<story><title>Charge, a phone company with features for nerds</title><url>https://charge.co/for-nerds</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rsync</author><text>Ok, that&amp;#x27;s sort of workable ... EDIT: ok, actually not so much - if you are out of coverage area and your phone rings zero times and goes right to voicemail (that&amp;#x27;s how it works with carriers in the US) then the caller calls you and goes right to silence, and presumably they retry 1-2-3x and get frustrated ... not even sure this is the right number, etc.  Whereas if the phone just rang and rang and rang, at least it wouldn&amp;#x27;t be a bizarre outcome for them ...&lt;p&gt;I would also like the ability to play a message, but then have no ability to leave a message.&lt;p&gt;The lame way to do this is to let your vm inbox fill up, and then everyone gets the &amp;quot;the person you called is too stupid to figure out voicemail&amp;quot; message.&lt;p&gt;What I would like is an option to play a message (&amp;quot;hi you&amp;#x27;ve reached so and so and here is my email address and have a nice day!&amp;quot;) and then ... no beep ... no message ... nothing.  Maybe just pause a bit and then a fast-busy.[1]&lt;p&gt;How can I do things like this ?  I&amp;#x27;ve been meaning for years to self-provide my own dial tone in the same way I self-provide my own email, but I just don&amp;#x27;t have the time to get it all set up.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Reorder_tone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Reorder_tone&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>joshbaptiste</author><text>To get rid of VM notifications, I recorded 2 minute+ of silence as my VM greeting, zero VMs after that.</text></item><item><author>rsync</author><text>Can I have &lt;i&gt;no voicemail&lt;/i&gt; ?&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a feature I really want and it&amp;#x27;s not easy to do.&lt;p&gt;If you configure a mobile phone line without voicemail, it will &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; just ring and ring and ring (as I hoped it would) - instead, the caller gets a message that &amp;quot;the number you have dialed is not accepting calls at this time&amp;quot; ... or some other message (depending on the carrier) that makes it sound like you don&amp;#x27;t pay your phonebill or something.&lt;p&gt;I want my phone to ring and ring and ring until the caller gives up.  I &lt;i&gt;think&lt;/i&gt; I can do this with the twilio API, but man that&amp;#x27;s a lot of work for something (seemingly) simple.&lt;p&gt;edit:  this is the discussion I found that makes me think I could accomplish this with twilio:  &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stackoverflow.com&amp;#x2F;questions&amp;#x2F;22410430&amp;#x2F;twilio-respond-to-incoming-call-by-ringing-forever&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stackoverflow.com&amp;#x2F;questions&amp;#x2F;22410430&amp;#x2F;twilio-respond-t...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>corin_</author><text>Record two minutes of ringing, so that depending on the type you record and the phone of the caller they either think it&amp;#x27;s ringing normally or two minutes, or think it changed to a different sort of ringing and assume it&amp;#x27;s some weird technical thing.&lt;p&gt;Related anecdote, I have a friend who lives in NYC who told me he recorded his voicemail to start with the beep (or beeps?) that sound like a network confirmation of a call hang up, and then his &amp;quot;Please leave me a message&amp;quot; message a couple of seconds later, so that automated dialers would be fooled into thinking the call was dead, and hang up rather than leave a message. I&amp;#x27;m not familiar with American phone systems and am not sure if this is a story from the past (he&amp;#x27;s certainly been hacking systems for longer than I&amp;#x27;ve been alive) or if it&amp;#x27;s still useful to this day (I&amp;#x27;ll pay attention if I ever call and get his voicemail, but we don&amp;#x27;t speak often).</text></comment>
<story><title>Charge, a phone company with features for nerds</title><url>https://charge.co/for-nerds</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rsync</author><text>Ok, that&amp;#x27;s sort of workable ... EDIT: ok, actually not so much - if you are out of coverage area and your phone rings zero times and goes right to voicemail (that&amp;#x27;s how it works with carriers in the US) then the caller calls you and goes right to silence, and presumably they retry 1-2-3x and get frustrated ... not even sure this is the right number, etc.  Whereas if the phone just rang and rang and rang, at least it wouldn&amp;#x27;t be a bizarre outcome for them ...&lt;p&gt;I would also like the ability to play a message, but then have no ability to leave a message.&lt;p&gt;The lame way to do this is to let your vm inbox fill up, and then everyone gets the &amp;quot;the person you called is too stupid to figure out voicemail&amp;quot; message.&lt;p&gt;What I would like is an option to play a message (&amp;quot;hi you&amp;#x27;ve reached so and so and here is my email address and have a nice day!&amp;quot;) and then ... no beep ... no message ... nothing.  Maybe just pause a bit and then a fast-busy.[1]&lt;p&gt;How can I do things like this ?  I&amp;#x27;ve been meaning for years to self-provide my own dial tone in the same way I self-provide my own email, but I just don&amp;#x27;t have the time to get it all set up.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Reorder_tone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Reorder_tone&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>joshbaptiste</author><text>To get rid of VM notifications, I recorded 2 minute+ of silence as my VM greeting, zero VMs after that.</text></item><item><author>rsync</author><text>Can I have &lt;i&gt;no voicemail&lt;/i&gt; ?&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a feature I really want and it&amp;#x27;s not easy to do.&lt;p&gt;If you configure a mobile phone line without voicemail, it will &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; just ring and ring and ring (as I hoped it would) - instead, the caller gets a message that &amp;quot;the number you have dialed is not accepting calls at this time&amp;quot; ... or some other message (depending on the carrier) that makes it sound like you don&amp;#x27;t pay your phonebill or something.&lt;p&gt;I want my phone to ring and ring and ring until the caller gives up.  I &lt;i&gt;think&lt;/i&gt; I can do this with the twilio API, but man that&amp;#x27;s a lot of work for something (seemingly) simple.&lt;p&gt;edit:  this is the discussion I found that makes me think I could accomplish this with twilio:  &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stackoverflow.com&amp;#x2F;questions&amp;#x2F;22410430&amp;#x2F;twilio-respond-to-incoming-call-by-ringing-forever&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stackoverflow.com&amp;#x2F;questions&amp;#x2F;22410430&amp;#x2F;twilio-respond-t...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>usuallycharlie</author><text>You can use something like Vitelity vMobile which routes your cell phone as an extension to a PBX system&amp;#x2F;SIP server. This gives you total and complete control of what happens on incoming and outbound calls. For example, you could have your cell phone number give an IVR menu, ring forever, play hold music, you&amp;#x27;re only limited by your SIP server. This is the closest I&amp;#x27;ve seen to providing your own dialtone.&lt;p&gt;I used it for a while and the only con---and it is a major con for me---is that, like most innovative or unique MVNOs, it&amp;#x27;s riding on Sprint. And Sprint is &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; terrible, at least where I live, which made the service great, except that getting data to work often involved walking around in large circles til I was able to catch an LTE signal.</text></comment>