Once you become a remote worker you may decide to travel around the world, but if you are a contractor or run a company you may need to be able to receive calls locally from your customers. However, using roaming is not always an option, here’s a simple guide to follow if you need to have a dedicated telephone line to be able to receive calls in a country and forward them to your phone (or your employees’) in another country.

In this guide (or rather collection of guides) I will show you how to use Twilio as a tool to keep your communications flexible, but before getting started there are 2 other options you should consider: Buying a Skype number and using Google voice.

Google voice is an excellent solution if you already have a US number but it may be the case that you either don’t have one or don’t want to use the one you already have.

On the other hand, Skype allows you to get a new number but it is also limited to 25 countries and you must pay a monthly fee.

Meanwhile, Twilio requires a monthly flat fee and you will have to “pay as you go” for every minute that you talk, so why even consider it at all in the face of 2 good alternatives?

Here’s why: Nerdyness & adaptability.

Both, Skype and Google voice, are straightforward and easy to set up and forget, meanwhile, Twilio is a real challenge for those who like to brag on the complexity and obscureness of their international calls set-up. Twilio is a tool for developers and businesses, it takes the mindset of a tinker to prefer it to simpler alternatives.

Then, there’s the fact that Twilio is a whole platform with programmable solutions that can come in handy down the road when you are trying to run a business or consultancy. If you’re a company setting up numbers for a remote workforce then Twilio should be definitively be your go-to solution because you will be able to customize it to your company structure. For example, employee X left the company and you got a new hire? no problem, just remove X’s credentials from the system and forward the calls intended for him to the new hire or the person responsible to fill the gap.

Now let’s see how to set up some basic systems.

How to deploy phone call systems for a remote workforce

This guide is a list of sub-guides from various resources that you can follow in order to get a handle of how to get started with the platform, just follow the links embeded in each step and in the end you will be able to forward calls and SMS to yourself or to any of your employees/colleagues around the world.

Step 1: Create a Twilio account (disclosure: this link is a referral you can use if you wish to support me, you will get 10 USD of credit for using it).

Step 2: Once you register you must upgrade your account and add credit

Step 3: When your account has been set up you will need to buy a phone number.

Step 4: configure the geographic permissions to be able to receive & make calls in the countries where your team is actually located.

Step 5: Set up Twilio to accept and receive calls in your smartphone (or alternatively on the desktop client of zoiper).

Step 6: Last but not least, configure Twilio to forward SMS to your phone (or email!).

After doing that you should be ready to have a globetrotter consulting service, if you have employees, you can create new credential lists and/or numbers for them, once they leave the company you can discard the existing credentials and re-purpose existing numbers for new employees taking their roles.

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