Masking my landline's outgoing number, with another phone number.

July 6, 2011 7:20 AM

I just moved to a new part of the state, and had a landline telephone installed through my local telco. I asked if they could port my old number (123)-xxx-xxxx to my new landline, and they said my old number was not in the same "Rate Center". I confirmed that they were telling the truth based on this AskMeFi post. I have the option to enable call forwarding from my old number to my new landline, which takes care of incoming calls. Now I am turning to you, the hivemind, to find out how to dial out from my new landline, and have my old number, (123)-xxx-xxxx, show up on other peoples' caller ID. I've done some searching and found a bunch of convoluted VoIP setups that would achieve this solution for me, but I'm not that technical, and I don't want to have to dial a million numbers just to make a single phone call from my land-line. Does the hive mind have any simple solutions?
posted by WhereAmI to technology (4 answers total)

Non pertinent to your actual question, but you could port your old number to Google Voice. If you do that, there are several ways to place calls through GV that would show your old number's caller ID.

Or why not port your old number to a cell phone?
posted by Gridlock Joe at 7:47 AM on July 6, 2011

Google Voice would be my suggestion, too. Use a speed-dial function on a landline phone to do the millions of numbers for you. Read your phone's manual—its speed-dial might have a pause function where you can program in a pause to wait for Google Voice (or some other service) to pick up and then press the next number for you.
posted by grouse at 7:55 AM on July 6, 2011

It would be nice if there were a phone out there that automatically dialed the Google Voice/VoIP/Etc. numbers by default every time I placed an outgoing call without my interaction.

Does anyone know if this exists?
posted by WhereAmI at 1:27 PM on July 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

The OBi100 is a little VoIP bridge that allows you to place and receive calls via Google voice from a normal phone.
posted by cspurrier at 8:06 PM on July 10, 2011