I was told that unless I’m doing video, then I really dont need a sip trunk. I have thought about it. Someone said there was a place that you pay $1.00 a month for the number and a penny a minute. But I would not consider that with my nonprofit because I’m on the phone all day with judges and attorneys. That would run up a bill quickly. But for my weather line yes that would be cheaper. But all I need for that is analog.
Well, unless you are in the boonies the chances of you getting an actual real analog line are going to be slim. But this is where I will just bow out. Good luck with what ever this is.
Recommendations for a weather line:
Incoming DID Numbers | Localphone
$6 setup + $3/month; no charge for incoming calls, up to 100/day. I assume that your expected traffic is much less. Since they charge $0.01/call for overage, if you expect a lot of traffic you would probably want some custom dialplan to reject calls beyond 100/day. Supports two concurrent calls.
For domestic outbound, they charge only $0.005/minute, but IMO they are not reliable enough for business use, except as a backup.
Anveo » The Smart Way to Use Your Phones
For business line, $3 setup + $6/mo.; no charge for incoming calls; three channels. Domestic outbound is $0.01/min. (even for toll-free calls), IMO adequate for business use, but don’t count on much support.
https://www.callcentric.com/products.php
For business line, $8.95 setup + $8.95/mo.; no charge for incoming calls; three channels. For outbound, see their website. IMO they are top class provider.
Thank you I have found this interesting. Much cheaper than buying other equipment. I have some cellular numbers and thought, why not use them since we are paying for them? I have a device I use that converts the cellular to a regular PSTN line. I used it for years, and when I started messing with FreePBX, I thought, Why not use these lines in FreePBX?.
On the business, as I said, I used Nexteva, but they are voice-only SIP, so I couldn’t do video. When I start a new program the Day Reporting Center, then I would like to do video calls with these individuals. I was lied to by Nexteva, and I had no other place to go for my business. I had to go back to Ooma Office. I have been with them for about 4 years, but I find dropped calls a lot, and it’s costly with the premium package. When I first started with FreePBX, I would get messages saying, Why mess with it? You should just go to a VoIP provider. I dont feel that I’m ready to manage the business phone system right now. I am just getting to know FreePBX and hardware. I’m trying to set up the weather line, for which the information you sent me was pricless . I think that will work.
Hate to break it to you but no provider offers video calling over the public telephone network. It’s just not something that happens. You need to use a solution for this. Nextiva offers a video conference solution but you need to use their solution so everyone connects to it and the video is done there.
Then you’re going to need to implement a video conferencing solution that can be used. You can use a hosted solution like Nextiva, WebEx, Teams, etc. or you can build one with FreePBX.
What did they lie to you about?
My understanding is some sip providers offer video and some don’t. When I spoke with the salesman at Nextiva they said there sip came with the options of doing video. If the sip providers offer video we can use freepbx to utilize it since it offers the codac for video. When setting up freepbx that was one of the questions do I want to use video. I’m new at this and have so much more to learn. I know I can’t use video over a landline but I can if my sip providers offer it
The public telephone network, which is how all the carriers pass calls between them, doesn’t support video calls because not everything on the network can support video. Additionally, video can’t be transcoding which means everyone must use the same exact video codec all the way through and that’s not entirely possible.
Some providers offer a video conferencing solution, which Nextiva does. You would have to use their solution on their platform to do your video conferencing and in those cases using a video phone isn’t the best way to do it.
So again, if you want to do video calling or conferencing you need to have a solution in place that all parties can directly connect to so the video can happen between them.
Nexteva just doesn’t offer video with their SIP account. I was even given a portal for fax, and I asked if I could use their portal for video, and they said no. Now that I’m trying to use a sip provider for the weather line, I might just stay with Ooma right now until I get better with FreePBX. I just received my HT841, which was released last year, but I’m having issues setting it up. Everything was green now nothing is green lol.
I’m having issues not being able to call out. I have setup both FXO and FXS, and they are both registered on the HT841. I’m also experiencing issues when I receive a call; it comes through, but sometimes in the background you hear the tones that are usually associated with this call cannot be completed as dialed. I’m posting the log.
By in the background, do you mean they have a low volume? That would indicate an analogue processing problem, an nothing to do with the VoIP side, or Asteris.
Log line 463 shows:
463 [2025-07-15 03:10:49] VERBOSE[803557][C-0000000d] file.c: <PJSIP/1972-00000009> Playing 'custom/Recording_160.slin' (language 'en')
Is that what you expected to happen? Did the caller hear it?
Unfortunately, the paste ended before it finished playing, so we can’t tell what happened after that.
The log is full of garbage. For starters, set Enable SIP OPTIONS/NOTIFY Keep Alive to No. You don’t need keep-alive because the HT is on the local LAN, and Asterisk does not handle the NOTIFY properly. Next, don’t set Outbound Proxy anywhere; you haven’t set it properly and it’s not needed in this application.
Also, adjust your router/firewall to not allow external attackers in. If you don’t have external extensions, you probably don’t need to forward port 5060 at all. In any case, set up a proper Inbound Route for 3367103960; you can then disable Allow Anonymous Inbound SIP Calls and Allow SIP Guests, so any attackers that do get to the PBX won’t log so much junk.
Once you have eliminated the log noise, paste a new log of a complete call and tell us what went wrong for the caller.
I need some help. I’m trying to figure out how to add the speaking time clock after it plays the announcement which is the weather.
Assuming that you are using the built-in Announcement app, just set the announcement destination to Feature Code Admin → Speaking Clock.