Please recommend SIP voicemail software [closed]

Question

My ISP offers some VoIP service which is provided via the same network cable as internet does. The ISP techsupport claims that the only known ways of connection allowing me to use VoIP is such that VoIP phone or VoIP gateway is placed between my computer/router and ISP.

I don't have VoIP phone nor VoIP gateway and want to avoid buying one and pretty sure that I can use offered VoIP service from my PC directly. Probably All I need is the proper VoIP software. I don't know which one will suite me, though.

I'm using Windows Vista and want to primarily use VoIP service for voice mail (in fact voice mail is the only thing I need, but other features like normal calls can be handy too).

There are also some parameters which may be important for the software selection: Speech encoding: G.711a, G.711u, DTMF - RFC2833.

The ISP says what following hardware is recommended for it's VoIP service:

VoIP phones:

• Fanvil BW-210
• Zyxel V301-T1
• Grandstream BT-100
• WellTech LP-388
• NSGate 3388
• Nag SNR-VP-6020
• D-Link DPH-120S

VoIP gateways:

• Grandstream НТ-502
• Welltech ATA-172

The question: Is there are any software solutions which will suite my needs? If so, which ones?

Update: AFAIK SIP-phone abilities isn't limited to only outgoing calls and in case of ordinary phone connected to SIP provider via SIP-gateway it's possible to use voice mail feature of the ordinary phone (if that phone have this feature of course). In that case I don't need to use voice mail service from my SIP-provider. If above is correct then I'm pretty sure that I can run some software which will emulate voice mailbox on my PC.

Answer 1

The short answer is yes. There are software solutions that could suit your needs. You can use Google voice or Skype and purchase a number so that people can call you from non-VOIP phones and then pay for credit to make calls.

There are a couple of issues with this though. First of all, your computer will need to be on all the time for you to receive calls and secondly, you will need to be at your computer to take the call (or you can purchase some sort of wireless handset).

Using a gateway and a dedicated handset removes those requirements but you would still need a SIP provider, such as Skype to connect the gateway to.

Answer 2

Wikipedia's got a comprehensive List of SIP software, take your pick.

Answer 3

Ekiga, SIP Communicator, QuteCom, and X-Lite (in no particular order) are a few from the Wikipedia list that operate on Windows. It doesn't really matter which you use for voicemail. The voicemail itself is stored on the server and you simply call yourself to listen to the messages. I'd imagine each of the previous clients are able to notify you of new voicemail messages.

Answer 4

If all you want to do is listen to voicemail, you may not need any special hardware or software. Many VoIP providers, including Google Voice, Vonage, and Ooma, allow you to listen to your voicemail using your regular web browser.