I currently carry a dual-sim phone to have two numbers, private and work each. I am not entirely happy with this setup however:
- Dual sim phones aren’t common and cost more when I have to upgrade.
- I need call recording for business, but android phones aren’t very clear when it comes to call recording support. I had to try and return several new devices.
- I would love to have additional temporary phone numbers for privacy (e.g. retails).
And here’s my situation:
- Google Voice is not available in my country. Plus, it’s Google.
- Prepaid SIM cards are cheap and easy to acquire where I live.
- I have a bunch of old spare android phones.
I was thinking, could I leave the SIM cards for private and work at home, inserted to phones/devices that are managed by a call-forwarding server, which transparently forward the calls to a third device I am actually carrying?
Self hosted Google Voice is what I would love to have.
Asterisk / FreeSWITCH. Not sure why you insist on having a SIM card, it’s possible with both of these using cellular modems, but it’s a lot easier to just get a DID from a VoIP provider.
This is the route I’d go. I use FreePBX for all this, but my voip provider could do most of the work (voip.ms). There are decent softphone apps (Zoiper, Linphone, etc.) to initiate calls from and porting a number to the voip provider isn’t too difficult.
VoIP.ms is clearly the connaisseur’s choice in this thread 👌
I was thinking about preserving my phone numbers and all that. From what I’m reading, all it takes is a voip provider routing calls directly instead of my own equipment?
Yes, you can also let the provider do all the work if you prefer.