Receiving calls on your Computer

[Brena]

Hi there,

I'm quite sure this one will be not the solution for everyone getting expensive calls from inmates but I hope that it might at least help some of us. It's a bit technical, sorry for that ;-)

I'm located outside the US and my fiance is on Death Row at Menard Prison, Illinois. Not knowing yet about their phone rules in detail, I think it's most likely that he won't get approval to call me regularly (actually he has never got a permission to call me at the former prison).

So I tried to find a way to work around this stupid rules. First I checked with local phone companies all over the US, trying to get a local phone number somewhere routing the call to my phone at home but as I don't have a residential US address it didn't work.

Then I found out about a new technique which is called "Voice over IP" and an internet service which sets up a virtual, local phone number for you. You can choose between three or four different US locations for it. The number can be called from any phone and works like a kind of virtual phone line. The calls are received at the local US phone exchange you have chosen and are routed to your local computer via the internet. This makes it a Non-international call but a long distance call depending on the location of the caller and the local phone number chosen. To receive such calls at the computer, a special software is required which can be downloaded at the internet service homepage and you need a full-duplex soundcard with a microphone headset. Additionally you need to be online with the software running when the call takes place. If you are offline, the caller gets a message from your Voice Mail.

I have got such a number but unfortunately had to find out later that this virtual line is set up as a cell phone number so it CANNOT receive collect calls at all. :argh Anyway, I tried it out by calling my number from the home phone and it works and also provides good speech quality.

I would guess it works for other people who are more lucky and can be called non-collect or know someone in the US who is willing to place a three-way-conference call with the virtual phone number once they accepted the inmates collect call.

The monthly basic fee for such a number is $8.95 and does not include any minutes in case you plan to place a call yourself. You can also set up a toll-free personal number but the basic charge might be different for this one.

Let me add another comment - there are several provider for virtual phone numbers but I have only found one which allows you to receive Phone-to-PC calls too. The others seem only to provide virtual numbers for the PC-to-Phone direction.

You can find more information about this service at www.iconnecthere

I know it's a brain buster - at least it was for me

Good luck!
Brena

[Brena]

oops.... the service' webpage is at:

www.iconnecthere.com

[torrey]

Thanks for the information.
I hope I can figure this out

[Cameo]

Brena, did you try the privateline, inc. information that I posted in this same forum...I wonder if it would handle international calls? Take a look at it and let me know!

[Kristin]

Brena!!
Thank you so much
I have been looking for something like that for a long time now!!!
I hope it will work for me too :-)

Kristin

[Brena]

I tried to reach Privat Lines Inc. but they only had an answering machine on the line.

So I got in contact with a similar service which is called TeleNet, Inc. and got I nice contact there. We're still trying to solve the problem which comes with me being located overseas ;-)

I hope we will get this sorted out and then I will post a new topic to let people know about them and my experiences.

To solve all that work-around the damned administrations it looks like I'm becoming tricky lately