said: 'It was a great little product and there was nothing like it on the market.  I imagine that when it comes back it will be a good seller.'

O2 asked distributors selling the product to: 'Remove Mobile Landline from... your websites and any other marketing material and amend any customer proposals.'

It also told distributors to 'communicate this information to your stockists'.

The email added: 'In order to provide an uninterrupted service to our customers, we've moved to an interim offering.'

Taken from this (http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/Dealer/Dealers__O2_Mobile_Landline_product_did_not_sell_well.aspx).

I hadn't heard of this. I'd recommended it to a couple of people, but I now imagine they didn't get round to it yet.

just found O2 statement: http://www.o2.co.uk/mll

landline over gsm/umts ?? am I gathering this right?

No, I think it is simpler than that. It is merely a divert but unlike other providers who do this, the costs of the divert for incoming calls from the landline number to the mobile are paid for by o2. You pay a flat monthly fee to cover these, so it is generally only worth it for people who will make heavy use of this.

Having a landline number reach your mobile via VoIP and UMTS/WiFI is another semi-feasible DIY option, provided of course you have a smart phone that is VoIP compatible, and your data carrier allows VoIP traffic, or you are in WiFI range. If you are not a heavy user, another option is to pay per minute for the divert which you can do for as little as 5p/min, such as by using smartvoip.com. In either case you will need a separate provider for your DID (inward number) i.e. You need to find a provider who will give you a landline number and allow you to forward calls from it to a SIP address.

Thanks for replying to delaro's query petkow: you were obviously the right person to do so.        :)

DIDs are one of those things I have never got into yet ( you may remember we have occasionally exchanged messages about such in the past. )        :'(

For the benefit of complete novices such as myself, could you tell us please how one can go about a DID, preferably a free one.  I have read about getting a Skypein number, but that seems very expensive to me.  What other sources of inward numbers can one try ?        :-\

I seem to remember you once told me you got a free DID from somewhere: is that source still available ?        :-\

Thanks for any further information which you may be able to provide.        :)

The best ones are no longer free. The ones I use are from from providers that are not giving them out for free anymore but some of them did in the past. One of them is Finarea/Betamax who were also giving these out with their VoIP accounts but this has long stopped.

Sipgate.co.uk still give them out, but I think you need to put some money on the account to get started.

Also see: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/DID+Service+Providers
Apparently these 11 companies will provide you with free UK DID's, though I am not sure what numbering range they take: http://www.voip-catalog.com/voip_freedid_united-kingdom:-uk_1.html

Another one I know will now give you a geographic with a paid subscription: http://www.voiptalk.org/products/Incoming+Numbers

Many thanks petkow: you are a wealth of information !        :o  :)  :)

thank you petkow for your veryt thorough reply. do you know about any DID supplieriers offering numbers in Poland? kind regards. delaro

There will be quite a few, and it will be best to read up on Polish forums about the best deals. I know that the company that supplies my Spanish DID, provides numbers all over the world including Poland. The following area codes are supplied and their rate is 5.40 Euros/month:
    Bialystok      
    Bydgoszcz    
    Gdansk     
    Katowice     
    Krakow     
    Lodz     
    Lublin     
    Poznan     
    Radom    
    Szczecin
    Warsaw    
    Wroclaw
See: http://www.netelip.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=72&lang=es#

They will of course be reselling these numbers from a Polish supplier. A bit of Googling (preferably in Polish) will no doubt be able to find you the source suppliers who will no doubt sell you the same range for a lot cheaper.

These people may still supply free Polish Numbers.

http://www.actio.pl/rejestracja.html

thanks guys... there's loads  ;D
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=numery+voip&meta= (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=numery+voip&meta=)