Second business number fixed on your mobile or app? Which is better?

If you've registered your phone number with Belfabriek, you can set up how you want the calls to be received. For instance, do you want your mobile phone to always ring when a call comes in, even when you don't have the app on? You can: give us your mobile phone number and we will forward all incoming calls to your mobile phone.

We can also play an announcement tone so that when you answer your phone on the mobile you will hear and know that it is an incoming business call.

Easily separate business and personal calls

This way you can easily have business and personal calls coming in separately on 1 mobile phone. You have a business telephone number and a private mobile number on 1 phone. In other words: fixed on mobile.

We forward calls directly to your mobile. You do not have to install an app to receive these calls. We make a routing in our telecom switches, where we put the incoming call traffic directly back on the telephony network to the mobile operators through our interconnection with these parties. This may cost a little more on our side, but it means you get the best call quality. Billions of euros have been invested in the mobile networks and in the technology to wake up a sleeping phone in your pocket when a call comes in for you through the masts. We are happy to deliver the phone calls to your mobile via this official interconnection. This way, you can be sure that you won't miss any calls.

Delivery via softphone

The other way to deliver calls to your mobile is via a softphone, a piece of software that you install on your mobile phone and which waits for a command ('there is an incoming call') and then starts up. A connection is then established over the Internet to your mobile phone and the telephone call is made in this way.

The call is thus not completed via the mobile operators' network, and this saves on the interconnection charges that apply to the completion of a mobile call. After all, the telephone call has now become packets of data that pass back and forth. The mobile networks see data, not voice, and this traffic is included in your data bundle (check if you have unlimited data in your voice bundle, otherwise you will still pay for this call, which would seem to be cheaper).

Disadvantages voice over data traffic

However, there is a big but... You can of course transport voice over the Internet and that works very well over fixed Internet connections, between office locations and between home locations, but a voice connection between a fixed device and a mobile device or between two mobile devices over the mobile network is and remains difficult.
That is why the mobile networks have made a distinction between voice traffic (which is charged in minutes and runs through your mobile number) and data traffic (which is charged in gigabytes).

Voice traffic is given priority and is handled in a special way over the mobile networks. It is always more expensive than an ordinary internet package. Why? Because voice is more sensitive. You don't want echoes, hiccups, delays and, of course, you always want your phone to ring when a call comes in!

So you've read about mobile interconnection rates, voice and data traffic, and you know that voice requires a little more attention and prioritisation in the networks. And that your mobile phone itself, hardware-wise, reacts to the mobile networks. When a big player like Vodafone or T-Mobile activates or expands a mobile network, they only do so with equipment of which they know for sure that is fully tuned to all mobile devices available. It has thus become one working whole, and the mobile phone always works as usual.

Voice over internet to your mobile phone: how it works

Now we come to perhaps the most important part: voice over internet to your mobile phone.

Over the years, there are always start-ups trying to reinvent telephony or make it cheaper. How? By developing apps on which you can receive incoming calls. However, this set-up will never give the same quality and especially reliability as offering voice to a mobile phone via the voice network of the mobile operators. And now you know why: voice is just a bit more special than data, it requires more specialisation and has a higher price.
On the other hand, imagine that everyone installs an app on their mobile phone, we let the calls come in via the data network of the mobile operators, we pay data and no interconnection, that saves millions if not billions! Unfortunately, this does not work. So why not?

The main reason is that apps are no longer active after a certain time. They go into sleep mode. This is to save the battery of your mobile. If you haven't started your app at all, it won't go into sleep mode and won't work at all.

That's (in a nutshell) why delivering 100% reliable calls to your mobile phone won't work. Not ever.

A mobile phone should last as long as possible in terms of battery life. This is what users want, they want to charge their phone at night and the next morning have a full battery that will last all day. And you can't do that if you put your phone on all day with the app on. So the app goes into sleep mode after a while, or it's not active at all if you haven't started it up every day.

There are work-arounds, of course. There are even official protocols that allow you to remotely start or wake up apps. Only: it never works as reliably as the official route of offering a call through the mobile interconnection to your mobile phone. There are always times when your app does not start, or starts too late. You can never be 100% sure of this. So the status of your mobile phone is important: is it in lock mode?

Read about it at Apple or on the Reddit forum Voip Push Not Received.

You can also Google on: Voip App Does Not Wake Up On Call

You will also often read good reviews of parties who deliver calls via the app: Consider then: when people test a service, they have the app open, and in 99% of the cases it goes well. It's only after a day or two that it starts showing hiccups and: how do you know you're missing a call? The caller is unlikely to call you again, or email you.

About the Belfabriek Softphone

Belfabriek also has a softphone, and a good one too, and it works on both mobile and computer. And it has all the protocols (CallKit Apple) and push notifications that we use to get this working. But: our softphones are primarily used on computers (you can then call with a headset and you no longer need the desk phone) and not so often on mobile phones. Or the softphone is used to make outgoing calls with your business phone number. Yes, that always works well too.

Reliable fixed-to-mobile solution for all

We can't think of an industry or profession where the customer says: I want a fixed-to-mobile solution and I don't mind missing a call now and then. Perhaps the festival organiser who expected a lot of traffic on two days, worked with volunteers and had no budget. And if a caller couldn't get through, the connection was bad or they had to call again, that was no problem.

But the veterinarian, nail studio, painter and other self-employed people who find every phone call important and who have to assume that it will come through: it's good to know that Belfabriek redirects every phone call from fixed to mobile in the official way, via its own interconnection to the mobile operators!

So register now your own phone number and let your calls be perfectly forwarded to your mobile ! Without hiccups ! And with functions such as call recording, a choice menu or welcome text !