Alpha Core

As some of you might already know, I’m constantly on the move between Germany and Belgium. In order to make communications as easy and cheap as possible, I wanted people in Belgium to be able to reach me in Germany at national rates by calling a fixed-line number in Belgium. The call should get transparently redirected over the internet to Germany as follows:

I also wanted to call people in Belgium from Germany at very low costs. For them, my call seems to originate from within Belgium. Since some people already showed interest in how I set this up, I decided to write an article about this.

Here’s the diagram of what it actually looks like, at least with the components that are of importance at the user end:

On the right, you can see my home network in Germany using a router with my computer behind it. Also in the network is an ATA (the device that does all the hard work for you) with a classic telephone attached to it. On the left is my SIP provider (the company where I rent the telephone number in Belgium and that offers me the service to transfer my calls over the internet) and also 2 people trying to call me: one using a classic telephone and the other one using his computer. Here’s a checklist with detailed information:

• First of all you need a SIP account. With such an account, you’ll be reachable over the internet by other internet users who are trying to call you. While classic telephones use a number such as +322xxxxxx to identify you, SIP uses the format such as user@sip.provider (like e-mail addresses). I have my SIP account at 3StarsNet and my ‘number’ therefore looks like 02xxxxxxx@sip.3starsnet.com. There, you rent a DID number (see below) with a SIP account immediately attached to it.
• You also need a DID number (often also called a ‘Call-In number’), which is basically a telephone number in the country of your choice that you rent from the company where you have your SIP account, e.g. +322xxxxxx. When someone calls this number, your SIP provider automatically transfers this call to your SIP account, e.g. 02xxxxxxx@sip.3starsnet.com. Note that when choosing the country in which you rent a DID number, you should give thought as to what you actually want to achieve. Where do you want to reach most people and be reachable by most? Take a look at the following two examples:

• Up to this point, when somebody calls you, either calling your DID number using a class telephone or calling your SIP account directly from the internet, they’ll hear a message saying that you’re not available right now and they can leave a voice mail. This recorded voice mail gets already automatically sent to your e-mail address now. So now, you need a way to receive these calls:
  • When you’re online with your computer, you can run a software client such as X-Lite and let it connect to your SIP provider. When you receive a call, it will pop up, you can press a button and talk using a headset or similar device connected to your computer. The disadvantage about this approach is that your computer needs to be turned on (and online) to be able to receive calls.
  • You might rather be interested in having a classic telephone next to your PC that you can use independently of whether your PC is switched on or not. This can be achieved by buying an ATA. This small box acts as a hardware client and automatically connects to your SIP account when powered on. On the back, you can plug in a normal telephone and when somebody calls you, it will let the attached telephone ring and you can pick up and talk this way. So the only requirement for this device is to be connected to the internet (and your SIP provider). I chose a Grandstream HandyTone HT-286. Your computer will from now on share your internet access with this ATA, so you might also need a router to setup a local network if you don’t already have one. There are also other Grandstream HandyTone models that come with an integrated router and also models where you can plug-in your normal telephone line as well, so that you can use your existing telephone for both lines and don’t need to buy a second telephone. There are even models in which you can configure more than one SIP account. Be sure to check them out!

I can heartily recommend 3StarsNet for people looking for a provider in Belgium! They offer numbers in Belgium for 15 EUR a year at the time of writing. You also need to buy some calling credit (minimum 9,99 EUR) for outbound calls, so you can call e.g. fixed-lines in Belgium for 0,01 EUR a minute. For a complete price listing, see their website.

There’s tons of other neat things to be discovered and this article is far from complete. There are so many more topics that could be discussed: you could have 2 DID numbers, one in each country and have an ATA on each location, there are mobile SIP phones that connect to internet hotspots, etc. The article doesn’t explain what SIP is exactly, how it compares to its alternatives and it doesn’t offer lots of detailed information. For that, I gladly invite you to Google around a bit, because these advanced topics fall beyond the scope of this article. I just hope this helped you getting an idea of how to setup something like this.

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