Get a landline at your computer with google voice + skypein + regular phone

I have an iPhone and on the AT&T network. Even though I live in a city that has huge population of highly paid professionals AT&T signal in my house sucks. I have to go out to make a phone call and sometimes words just cut off. At the same point during different times of the day I will have different signal ranging from 0-5. I even did badly in one phone interview due to my damned iPhone and AT&T. Hence started my quest to solve this problem.

Attempt #1

I tried calling AT&T and explaining my problem. They simply don't care and my bad singal reception is due to the building materials of house. Their recommendation - buy a signal booster. So in addition to the m

oney I spend for the monthly bill I have to buy an additional device just to make the phone work? This is stupid.

Attempt #2

The next option I tried is to get a landline phone and use it as a home phone. This is the traditional(and age old) approach of doing things. First I checked the prices and AT&T, comcast are just out of proportion. Though quest had a decent plan with $13/pm and no contract and other strings, I can make only local calls without additional bill. Local means only numbers in my area code, this does not include even my cellphone, so this is not an option either.

Attempt #3

Since I am paying $50 for the internet connection anyway I thought I should be able to use the newer technologies out there to solve my problem.

I have Skype installed but their calling features are not cheap and you don't get a dedicated number. Though Skype has excellent VOIP call quality it doesn't work alone for me. I can' ask people to call me on skype handle :)

Attempt #4

I already have a google voice account and I am using it to get a local number and to route to my cell phone. Google voice is one of most useful products by Google and has many advanced features that try to mimic the features of email to a phone number. Features like call forwarding, online voice mail, voice mail transcripts, number blocking etc makes you feel like you this is the next evolution of the phone. But for me this does not solve the problem because even though google voice routes the calls the signal is crappy on my cell phone. There used to be a service called Gizmo which offers a free number that integrates perfectly with google voice. So some one can call you on the google voice number, which routes to gizmo and you can pick calls from there. But unfortunately Gizmo is now out of service or rather in

development of newer features and has been acquired by Google. So there is some hope for this nice integration but that's not going to happen anytime soon.

Attempt #5

So my quest has now become to create a online number that I can use in conjunction with Google voice. I've searched several services for this - VOIP buster etc they are not free. One service that's free works with extension number is ring2skype.com it works as expected with extension but google voice can't press extension numbers so this too does not work.

Final breakthrough

My solution came in when I decided to some money for getting a number. So I used SkypeIN to get a number. The actual number is irrelevant as long as it is a US number. I use it only for rerouting through google voice. So I paid $18 for three months and got a number. I added this number in my google voice phones. And made this number receive calls first. So whenever I get a call on my google voice number, it gets routed to

skypeIn number, which then routes to skype, so I can enjoy speaking over skype at my computer.

The setup requires to spend some money but it is totally worth it! Once again the steps

1. Download Skype.
2. Buy an online number from Skype
3. Add a phone in google voice using this number
4. Install google voice plugin for chrome (optional)
5. Make calls from your desk by clicking on the phone number and selecting SkypeIN
6. Talk from your computer
7. Receive calls on your computer through skype.