Telephones
From BiOrgResources
The Internet is a great resource for free or very cheap ways to publicise and provide information about an event. A really important factor for organisations with little or no money.
Despite the Internet seeming to be ubiquitous to those who use it regularly, many people still don't have access to suitably private Internet access or the technology required to access it. Many people's access is not good enough for them to rely on it for finding out about bi community events.
Having alternatives such as telephone contacts is an important accessibility consideration, even though they may cost some money to implement. I'm aware many of us don't like phones, but do ask your local group, there's often one person willing to look after phone stuff.
I (Barakta) am happy to consider talking people through phone stuff, best way to contact me is my email on barakta at gmail.com
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Telephone service costs are a good thing to mention when applying for any kind of funding bid.
Mobile phones
- Ask your local bi people for old handsets + at least one charger (more are always useful)
- Get a Pay As You Go SIM card from whichever provider you can find.
- Ask your group if they are willing to donate a few pounds to cover call costs/voicemail etc £5-£10 as a starting amount is good for this.
- Returning text messages will cost 5-12p a go, so might be a viable option if calls are very expensive, but balance this against whether the recipient is likely to be comfortable with texts
Advantages of a mobile is that it is portable so can be taken to your meets and answered while you are there when people get lost or anxious about whether you are there.
A Sipgate Account?
Sipgate are a company who provide connectivity to the telephone network (PSTN) using SIP. Primarily intended for providing a VOIP phone or software client with the ability to make and receive 'normal' phone calls, often at a lower cost than that of a traditional telephone line.
Sipgate will, at no cost to the user, allocate a normal geographic (01 or 02) phone number to an account, which can be used to receive calls over SIP. They also provide a free-of-charge voicemail service which calls may be diverted to in the absence of connected SIP client.
Therefore, without having to know anything about VOIP or SIP, Sipgate's service may be used to obtain a free-of-charge UK geographic number, with new voicemail messages automatically emailed to the user as a sound file and the option of calls being forwarded to another phone number on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Registering with Sipgate
- Go to Sipgate at http://www.sipgate.co.uk/user/index.php
- Click on the sign up for free now link on the front page.
- Select Country and Area Code of residence from the drop down menus.
- Select the type of number you want (local area code, 0845 or 0870)
- Select a number from the list (there may only be one) and click continue
- Provide the following info on the form:
- A username & password
- An email address (they will use this to send you activation info)
- A gender (yes this brings up Mr and Ms - don't ask! Sadly it's mandatory)
- A first name and last name
- Optional company name
- An address, inc City and Postcode
- A Tel number (Optional)
- A birth date
- Internet access (if your ISP is not listed, scroll down to select other)
- Read the terms and conditions and check the box
- Decide if you wish to subscribe to the free email Sipgate newsletter
- Copy the captcha info into the appropriate box and click finish registration
- If there are any errors it will ask you to correct them without refilling the entire form.
- Successful registration should give a page asking you to check your email.
- You will receive an email containing "thank you for signing up for sipgate.co.uk"
- You need to click on the activation link within 24 hours
If you want to forward calls from your sipgate account, or make calls via your sipgate account you will need to add credit to your account.
You can leave up to about 50 seconds worth of "message" before the voicemail bit, with practice this is enough time to quickly list the date/time/location/cost of your event and sound welcoming to your caller.
Setting up a VOIP client is at this point left as an exercise for the reader. There are instructions on the sipgate website.
Experiences of phones in real situations
I am leaving this section here for people to add a few lines or words about their experiences.
Natalya with SipGate voicemail system for Brum BiFest 2009
I set SipGate up to divert voicemails to my email from a Birmingham (local) number as mp3 files. I then returned calls as soon as I could. I received about 5 calls on it which sounds few but is more than email (zero), AND every single caller showed up to BiFest and expressed relief/thanks/other and said it was important to them that they had some kind of 'personal' 'human' contact. They liked to have a person with a name who they could say "Will I be able to meet you" "who do I ask for?"
As I'm partially-deaf I sometimes needed a hearing volunteer to transcribe the voicemails. I returned each call via relay/TTY (TextRelay/TypeTalk) within a couple of days of receiving voicemail. I used my own phoneline with 141 to withhold the number so people didn't get my home number as I am using a hardware TTY/Textphone/Minicom but a hearie could use software configured with the SipGate number.
Additionally as a random specific to me datapoint 4 of my 5 phone people were fine with me using relay operators and didn't think it unprofessional. One caller got confused by relay cos of lack of experience/knowledge of it and language barriers which I worked around by sending an SMS after the confused relay call and communicating effectively that way.
-- Natalya organiser of Brum BiFest 2009.
