SIP client with VOIP call plan - Advice needed

[cburon]

Hi all,

I am finally ditching Vonage. I got tired of taking the receiver everywhere I go. I want to place VOIP calls on my EVO.

I am looking for a replacement. Of course I would like to use my data plan and/or WiFi to place VOIP calls.

I have read several threads on how to configure SIP clients to get free calls over WiFi; but that's not really what I am looking for. I place a few calls abroad on a regular basis. I need to find a VOIP provider (I don't mind paying) that is compatible with a SIP client on Android.

I have looked around and found a couple of companies. these three have caught my attention.
Callcentric
IConnectHere
VoipVoip

Does anybody have any experience with any of these companies? How is the service? Do you really get what you pay for?

Would you advise on other solutions?

Please share your experience. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

TOF.

 

[alnova1]

I have used VoIP PBX - 30-day free trial - move your phones to the cloud and had pretty good success with it and using the sipdroid app from the market. Minutes are cheap too. Not sure if this is what your looking for but may help. Just sign up for the sipgate one and you get a 30 day free trail to test it out.

 

[cburon]

Thanks for the reply.
I checked it out. Minutes are cheap indeed.
I wish it supported number portability.

TOF.

 

[pooohbaah]

An easy way to test is to setup a pay-as-you-go plan and see how well it works on your phone. I use a callcentric plan like this but I've never tried to use my cell for the service. If you want a dirt cheap prepaid plan, look at phonepower for about $230 for two years. You should be able to interface phonepower with a hosted pbx service (see below). I run my own asterisk server at home to get free googlevoice calls (nerdvittles.com), but sipsorcery can also make this possible.

There are several online services that can provide features and services that may not be available through your chosen VOIP provider. Look at pbxes.org and sipsorcery. Pbxes.org in particular is run by the people who make the sipdroid app. Their forums are probably a great place to look for info.
:: p b x es :: your virtual PBX and CRM on demand

Lag is going to be an issue. Try it out and see how well it works. When you go overseas, the distance between you and your voip server is ggoing to cause a pretty significant lag in the calls. You'll just have to try and see if it can work for your uses.

 

[clobber]

sipgate works well

 

[cburon]

I just checked pbxes.
Does it just connect to and from your vip provider or does it provide calling minutes as well?

TOF

 

[alnova1]

Thanks for the reply.
I checked it out. Minutes are cheap indeed.
I wish it supported number portability.

TOF.

Yea I know...sipgate allows you in settings to change your caller ID to anything you like so it would look like your calling from your regular phone number but if they called you the party would still have to call you on your sipgate number you were assigned and I think it is usually a California number.

 

[gllu]

@cburon, please update us on the service u chose and if it was good.
Thanks

 

[khabibul35]

I know you want to port over your number, but if you want good voip, it's not what I would suggest. Or at least, if you want incoming calls.

Sipdroid, does work incredibly well for me. But sometimes calls don't "push" through, so it's good to be able to have an actual cell phone number called if you're not registered on the network.

That's why I like Google Voice, I can forward to both a VOIP number and a cell number. Currently, I'm using the free option, Google Voice + IPKall, but people who rate rely on VOIP as their #1 phone say CallCentric is quite good.

Still as great as SIPdroid is, if you're looking for 100% reliability, it's not there for incoming calls as of now. Outgoing calls have been working great for me, 99% of the time I would say.

I have used SIPcalling for about... 5 months now, so I know what I'm talking about. Let me know if you have any specific questions and I'll try to help you out.

 

[cburon]

@ khabibul35
Thank you so much. This exactly the type of advice I was looking for.
Indeed number portability is important as well as outbound AND inbound call quality.
I will follow your advice and give callcentric a try with their personal unlimited plan. I will pay as I go for my international calls.
I assume I should be able to use Sipdroid on my EVO to get the connections to work. Or should I use something else (like 3cx, Fring)?

@ gllu
I will report in a couple of days on how it went.

TOF.

 

[khabibul35]

SIPdroid should be fine

As far as settings:

I bet call centric has some sort of call forwarding option, though they aren't the provider I use, so I can't say if they do or how it works.

If you have sufficient minutes on your Sprint plan (and don't mind paying for outbound with call centric and/or have unlimited outbound), just have callcentric forward to your EVO. And use SIPdroid for outbound.

If you don't have sufficient incoming minutes, you could try callcentric to forward when you're not registered (I think they'd have the option) and so you'd receive calls if you're within wifi range or there's some other technical issue preventing you from connecting to call centric servers.

Outbound, is fairly straight forward. The only thing is if you want to call some contacts via phone and some via SIPdroid, there's a bit of an issue. SipDROID either wants to take over your phone book or not use it at all.

The 2 possible work arounds are:

1) Don't go through contacts menu and just dial/paste the number directly into the SIPdroid dialer

2) Go through contacts menu and hit TEXT (I know it seems strange) and in the text menu, SIPdroid will pop up as one of the apps that you can use to "text", however, once you select SIPdroid, it will call that number rather than texting it.

Let me know if you need help with settings or anything else.

PS - If you haven't already chosen a provider, another excellent one that came to mind based on reviews was Future-Nine. But it requires a little more technical know-how, though I remember it was highly touted for having "Incoming Call Failover" for when you're for some reason not registered to their services. They just sound like they might be exactly what you're looking for.

 

[cburon]

Update.

I signed up successfully last night with Callcentric. It was pretty easy.

Next I tried using Sipdroid on my phone to route my calls. I was not successful. there is a thread here that describes how to set up Sipdroid with Callcentric using PBXes. I have to dig deeper but it does not look easy to me (and so far no luck).

I however managed to make it work using both the 3CX softphone and Linphone softphone. Inbound and outbound voice quality on my end was good over WiFi (not so much on 3G). But the person I was calling experienced a terrible echo of his own voice. I do not believe the softphone software is at fault (but how knows?). I have placed a ticket with Callcentric to see of they provide support.

I'll keep you updated.

TOF.

 

[khabibul35]

Umm, try registering with SIPdroid directly rather than messing with PBXes. It gives some nice features, but it adds an extra step that makes it just a tad bit more complicated than it has to be.

Without PBXes, SIPdroid has worked great for me. And it's by far the best droid client there is.

 

[steelersmb]

I use Sipgate with Sipdroid and Google Voice and it works great and is free. Sign up for an account at sipgate.com and use Google voice to call your sipgate number which rings through Sipdroid. Sounds confusing but is very easy to setup and works perfect.

 

[cburon]

Thank you all for encouraging me to not give up.

@ khabibul35, for some odd reason, I could not get Sipdroid to work directly with Callcentric. And I had all the information I needed to configure the system (see here). i just don't know what I was doing wrong.

But in the end, I managed to get things to work using PBXes and Sipdroid.
For those who are interested, it was not that hard and I followed a combination of this guide and this other guide.

The echo problem I was experiencing is almost gone (thanks to Sipdroid and its outstanding mic and earpiece gain settings). The problem even goes away completely when using a bluetooth earpiece.

here is what I found out:
- 3CXPhone, Linphone and CSipSimple work with Callcentric (setup is actually super easy for each) but they do not have sufficient settings to get rid of the echo problem I was experiencing.

- Callcentric has top-notch customer support. They answered my mails within 15-30 minutes and they tried to work with me to solve my issue (even though it looks that they are not responsible)

- I now suspect the Evo itself to generate the echo (?) I don't know...

I think I will stick to this setup for now ans check how my international calls turn out.

TOF.

 

[Scooterman1]

Try Broadvoice.com. They have World and World Plus for home voip. They allow you to add a multi presence device (your android phone) for only $2. 95 a month more. You can use their Airdroid App or Fring with sip configured to sip.broadvoice.com.

 

[hostit1]

I really like Call Centric. Seems like a great company and I have tested it on many of the Android based phones.

I wish there were some really good VOIP Clients that supported G711 (even if there was a cost associated to it). Most of the Androids have the extra CPU processing power to encode on G711 and G711 seems to be much better on WiMAX or 3G.

Some of the issues that I have seen is the latency and "burstable" speeds which is common on the wireless networks. LTE may solve this problem in the near future.

Thanks for letting me share.

Tim Rice
True Call International - Voip Service

 

[hostit1]

Try Broadvoice.com. They have World and World Plus for home voip. They allow you to add a multi presence device (your android phone) for only $2. 95 a month more. You can use their Airdroid App or Fring with sip configured to sip.broadvoice.com.

I don't know if Broadvoice still charges a "disconnection fee", but you may want to check it out before you go with Broadvoice