* Single-line gateway optimized for Skype-to-PSTN connectivity
Innovation comes in many forms and sometimes a small, seemingly obvious device can make a lot of difference. Responding to our recent columns about VoIP over Wi-Fi, a reader mentioned that he had come across a cool device that could let him connect to his office using Skype and then to make calls from Skype’s PBX.
As he explained: “Whenever I call the Skype name of the gateway PC, I can talk to people in the office on their regular extension for free, and I can get an outside line and make local calls, or even international calls at the cost of the discounted office plan. Apparently the PBX recognizes the tones of the keypad on Skype.”
As it turns out, the device that he is using comes from a small San Francisco Bay Area company called CuPhone (http://www.cuphone.com). The device is called Personal Phone Gateway (PPG) and it connects to the USB port or the PCI bus on a PC and also to a regular phone line. If you’re running Skype, depending on how you program the device, a call that remains unanswered after a given number of rings is transferred to a predefined number.
From the other direction, if you’re traveling and you receive an inbound call on your “real” phone line, the PPG can transfer the call to your Skype account – wherever you are. Quite a mobility solution.
A third application for the PPG would be for a small (or large) multinational company to deploy a PPG in multiple countries, allowing “local” calling from the phone line in the host country. This is the situation the reader referenced above in which he used the PCI version of the device in a spare PC and was connected to a port on the corporate PBX.
According to the CuPhone Web site, the price for the USB version of the PPG is $59, while the PCI version of the PPG saves you a few bucks at $29.
This is an innovative approach, but next time we’ll continue the discussion and tell you about a possible nomination for cool product of the year, even though it’s only June.
