With further restrictions on the Google Voice mobile app and lots of connections back in the United States, it was finally time for me to build a better solution.

I had already ported my old US cell phone number to Twilio before leaving the US but just getting voicemail transcripts and the option for passthrough to my UK number wasn’t enough. I wanted to be able to call any number I wanted at a reasonable rate.

The easiest option was building in the javascript API. Whenever I had good internet, I now had the ability to bridge a webRTC voice channel to any number I wanted.

What was still missing was for me to be able to use my normal UK talk time (unlimited) to talk to someone on a POTS line in the US, only paying for the call in Twilio.

I added a tiny bit of persistent state to my application that allows you to store the outgoing phone number of who I would like to reach. When my virtual UK number receives a call from my UK phone, it will patch the call through to that number and we can both talk without using any data.

When I want to change which number it will connect to, it is just a few bytes of data.

I would love to show off the tool but my Twilio account is not that large :)