DID (Direct Inward Dialing) Phone Number

Some people asked me about my telephone service/features and one of the pay services that I use in order to get a DID (direct inward dialing) phone number is from VoIP.ms.

VoIP.ms offers a lot of features and it would be too long for me to go into all the features so you can check out their website.

I only use their service in order to get a phone number to use as a forwarding number. I find their rates very reasonable for this. When I travel to the US with one of my US prepaid cellphones, I will purchase a local Montreal phone number from them so that my friends/family does not have to pay long distance in order to reach me. I set this Montreal number to forward all calls (or only certain calls) to my prepaid US cellphone. I also use them in order to obtain a Canadian (Montreal) number to forward to my Google Voice number.

I've also done this with a toll free number (purchasing a toll free number) from this website but I found that based on the call volume that I was receiving and the extra costs of a toll free number as well as the fact that when I travel to the US over 95% of the people whom I want to be able to reach me for free at located within the Montreal local calling area, in my case, it was not practical.

In order to use the VoIP.ms services, you will obviously have to register on their website. After registering, you will see all the features and prices. Prior to registering, you are only given a brief cost structure for most of their more popular services. Once you've registered, if you want to purchase a phone number or any pay service, you will have to have a positive balance on your account. The company accepts PayPal, credit cards from certain countries, wire transfer, etc. as a means of payment. The minimum payment is $25 via PayPal.

In terms of the price plans for DID phone numbers, there is an unlimited monthly plan and a pay per use monthly plan. Initially, I opted for the unlimited monthly plan but then later opted for the pay per use monthly plan.

Using VoIP.ms, you can also set up your unlocked VoIP router and get phone service similar to what you would get with the locked Vonage router. I haven't tried this myself but it does look like something that I might eventually try in the future. If I do, I will write a blog entry for it  ;-)

Something else that you can do with VoIP.ms is that you can use their service in order to install/configure your own Asterisk server. I haven't done this either but I know someone who has implemented this and it is definitely an interesting project that I might attempt as well.

If you have any questions/comments regarding this blog entry, please don't hesitate to leave a comment in the comments section.