what i want from VOIP
What do I want from VOIP? Features Features Price Features. I want stuff that my phone carrier could never offer. Give me options like on the crappy $50 network firewall wireless routers. Give me:
- Custom Call Privacy. For most of the calls that I make I want my outbound caller ID blocked, but for calls that I make to people that I know, my friends and family, I don’t want my outbound caller ID blocked.
- Caller Authentication. For all callers not on my contact list / friends list (see next feature), they should get routed to a “please press X to complete your call”. This is to weed out incoming fax machines or spamming computer dialers. Some bastard was trying to send a fax to my home voice line the other day from midnight until 4am…
- Contact List / Friends list / Frequent Callers list. Have a type of contact list or address book on the config panel website. Either import my contact list from Outlook or off my Mac or maybe just make it a “friends” list that I define based on the “called” or “callers” list. Now I’m looking at a list of names and phone numbers, next to which I can check or uncheck call features like “No Call Privacy” or “Auto Call Hunt” or “Forward to Cell”.
- Groups for Contact List. Users should be able to define groups for their contact list, like “Friends” or “Work” etc. just like in firewall configs you define ip address ranges or subnets and assign them to a group. Then users give the groups attributes or call features. I want the family group to always call hunt to my cell phone, but don’t call hunt for unknown callers.
- Custom Outbound CallerID. Let me set my outbound caller id on a per-number or a per-group basis. For people that I call who are in my “Friends” group, send my name. For business contacts, send my business name. For numbers that I call who aren’t in my contact list, don’t send caller id.