Main reason Free Calls, also calling direct means HD codecs with better sound then a traditional phone call can be used.
When you dial a number it goes to sipsorcery in this form FromName<PhoneNumber@sipsorcery.com> no different then an email address. Your dialplan will take the User part the phone number and send it to your sip provider to make a more local call over the traditional phone network at a small charge passed back to you.
Many soft phones allow you to dial a full sip address letters and numbers like this example test number 1234@loligo.com directly into the phone so you can call them free of any traditional phone network charge. This is what the sip block is for.
This is where Enum Calling is a good idea. You have your traditional phone number and your sipsorcery sip:address entered together in a Enum database (e164.org). If someone calling your phone number has a service using Enum lookup they can end up calling you for free on your sip:address and vice versa.
Dialplan to dial SIP URI?
Thanks for your explanation. I understood it now.mnipp wrote:Main reason Free Calls, also calling direct means HD codecs with better sound then a traditional phone call can be used.
I implemented the method tonight and monitored the "Console" during my testing. It's confirmed what I learned here.
For a SIP URI dial (such as Blueface clock or CNN news), actually these is no GV CB involved. like you said, it's a "free call". I also believe the audio quality is better than those via GV CB.
For a non-SIP URI call (like NBC weather or Google 411), the calling process on console tells me that it goes through using GV CB.