VoIP For Beginners
Over the past twenty years, voice services has moved from public switched telephone network (PSTN) to Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP. This change has been very rapid and ubiquitous, and many people use VoIP in some form or another without really knowing or reaching into the nuts and bolts. Services like Skype and Google Talk provide VoIP services use by hundreds of thousands of people, and through feature deprecation and convergence, anyone with a Google account has the ability to make VoIP calls for free, but it's not always clear how. This article will go over how to leverage Google Talk to make free phone calls using a PC, but the same can be applied to Mac OS and with further research Android OS.
Required Equipment
To make a phone call using VoIP and Google Talk, you will need a few basic things:
- Computer
- Headset or speakers + microphone
- Web browser (Google Chrome or similar)
- A Google Account (Gmail)
These are really not very high barriers to entry, most laptops come equipped with a speaker and microphone.
Getting Started and Testing
We are going to test our setup with a test number. Start Chrome and log into your Google account. Navigate to Https://contacts.google.com and create a contact by clicking the plus (+) sign in the bottom right corner. Here are some test numbers we can use:
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- AU: +61386521453
- NZ: +6498860565
- UK: +441173257425
- US: +17607067425
Once you have created the contact, click the number and a new tab will open for Hangouts. You will get a notification about the cost of your call, which should be free, click OK. Your call will then be connected and you can use the soft phone as you would expect. If this was a real call you could have a conversation and do business.
Diving Deeper and Receiving Calls
You can get a DID (Direct Inbound Dial) number with Google Talk by signing up for Google Voice. This requires a real phone number to validate with. You can also get DID numbers from third party providers like Multitel but this is beyond the scope of this article, and SIP URI providers usually charge a very small fee.
I hope you found this guide to be useful, and if you followed it completely, I'm sorry for rickrolling you.