Landline to mobile number without an actual landline.

Our landline numbers, we love them, don't want to lose them, but it's expensive to keep paying for the landline each month.

With the NBN rolling out, those who wish to have NBN internet services, keeping the landline is fairly easy. But if you mostly use a mobile phone and only keep the landline number so others can call you, there's a couple of alternatives and it can save you money.

I'm not a fan of Vodafone, but I do use their services. Recently we dropped the landline, increased out data allowance (which is shared across  two mobiles) and moved the landline number to one of the mobiles so if someone calls the old landline number it goes to the mobile.

With Vodafone you need to be on a plan, but it only costs $5 a month to port your landline number to Vodafone and then Vodafone redirects the number to a nominated mobile on the Vodafone plan. I called Vodafone help and they didn't know about the service so expect staff not to know. Here's a link to an article on the Vodafone site and it's called the Vodafone Mobile Landline Service. If you let Vodafone staff know the name of the service they'll quickly find they do have it.

Keep in mind it takes 15 plus days for the service to be ported. In addition once ported you need to advise your old telco to cancel the service or they'll just keep charging you. Vodafone advised me I didn't need to do anything, but after the number was ported and calls were going to the mobile, I could still call out on the landline which meant I still needed to cancel the service with the old telco.

Overall apart from Vodafone staff not knowing their products, the service is working well. When people call the old landline number it simply goes to the mobile. They aren't aware and it doesn't cost them anything different from what they'd pay to call you. That is if they called your landline number for a local call that's all they pay even though the call goes through to your mobile. Also you don't pay extra for the redirection as you would if you redirect your landline number to your mobile.

The one thing callers will do is if they don't get you on the landline, they'll then try you on the mobile, which of course now the same thing.

The problem with Vodafone is you need to be on a Vodafone service. So far there's only one other service provider I've found in Australia that provides a similar service and that is Click Broadband. I've not tested their service so I have no actual experience. In theory it looks OK.

Click Broadband have a service called Landline Connect. The service enables you to redirect your landline phone number to your mobile (any Australian mobile service provider) and then disconnect your landline service. The cost is $10 a month.

As you only receive calls and can't make calls using the number there is no additional charge. Calls to the landline number are the same as calling a regular landline number. There's no additional cost for the redirect.

If you decide down the track to redirect your landline number to a difference mobile number you can put in a request with Click Broadband.

You can find details on the Click Broadband Landline Connect Service here.

Finally I just received feedback from a client  using their broker that Telstra is also able to redirect the landline number to a mobile without having the landline. What the final cost will be with Telstra however, I don't know.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support

Adsense ads no longer working on my websites. Adsense ad unit deleted.

Recently I got the following notification in my Adsense account and didn't think too much about it.

"We found your ad code on one or more sites that aren't on your Sites list. To avoid lost revenue, make sure you add all your sites to this list."

Next I found a couple of my sites stopped displaying the Adsense ads. Again I'd seen ads not display so I wasn't too concerned. Once I started checking things out more I then found Google's made a few significant changes.

One thing I didn't expect is that Google had completely deleted the Ad Units from Adsense and not added the site to the Sites list. I've never added a site to the Sites list so this must have been done by Google using a bot.

First I added one of the sites to the list of sites. This is a new change for Adsense. The Sites option has been moved higher and is more obvious. From what I've read in around October 2018 Google decided to start putting more time into reviewing new sites so now you need to add additional code to your site and the site gets reviewed as to whether or not the site is suitable for Adsense.

The second thing that happened is Google Adsense went back and reviewed a couple of my sites and found they didn't have sufficient content and were now barred from showing ads. The sites have been showing ads for years. I get the first site (https://www.Mapz.com.au) being barred as the main page really is a table of contents to the 14 sections of the site plus one external site. Not much content there so I understand Google Adsense's approach.

I went back and added more content and submitted the site but it was still barred.

The second issue is one of the sites listed is an external site (https://www.NearestTrainStation.com.au) and that site too has been barred from using Adsense. I have quite a few other similar sites that have not been barred, so linking from the Mapz site has probably resulted in the Google bots somehow associating the sites. It could also mean many of my other sites may eventually be impacted in the same way and that's very concerning.

I've always felt Google Adsense is an exposure as at any time Google can decide what you're doing isn't acceptable and you no longer have access to Google Adsense. Since I can't get the sites to meet the terms of Adsense, the simplest approach has been to use a different adveristing approach for those sites I can no longer use Adsense. Not ideal but not much I can do about it.

The real concern going forward is what will Google Adsense do with my other sites. I need a proven alternate to Google Adsense. It's always good to have multiple strategies in case one strategy ceases to work.

Hopefully since many of the sites I have, have been added to the Sites list by Google, this means those sites won't be impacted. I suspect since a bot went through the sites to add to the Sites list, that at the same time the bot was looking for non-compliance. Since the Mapz site was non-compliant, the Nearest Train Station site being linked, was found to also be non-compliant. This could be the end of it, or it could be the first stage of Google going through sites and additional sites may be found to be non-compliant. Only time will tell.

As a side note, this is the first time I've seen an impact with Google where one site has been impacted which has been linked to from another site. Other similar sites have not been impacted.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support.

Setting up Google Chromecast to a mobile hotspot on a mobile phone.

Recently I went completely mobile for accessing the internet, ditching the ADSL2+ broadband and landline. When you make a change like this you need to make sure you don't lose any services you currently use. The Google Chromecast is one such service.

Google Chromecast is relatively easy to set up normally. The hotspot in your home is usually the Wi-Fi access point, which is also your router and ADSL modem, or cable modem. Because your mobile phone and Google Chromecast connect to the Wi-Fi access point everything tends to work OK.

However, if you want to ditch the home broadband and go mobile, you need to set up the Google Chromecast to use your mobile phone as the hotspot. Therein lies the problem. When setting up a Google Chromecast the set up steps need to use Wi-Fi, this disables the hotspot, which means the Google Chromecast can't access a network.

There's an easy way to work around this issue. Set up your mobile phone as the hotspot. Now get a second mobile phone and connect the second mobile to your hotspot. Use Google Home on the second mobile phone to set up the Google Chromecast with the Google Chromecast using your first mobile phone as the hotspot and network. Once the set up is complete the second mobile is no longer required.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support.