OT: Ok I know there are some cell phone nerds here, so here is my question. Can I find an app that I can set to answer the call on the first ring, then play music I have on my phone while I decide if I want to take the call, then if I don’t take the call actually go to voice mail on my phone and store the message left on my phone instead of at the server level. In other words can my phone take over and be the server so that I don’t have to pay my provider to be the server.
When someone calls you a paging channel is setup. This channel is a simple low bandwidth that is one way only. The music is being played by the voicemail server while it waits for you to pickup.
What you are proposing means that the phone would have to respond… create a traffic channel, which you are paying for / being billed against, and removing the voicemail server out of the loop.
So no… There is no app that does what you are proposing because the infastructure doesn’t support what you want to do with it.
The voicemail server is always involved. You never circumnavigate it. Your phone does not recieve the voicemail directly rather the voicemail system stores it. Then it sends out a page to your phone that there is a VM waiting across the paging channel. Your phone starts what is basically a phone call to the server, unbeknownst to you, and downloads the vm.
I’ve seen some people do similar things using Google Voice. Your callers would call a Google Voice number and then you have some control over where it rings, you may be able to even listen in to the voice mail to screen the call and answer anyway (stealing them back from voicemail like an old-school answering machine).
One confusing thing I’ve heard about this setup is that Google Voice would be your voicemail, but in rare circumstances a caller might end up at your cell provider’s voicemail. This might be undesirable because you might not want them to leave the message there, might never check it, etc.
If you commited to such a scheme, you could transfer your existing number to Google Voice, and then get a new one for your cell phone. You should have some latitude in terms of how you want to route calls (i.e., you could set some numebrs to ring straight through to your cell phone, others would go to voice-limbo ring back, others would never get through, etc.).
I’m not an expert in this type of thing, but I know a few people who use rather exotic setups like I’m describing and seem to like them just fine.
Maybe there is an HP/Google engineer listening in on this and will give the people what they want,control over ringback/ringtone choices. I’m pretty sure the FBI can already call a cell phone, have it answer automatically and listen in on whoever they want. If not then maybe they should talk to Rupert Murdoch to learn how it’s done.
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