Hello BP community,

I need help setting up a telephone line for my VA in the Philippines. I know there are more than a handful of services that I can use with this. I guess my question is, does my VA have to use her own phone? Do they need extra equipment? What is the step by step guide on having my VA up and running with the telephone line? Thanks for you time.

@Noel John Cabrigas Does you virtual assistant have to use her own phone? Depends, if you want her to use a desk phone only or a cell phone?

See, having them use a US cell phone overseas is going to be very expensive, so she will have to have her own cell phone where you can forward all the calls to.

There are tons of ways to do this, as you said but i have see Vonage working very well. you can get a local California number and calls will land on vonage landline phone at her desk. She has an option to forward the calls to her local Philippines cell phone if she likes or a hybrid where landline rings for 15 seconds and then on cell for for 15 seconds before going to voice mail.

Hope this helps

Thanks @Mohit Madaan ! I knew there had to be a simpler way. Thanks for your response. That helped clear things up. I'm leaning towards Vonage as well. 

Originally posted by @Noel John Cabrigas :

Thanks @Mohit Madaan! I knew there had to be a simpler way. Thanks for your response. That helped clear things up. I'm leaning towards Vonage as well. 

 Make sure to have Vonage device shipped to you first and then you ship it to them in philli (Vonage won't ship directly to Phillipines). They dont' need a device if they are going to take only inbound calls, you can just forward the calls to their local cell phone using online vonage tools. They DO need it, if they plan on returning calls or making alot of outbound calls.

You may want to consider running them through skype.  Skype allows for inbound and outbound calls and you can get them local numbers.  You can also track all their calls they are making and receiving as well.  We have used it with great success for several years with all of our VAs.