Backpacker Telecom

Posted on June 15, 2015

I have spent the last weekend in Lisbon Portugal after an invite from @sammachin to attend TADHack at the Institute of Superior Technology.

During the hackday I built a little hack to help me stay connected while traveling without breaking the bank using Truphone, Twilio and local data sims.

The hack even won a $1000 prize from Truphone.

It works like this:

• My O2 sim has unconditional call divert set to a UK based Twilio Number
• The Twilio number redirects forwarded calls my Truphone number
• I also can call or text an access number from any other phone to have my calls diverted to that number for 24 hours

This means I have a lot more control over my roaming costs and can decide how to take / make calls.

• Timezone based call control (no more 4am PPI calls)
• PayPhone reverse call. (call a number and get Twilio to call me back for 'free' calls)

I am just tidying up the code and will post it on GitHub soon.

I have the rest of the week in Lisbon to rest-up and get ready to head to Asia.