VANITY--Alternates to Google Voice

[AbolishCSEU]

Currently using Google Voice for my husband's micro business with an obihai box over IP. Wondering it that number is portable to a different service?

Just looking at my pi-hole's query logs shows lots of google activity. No longer trust Google voice not to boot us off aka in Parleresque, Amazonian fashion.

Any advice? Thanks in advance.

[Jonty30]

Is Dragon voice still available?

It would have much improved over the last twenty years, if it has.

[Jonty30]

They call it Dragon speech now.

There are probably alts in the playstore.

[CA_soon_gone]

I’ve be using it with Obi for a long time. Several years ago it was shut down for this sort of app. There were many other services available that worked with Obi. Most were not free but still cheap. Yes, your number will port.

[AbolishCSEU]

Looking specifically for a paid for service. Not sure if the dragon you are talking about is part of Dragon Naturally Speaking which I am not very thrilled about.
Has anyone tried grasshopper?

[MercyFlush]

If you’re serious about your privacy then buy a firewall and lock down all of the Google and etc. telemetry sites and ports.

[off-roader]

Look at VoIP.ms

Superb service all around.

[CA_soon_gone]

Obi has a list of other providers on their site.

[sauropod]

I use Dragon, but not online.

[Pollard]

Dragon Speech has been around a long time. I played with it once probably 15 years ago. Win 98 I think.

[familyop]

I don’t even know what Google Voice is. One general problem, though, is that too many people are dumbing down and becoming too attached to bloated, closed source, proprietary applications with too many unneeded features and bugs.

[AbolishCSEU]

tried ubiquiti. did.not.like

[familyop]

If it’s a VOIP package, then consider voip.ms. It’s much more secure, private, and has many useful features. But it is for grownups, who aren’t afraid of services that don’t provide big marketing or pacifiers.

[familyop]

"If you’re serious about your privacy then buy a firewall and lock down all of the Google and etc. telemetry sites and ports."

Yes. And find another app store. Use a VPN with the phones. There's also F-Droid, for those who don't mind going a little further.

[AbolishCSEU]

thanks. looking into it.

[willyd]

Use TWilio and you can route the calls to your cell phone or obi device.

You can also have an ext tree, office greeting etc...

Number are $1-3 per month plus 1.5 - 3 cents per minute. If you need help setting it up let me know.

[daniel1212]

They call it Dragon speech now.

Dragon speech is overpriced speech to text software that is perhaps purposely under developed, with even upgrades costing a lot. What the OP is looking for is VOIP software. Maybe10 Best Free Internet Phone Calls Apps (January 2021) www.lifewire.com › Apps › Best Apps"> this will help. Google voice is free and you can make phone calls with any voice device that connects to the Internet. I sometimes use it for a non-activated Galaxy S6 that a brother (in Christ) gave me. Google should listen to what we say about what is actually evil versus good.

[daniel1212]

Oops. The link is https://www.lifewire.com/free-internet-phone-calls-1356646

[daniel1212]

As regards speech to text software, Windows 10 provides its own by default but it is bad. And Dragon is very expensive, so I went looking for free software, and so far I have found https://www.speechtexter.com to be quite good. I am using the $10.00 ZELIER USB Computer Microphone, with Volume Control,Mute Button&LED Indicator,PC Condenser Mic, which is not the best but none of the analog mics I have had were satisfactory either, but this one is easy to use (except that it turns itself back on when the PC comes out of sleep). Below is my brief test in which Speech Texter typed what I said. It made some mistakes "softwareoh" and in the 4th sentence but if I had spoken clearer and slower than it would have done better:

hi, I am testing the speech texture application on the Chrome browser. I can see that it does not recognize its own name, which is speechtexter, except that is two words. In any case, the voice recognition on this application is far far better than Windows 10 own speech-to-text softwareoh, and it is better than Dragon software which I have used in the past, at least up to version 11. However this application is free. I am using a USB microphone and I will give you the name later. While you were speaking, you can see what understand you were saying to a visible pop up above the text box. You do need to add punctuation, and I probably have missed some here. This is about all I'm going to say for now, but maybe everything that we say and do give glory to God, thanks be to him.