Re: Answering Phone Calls Using PC

[Kim Wall <kim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 01/03/09 18:45, darren_karp2001 wrote:
> Despite having two cordless phones in the house it amazes me that
> nobody can be bothered to answer incoming calls on some occasions
> leading me to think whether it's possible to use my laptop (which is
> always on my lap) to answer incoming calls.
>
> Does anyone know of a method of tying in my ADSL router and some
> clever software to do this?

The gold standard for this would probably be Asterisk with an FXO card
or an ATA with a FXO port.  A softphone on the laptop could then connect
to that as an extension.  Asterisk could also provide Cool Stuff(TM)
like selective routing of outgoing calls via landline or a VOIP
provider, calling between internal extensions, voicemail, caller ID
based routing and all manner of fun ways to torment telemarketers.

It's a bit of a learning curve though, especially if you don't have a
working knowledge of Linux.  Something like Fritzbox would be an
embedded solution.

I suppose an FXO ATA could be connected to by a softphone directly,
without any PBX software, though I've no experience of this myself.


Kim.
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