Dialplan: Prepending "*"
 

Below is my dialplan.
_18XXXXXXXXX *${EXTEN} FWD Yes

I perform a test and the call was forwarded to the right provider. However, why it didn't prepend the "*"? This was working yesterday.

A call to:18007425877 will get forwarded to sip:18007425877@tf.voipmich.com

FWD requires an * before dialing toll free number in US.

Thanks.

VoXaLot is doing an ENUM lookup and passing those calls to the result of that lookup instead of your selected provider (FWD).

Be aware that your dial plan entry will catch more than just toll-free numbers and even if they're passed to FWD, they won't go through.

Ron

Thanks Ron. It's working again.
On your first comment, do you mean my dialplan is incorrect? so that the call is passed to different VSP than the intended one?

What is tf.voipmich.com? I thought this is just one of FWD proxy.

May I know why my dialplan will catch more than just tollfree?

Thanks for your help.

I'm just saying that VoXaLot always does an ENUM lookup on your dialed number (unless you do something with the 'ENUM Replacement' field to make it fail). That's why your toll-free numbers are NOT going to FWD as expected (they're going to tf.voipmich.com).

_18XXXXXXXXX catches more than 800/888/877/866 (toll-free numbers). It also catches 818 (California), 801 (Utah), 830 (Texas), etc. numbers. You need something like:

_1800XXXXXXX *${EXTEN} Free World Dialup
_1888XXXXXXX *${EXTEN} Free World Dialup
_1877XXXXXXX *${EXTEN} Free World Dialup
_1866XXXXXXX *${EXTEN} Free World Dialup

to catch just toll-free numbers.

Ron

And then you need to corrupt the ENUM lookup value as well, so that these 800 numbers don't get redirected to voipmich. It is definitely not a FWD server. If it was going to FWD the dial test would tell you the FWD proxy as the address. I had this problem myself when I wanted toll-free to go through sipphone.com. I had to corrupt the ENUM lookup value so that it searched for some obviously nonexistent number, otherwise Voipmich "takes over" the call thanks to it being the providered registered with e164.org for nearly all toll-free numbers.

Sorry for my ignorance. How do I corrupt the ENUM lookup?

voipmich.com is also free, like FWD, right?

Thanks.

There's nothing (that I know of) wrong with allowing tf.voipmich.com to handle toll-free calls instead of FWD. I also set up entries to pass toll-free calls to FWD also because my default provider (Gizmo Project) used to bill for toll-free calls. I then discovered they were being routed to tf.voipmich.com instead due to ENUM, but concluded this was just fine. Should tf.voipmich.com stop providing this service (and nobody else picks it up), then the ENUM lookups will fail and my toll-free calls will go to FWD as originally intended. I think the current situation is best of all worlds.

Ron

EXCELLENT RON. Thank you all for answering all my questions.

While Ron is correct, if you have a good provider that does it well and you trust them, then it makes sense to go with them. So personally I call toll-free through my Gizmo Project account, but if they started charging again or quality suffered, I too would reconsider Voipmich or FWD for placing my calls.

The way to corrupt them is to add something like 0123 before the ENUM replacement value, so the lookup can't find any record in ENUM.