Pre-dial Account Access Via Skype

[A1ia5]

Already mentioned this on another thread, but worth putting here ?

On Skype you have to fund your account to make Skype-out calls.  Sadly, for Skype, this cannot be done in the ways of Pre-dial (AFAIAA!).

So, the idea is :

* Pre-dial has a Skype ID or a Pre-dial user has their own Pre-dial Skype ID they can call from Skype - from computer or phone
* They get into their Pre-dial account and key the "number you wish to dial"
* Ok, hopefully you get the picture

Equally, access to Pre-dial could be from a SIP phone.  (Please dont slate me for not doing my SIP bit).

Not at the mo I am working on getting freely available DID nos (VoIP Geo (or whatever) Nos) to route to a Skype ID, ala Skype-in, but free !  This is kind of the opposite.

There are many VoIP providers that offer a SIP interface - ie typically most web based Finarea/Betamax instantiations (VoipHooters ;-) et al) do so :

Software configuration
General
   SIP port : 5060
   Registrar : sip.voipdiscount.com
   Proxy server : sip.voipdiscount.com
   Outbound proxy server : leave empty
   Account name : your VoipDiscount username
   Password : your VoipDiscount password
   Display name/number : your VoipDiscount username or voipnumber
   Stunserver (option) : stun.voipdiscount.com

from    http://www.voipdiscount.com/en/sipp.html

Now if Pre-dial could only offer a SIP interface, that may well be great and doable from Skype.  One of my next projects is to get from Skype to a SIP calls provider. 

Given the current offerings from the mobile provider x, where 2<x<4 (Duh, i fink that is right! & integers only please), then this would be most useful, would it not?

[Mikael]

This is an idea I have considered before, but there are no good products available yet which can do this on a large scale. However, there is now an add-on to asterisk which is in Beta test, that should allow Skype callers to call into an asterisk server which in turn can connect via SIP. This would also allow us to offer customers a way into a service for free.

[A1ia5]

This is an idea I have considered before, but there are no good products available yet which can do this on a large scale. However, there is now an add-on to asterisk which is in Beta test, that should allow Skype callers to call into an asterisk server which in turn can connect via SIP. This would also allow us to offer customers a way into a service for free.

Hi Mikael and good to hear that you have considered this !

I have seen the Skype to Asterix bridge and thought this is good.  I can understand your consideration is on a hiher traffic scale.

I'm hoping to get big broadband today so will be experimenting with my own call through and am particularly interested in a Skype through service.

I have several suggestions, but typically do not fully explain why.  It does not take a great deal of grey matter to understand why this one has been requested,

However, no doubt ToLoN will like to W+0 and dwell !

Mikael I thank you for what you do and provide !

Alias

[andy]

Not at the mo I am working on getting freely available DID nos (VoIP Geo (or whatever) Nos) to route to a Skype ID, ala Skype-in, but free !  This is kind of the opposite.



Now if Pre-dial could only offer a SIP interface, that may well be great and doable from Skype.  One of my next projects is to get from Skype to a SIP calls provider. 

Given the current offerings from the mobile provider x, where 2<x<4 (Duh, i fink that is right! & integers only please), then this would be most useful, would it not?

There are ways to get calls from SIP to Skype, but perhaps the other direction is a bit rarer. There needs to be a server running somewhere to do it; some rely on leaving a PC running at home, with the various programs running to do a divert or bridge between accounts. Or you can find other suggestions to work around not having SkypeIn on Skype on mobiles, also leaving a PC running. But there are some VoIP providers who can call Skype accounts from SIP - still in beta though.

So it's possible to divert an incoming number to a Skype account. I did this a couple of years ago, and rather oddly the call quality appeared better than using SkypeIn. But one service has been more intermittent since, occasionally spending days or maybe weeks out of use, sometimes maybe just capacity issues. As I don't speak the language of the one provider, it's difficult to keep track. Also, most of my messing around with this was in the past, due to interesting tariffs which are no longer

If you're looking at trying to make cheap calls via Skype on a certain mobile network, I'd suggest play with diverting a pstn number to the Skype account and use callback between this and the destination. I'm pretty sure it would work, but haven't bothered to buy a phone specially to try it. Maybe I could run Skype on Fring in the phone I have now (data add-on with this contract), just to try the concept, but it seems all rather complicated to bother with it, as the contract has plenty of included minutes anyway and I could use a SIP provider in Fring more simply if I needed more calls.

[A1ia5]

This is an idea I have considered before, but there are no good products available yet which can do this on a large scale. However, there is now an add-on to asterisk which is in Beta test, that should allow Skype callers to call into an asterisk server which in turn can connect via SIP. This would also allow us to offer customers a way into a service for free.

Just looking over the replies again.

I thought of Skype as 3 give a lot of minutes to access this and so it would enable people to use a mobile in UK (and partner roaming (free) countries!!! - so you could provide a call thru there from eg Austria, HK, Australia, Denmark etc (Me thinks - then again is skype free if roaming?)) to access the pre-dial call thru.

If pre-dial could offer a SIP interface to the call thru service may be all that is needed.  The challenge is providing a sufficient capacity Skype to SIP bridge.

Or sufficient capacity Skype to Pre-dial bridge.  Then it wouldn't be necessary to put anything in-between.  And many people could make use of the unique and valuable offer from three for the hop from mobile to call thru service.  Of course another alternative now (as three are doing unlimited 3 to 3 calls) would be to provide a three access no - but somehow I don't know if this is feasible on the longer term. 

Wayhay !  Just got an sms to say the new top-up sms nos are available !

[A1ia5]

There are ways to get calls from SIP to Skype, but perhaps the other direction is a bit rarer. There needs to be a server running somewhere to do it; some rely on leaving a PC running at home, with the various programs running to do a divert or bridge between accounts. Or you can find other suggestions to work around not having SkypeIn on Skype on mobiles, also leaving a PC running. But there are some VoIP providers who can call Skype accounts from SIP - still in beta though.

So it's possible to divert an incoming number to a Skype account. I did this a couple of years ago, and rather oddly the call quality appeared better than using SkypeIn. But one service has been more intermittent since, occasionally spending days or maybe weeks out of use, sometimes maybe just capacity issues. As I don't speak the language of the one provider, it's difficult to keep track. Also, most of my messing around with this was in the past, due to interesting tariffs which are no longer

If you're looking at trying to make cheap calls via Skype on a certain mobile network, I'd suggest play with diverting a pstn number to the Skype account and use callback between this and the destination. I'm pretty sure it would work, but haven't bothered to buy a phone specially to try it. Maybe I could run Skype on Fring in the phone I have now (data add-on with this contract), just to try the concept, but it seems all rather complicated to bother with it, as the contract has plenty of included minutes anyway and I could use a SIP provider in Fring more simply if I needed more calls.

Andy - thank you for a good reply !

Good to see you have tried a few possibilities and have given me something more to go on.

IMHO mobile data in the UK is still v expensive.  Which is why I am particularly interested in taking advantage of the "freebies" offered by three.

I have been playing with this solution, but have not got it to work yet...

http://www.scopezoom.com/guide9.htm

Interestingly, in the above guide, it refers to a site that appears to be offering free online Asterix servers (or some other PBX).  I need to play with this a lot more as I think there is a lot that could be done with this !

Be good if you could give a bit more details on what you have tried previously...