GrandCentral VOIP open to Public Testing

After being in beta for a extended period of time, almost 6-8 months and during this time getting acquired by Google, put GrandCentral right on top of many other VOIP companies.

Grandcentral is a great way to make free US calls and of course, if used intelligently can serve as a great virtual PBX system. You can also club it with other services such as RingBranch which provided Auto attendant and PBX services for FREE.

GrandCentral is now official open to Public. What that means is you don't need a invite for GrandCentral anymore. However It's only available to people in the USA, so if you are not in USA and still want to test the service with Virtual Numbers you should first get a free incoming number and then use a USA proxy to get grandcentral account.

Google's official PR says,

With GrandCentral, a free service from Google, you can receive phone calls and post voicemails right on your blog. WebCall Button
When you add GrandCentral’s WebCall button to your blog, your readers can easily call your phone or leave voicemails without ever seeing your telephone number.

Honestly, GrandCentral is a great tool. You can get a free incoming number and then just attach your landline/Mobile numbers to the account. You don't have to give your regular numbers to people anymore. Setup your preferred settings and where you want to be reached. Its all FREE.

Now the way in Free USA calling business is ON and only best things are in store for customers. We are looking forward to the day when GrandCentral will be launched internationally. I however doubt it will ever come to India :-(

Go try GrandCentral

Qtel launches Free Callback service in Qatar

A good news for our Qatar readers. Qtel, the largest Telecom operator in Qatar has launched the "Call me back" service which allows pre-paid (Hala) customers to send a "Call me back" text regardless of their calling credit.

Qtel chief operating officer, Sheikh Fahad bin Jassim al-Thani said: "The service is free and simple to use. It applies to all Hala customers, regardless of their balance or account status, even within the grace period for service extension. Up to three such text messages can be sent a day from any Hala account."

He further added: "Qtel is deeply committed to ensuring our customers are able to maintain communication, regardless of the funds available. The introduction of 'Call me back' service has again demonstrated that Qtel understands its customers' needs."

To use the service, one must dial *103* followed by the mobile number of the person they would like to contact. Qtel will then send an SMS asking "Please call me back" in English and Arabic to that number free of charge.

At first, we thought its a free callback service which could be used by Qatar residents but its seems it more of a SMS service. Although, we hope it helps. There are hardly any news for middle east readers so this one is dedicated to them for their humble support for Free VoIP Hacks.

Free Virtual Hosted PBX systems

Yesterday we discussed about SIP Softphones and how some of these softphones are making your life easier with multiple SIP providers. It will be increasingly difficult for users as FREE VOIP becomes a key feature or its hard to manage multiple VOIP providers.

Today, we are going to discuss about Free Virtual Hosted PBX system which gives you hosted PBX features for FREE. Isn't it great to have a FREE PBX system hosted online for you and you manage it with a few clicks.

This article is sent in by our regular reader, Wilson Lacerda (from Brazil). William is expert in PBX system and runs a Orkut community in Portugese. I have added more description to the original article so it's helpful for everyone.

William has compiled some of the best FREE Virtual Hosted PBX systems list (not in any particular order):

Quick Notes:
- All of PBX services are Virtual/online: that means no need to install anything!
- All are free or offer free plan.
-Some of them are very simple (good for newbies), other more feature rich and powerful: multiple trunks/extensions, complex dial plans, callback, pstn gateway, skype/MSN/Gtalk/other integration, callme widget, etc.
-For SOHO use usually they are more reliable, easier to use, powerful and cost saving than have a PBX running in your own machine.
-With some smart settings you can combine 2 or more of them and this way have a free and very powerful virtual PBX.

1) PBXes: PBXes is a hosted PBX service which runs like a voicemail service or an email server in a data center. PBXes provider a Free and premium PBX service. The free PBX account has limitation of 10 GB traffic and up to 2 con-current calls. PBXes has gained a lot of attention lately. One of our regular reader Emoci loves it :-)

2) VoXaLot: Perhaps the most popular Free PBX system online. However after they went into premium membership, they lost a lot of users to other free pbx systems. They still offer a compact version of Free PBX. It users SIP broker service to so you can use 200+ access numbers around the world to call Voxalot and over 2000+ SIP Networks (millions of VoIP users) for free!

3) MySipSwitch: Another excellent PBX service available in the market. it allows you to route multiple SIP accounts from different suppliers through a single SIP login. Simply put this means you can channel phone calls from several different VoIP providers through to one piece of hardware like an IP phone or an ATA.Its a KISS (Keep it simple stupid) system. However lately, I have seen some internal pages throw exception errors. I really wish they could fix it. MysipSwitch has great potential.

4) LiberaILVoip: Their website is all italin. However, the best i could figure out was, they offer a commercial network by increasing your ability to communicate without any extra cost. You can enjoy all the benefits and functionality of a PBX IP specifically designed to be used by a residential needs.

5) simplyConnect: Anoother non-english provider. It's a german PBX service. I seriously couldn't figure out much. I am leaving this here for your experiment sake. Maybe our german readers can confirm if this indeed is a Free PBX service.

6) Oigaa: This really look interesting at first look and definately a good find. There are no limit on number of PBX extensions. You can map your extensions into your IP Phone and they also offer 60 minutes of free calling for new users. They are also throwing in one free DID number :-)

7) GTalk2Voip: One of my all time favorites, another Keep it simple product. One of the older bunch of online PBX system, which have stabilised over time. One of the serious missing features, people often don't understand how to get to the account page. The command line usage is complicated for below average newbie users. Hope they simply the interface. Works absolutely great and highly recommended.

8) FlashPhone: A new entrant in the industry and does the dirty work for online PBX. Nothing fancy about it just good old PBX stuff.

For more professional users who want more control over PBX, there are lots of Asterisk based ones that runs under Linux (or under Windows with a little help of VMWare or MS Virtual PC). One of the leading windows based PBX system is 3CX PBX system.