You can plug a crdelss phone into the Magic jack for portable use around your home. My old Panasonic phones cover my whole property.
-- Subject: Spelling Lesson The last four letters in American.........I Can The last four letters in Republican.......I Can The last four letters in Democrats.........Rats End of lesson. Test to follow in November, 2016 Remember, November is to be set aside as rodent extermination month.
Find someone local who has the Magicjack+, and borrow it to test it.
The app works on cell phone, tablets or computers.
-- Subject: Spelling Lesson The last four letters in American.........I Can The last four letters in Republican.......I Can The last four letters in Democrats.........Rats End of lesson. Test to follow in November, 2016 Remember, November is to be set aside as rodent extermination month.
My broadband ISP has 450,000 free hotspots that I can connect to. All it takes is to st up a free account on their website, then configure the device to use it. They also offer a locator app for their hotpots. A lot of free hotspots at stores as well.
-- Subject: Spelling Lesson The last four letters in American.........I Can The last four letters in Republican.......I Can The last four letters in Democrats.........Rats End of lesson. Test to follow in November, 2016 Remember, November is to be set aside as rodent extermination month.
Yes, I know, but that's not what I'm looking for. I want a single phone, or more importantly, a single phone number I can use everywhere I go, including places that have Internet access, but no (or very poor) cell coverage. One of my houses really sucks when it comes to cell phone coverage. It works when it wants to work. Connecting through my WISP modem would be great.
-- Rick C
I tried Nettalk, but if it doesn't work well, does that mean it's my connection or Nettalk's servers suck? I read reviews of both Nettalk and Magic Jack and both have uses who say it works well enough and users who say it sucks eggs. Hard to tell what is going on.
-- Rick C
go to the playstore and install magic app. Your android phone will ring at the same number as your home magicjack. Or, you can use your google voice number and forward to your magicjack and it will also ring your android phone. Or you can take your magicjack with you and plug it into any router at your destination. Or, you can use google voice and hangouts to get VOIP anywhere there's internet access (and not blocked) using your google voice number. Nice thing about google voice is that you can easily set the forwarding options.
Problem with VOIP is that you need to have internet access where you go. That's not always easy if you don't control the internet connection. And, even if you know the password, you still have to login every time you want to use it. Not too terrible for outgoing calls, but you'll find that incoming calls are a real hassle when you have to change the login everywhere you go.
I use a flip-phone and pageplus. Costs 10 cents a minute and you have to feed the meter $12 every 120 days to keep them from expiring, but it works very well. 10-cents a minute sounds like a lot, but if you don't use 'em up, it doesn't matter...it's $40/year. And you never have to worry about cracking the screen on your $500 smart phone.
My experience with magic jack is that the quality is at least as good as you get with a random cellphone in a random location. My experience with VOIP in general is that the quality is worse than we had 30 years ago with POTS. Back then, we'd have called for service if the voice got garbled. Today, we accept intermittent bad reception as the norm.
As I previously mumbled, my setup has a single number that rings in 3 places at the same time. Those are my house, my office, and a portable SIP phone (Linksys SPA921). The only real difference between the programming on the 3 phones is that each has a different SIP login to the Asterisk switch. As long as I have the phone configured to use a STUN server, I can traverse the NAT in the router without needing to port forward or modify the router. The catch is that I can't use two SIP devices, both using the same port number (5060), on the same router at the same time. So, I use odd port numbers, which prevents a conflict.
It's a workable system, but it won't do anything for dealing with incoming POTS calls or cell phone calls. Those will require call forwarding which is kinda clumsy.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
$500? Cheap bastard aren't ya'? ;-)
IIRC, PagePlus, uses the Verizon network, which is a big advantage if you travel much.
Exactly. Worse, I don't want a big, clumsy house phone. The SPA921 is exactly what I don't want. The cell phone that can also do VOIP might work, especially if the VOIP can come from my cell phone provider. I haven't found that yet though.
-- Rick C
On Monday, August 29, 2016 at 11:27:35 AM UTC-7, rickman wrote: ...
AT&T's cell phone service automatically changes to AT&T WiFi when there is no cell service (or it is weak) and there is WiFi service.
Comcast's phone service allows to you to ring up to 5 phones including an a pp that runs on your phone when there is an incoming call.
When I was recently in the UK I had it set up so that I could answer my hom e phone in CA on my cell phone that was connecting over the internet - it d idn't just ring my cell using the phone service which would have been a tra nsatlantic call; I could answer it as if I was at home. I could also make phone calls as if I was at home just using an internet connection.
One other feature they have is that any voicemails can be emailed as an aud io file or as a transcribed text email. It was surprisingly accurate at do ing the speech to text.
kevin
Next think I know, you'll be asking for battery powered. Sigh.
I'm not suggesting a model 500 desk phone. Will a cordless phone base unit, and an ATA VoIP adapter, be adequate? The handsets are smaller and will do everything that my big SPA921 will do. My preferred ATA adapter of the week is a Cisco SPA112: for about $40.
I've had some experience using a smartphone as a SIP phone. There are plenty of apps available to do this. I've been using LinPhone for years with only a few minor issues: In the past, when I had a fairly slow smartphone (Motorola Droid X2), the audio quality and MOS (mean opinion score) were lousy due to packet loss and jitter. Today, I have a Moto G phone, which is better, but still has problems keeping up, especially when some app decides to generate traffic in the background. There's no way that I can find to allow the VoIP app to gain priority and disable all the other junk while making a call. Also, if you don't have QoS enabled for SIP to give SIP priority, you'll find that your audio will be trashed by network traffic. There's always a temptation to use it in a coffee shop wi-fi environment, which usually does not have QoS enabled and will therefore cause problems.
The holy grail for VoIP systems is to sound like and be as reliable as POTS service. You can get close with a wired ethernet connection. However, via Wi-Fi or BlueGoof I don't believe it can be done with todays technology.
Also, many ISP's provide voice service in addition to internet. Comcast is one of the largest. Locally, Cruzio and Sonic both provide CLEC phone service with their internet. However, these and most like them, use separate channels for internet and voice. They are NOT a VoIP service sitting on top of an internet data service. They want to deliver POTS quality service and that's what it takes. However, your wireless ISP can't do that. Everything currently has to go over a common wireless link, which means that voice and data will affect each other. QoS and MPLS will help, but it will still be inferior substitutes for independent channels.
On a more personal level, I think you're trying to resurrect what is called "telecomm convergence". It was an attempt to merge VoIP, video, internet, gaming, mobile voice/data, messaging, and such into one conglomerated service. It's not dead yet, but might was well be. The problem was that it was much like buying a universal automobile, that could also be used to plow the field, haul a load, drive to the theater, entertain guests, and travel to far away vacation spots. Such an automobile would be an inferior compromise, as would a single service that does everything. You're seeing some of that in the limitations of a combined internet, VoIP, cellular, and BlueGoof service. The best I can suggest is that you reduce your expectations.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
I assume that was a joke?
I said what I needed very clearly I thought...
"I want a single phone, or more importantly, a single phone number I can use everywhere I go, including places that have Internet access, but no (or very poor) cell coverage. One of my houses really sucks when it comes to cell phone coverage."
Ideally I would have a single cell phone that is a cell phone when I have cell service or can do VOIP when I don't and uses the same phone number in both cases. I will be checking with some cell phone providers to see if they can offer that.
To answer your question, no, I'm not looking for any sort of house phone, corded or cordless.
I'm not clear what a SIP phone is. Should I assume that is VOIP?
I think you are overstating my requirements. I never asked for Internet, gaming, etc. I'm just looking for a phone that works everywhere I go (but no need for it to work places I don't go).
-- Rick C
Yeah, I seem to recall when I had Nettalk I would get voicemail emailed to me. Not bad. It would have been better if the VOIP had just worked.
Good to hear AT&T offers that service. I need to have a chat with them.
-- Rick C
I have a Google Nexus 5X phone, with a cell plan from T-Mobile. The phone supports WiFi calling using T-Mobile, and it's pretty much seamless. Turn on WiFi calling, and tell the phone whether you prefer cellphone or WiFi if both are available at the same time. That's it.
You might also check out Google's Project Fi.
[Disclaimer: I'm currently employed by Google, the Nexus 5X was my "holiday gift" from the company last year, and they pay for the T-Mobile service. I believe that both Project Fi, and the T-Mobile WiFi-calling are publicly available.]I also run my own VoIP server at home, can make calls to/from the public switched telephone network using it, and can access it from all of my tablets and PCs, and from my Nexus 5x as well (using the Zoiper soft-phone client).
Well, it wasn't intended to be a joke, but seems to have turned out that way. Sorry. I'll try to be more serious in the future.
Sorry 2.0. I was under the impression that your requirements were somewhat negotiable and that you were willing to spend the time assembling your own VoIP system. So, I answered your questions based on the assumption that you did NOT want a turnkey solution. Apparently, that was wrong and I apologize for missing this point. The solutions and experiences that I offered apparently do not meet your requirements. I suggest you find a suitable vendor that will provide you with a single phone number. So far AT&T and T-Mobile have been suggested.
SIP is "session initialization protocol". It's the protocol used to setup an outgoing call, receive an incoming call, and ring the phone bell. If you look at the actual protocol, it looks very much like HTML. SIP is the de facto standard for business and home VoIP service. An alternative to SIP is H.323 which I suggest you avoid. The SIP protocol is usually resident on a SIP desk phone (such as my Linksys SPA921) in firmware. It can also be done in software in the form of various SIP phone client programs and apps. Note that SIP has nothing to do with the CODEC used to encode and decode the audio.
I'm making the assumption that since your cell phone coverage at home is marginal, you'll use your (wireless) internet connection for telephony, presumably via some form of VoIP. Perhaps installing a radio tower in your yard, and planting a cellular repeater on top, might be the easiest solution.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Some people try to use them on a dialup connection. :(
Are you in the United States? If so, Email me a phone number and a time, and I'll call you so you can hear it for yourself.
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