Voip To Telephone Access? Recommendations? Options

[Howard Roark]

Anyone have recommendations for which service works with the 6000 to provide a connection to regular phone service so you can call a 'normal' phone number?

[cvmiller]

Anyone have recommendations for which service works with the 6000 to provide a connection to regular phone service so you can call a 'normal' phone number?

Howard,

This _isn't_ the answer you are looking for, but it will get the discussion going. As I just wrote in the "Digital Swiss Army Knife" article (The Zaurus, FWD (FreeWorldDialup) will provide you 800 number access for free. I have used this and my North American calling card to make calls when recently traveling in Europe. But it isn't the most economical method (cost me 22 cent/min).

I have been asking the similar questions, and so far I have heard that Vonage is pretty good. I am just not quite ready to bite off yet another monthly minimum bill.

I hope this helps,

Craig....

[hbo]

Anyone have recommendations for which service works with the 6000 to provide a connection to regular phone service so you can call a 'normal' phone number?

Checkout http://voip-info.org. Search for "VOIP Service Providers" in the front page. You have lots of choices depending on how much geekiness you want to put into the project.

[offroadgeek]

howard_roark - I'm hoping that you saw the extensive voip on 6000 thread... if you haven't, there's a ton of useful info in there.

I use my 6000 regularly with my vonage softphone setup. I don't have a regular phone line so for me it's not an extra bill . Previously I had voicepulse when I was in SF and their voip service was just OK. I primarily make voip to pots calls and with voicepulse I got repeated complaints from people on the other end of the line about bad quality calls, delays, etc. I have yet to experince that with vongae. The only time I have seen (heard) a slight degredation in a call was when I was downloading several ISOs while on a call (obviously using serious bandwidth).

good luck

[eji]

A lot of us are still -- vainly, perhaps -- holding out for Skype on the Zaurus. A fair number of people think this is an impossibility, and the Skype forum on the subject has grown to 7 pages without too much response from Skype developers, but Skype has recently surprised me in a lot of ways. For example, the Mac OS X version integrates with the open-source Growl project. And there have been a few hints here and there that maybe, just maybe, we might see something for the ARM processor. Which ROM they'd choose (Qtopia 1.5? 1.7? 2.1?) is a different story.

In any case, while you're experimenting with other solutions like Vonage, you can vote for it here at PublicMind.

[drdank]

I've played around with Stanaphone a bit with my 6k using Kphone. Free NY area numbers and a new fax service too.

[cvmiller]

I've played around with Stanaphone a bit with my 6k using Kphone.  Free NY area numbers and a new fax service too.

drdank,

Any tricks to getting kphone (on the Zaurus 6k) working with Stanaphone? I have registered, have money sitting in the account, but can't make outbound calls. I can call into my Zaurus by using my PSTN phone and dialing the NY number. But outbound calls always give me "unauthorized" dialog box.

TIA,

Craig...

PS. the reason I would like Stanaphone to work, is that I would like to call the PSTN from my Zaurus, FWD doesn't really let you do that (unless it is a 800 number).

[christefano]

Any tricks to getting kphone (on the Zaurus 6k) working with Stanaphone? I have registered, have money sitting in the account, but can't make outbound calls. I can call into my Zaurus by using my PSTN phone and dialing the NY number. But outbound calls always give me "unauthorized" dialog box.

TIA,

Craig...

I'm having the same problem that you describe (and have posted a request for help with this). Have you been able to solve this problem?

[cvmiller]

Any tricks to getting kphone (on the Zaurus 6k) working with Stanaphone? I have registered, have money sitting in the account, but can't make outbound calls. I can call into my Zaurus by using my PSTN phone and dialing the NY number. But outbound calls always give me "unauthorized" dialog box.

TIA,

Craig...

I'm having the same problem that you describe (and have posted a request for help with this). Have you been able to solve this problem?

Alas, no. They claim they will have a linux client out in a few months, but I doubt they are even aware of the Zaurus (I referred to mine as Kphone on Linux).

So no luck here, I am afraid,

Craig...

[christefano]

Alas, no. They claim they will have a linux client out in a few months, but I doubt they are even aware of the Zaurus (I referred to mine as Kphone on Linux).

So no luck here, I am afraid,

Craig...

Thanks for the reply, Craig!

SIPphone is working on a Linux version of what they're calling Gizmo Project, and the public release has been pushed back from August to September. I've asked if it will run on tho Zaurus (in both SIPphone's forum and Gizmo Project's) but haven't heard anything yet.

I'll post again in OE Forums when I know more.

In the meantime, have you gotten any other VoIP softphone on the Zaurus to dial out to PSTN numbers?

[cvmiller]

Alas, no. They claim they will have a linux client out in a few months, but I doubt they are even aware of the Zaurus (I referred to mine as Kphone on Linux).

So no luck here, I am afraid,

Craig...

Thanks for the reply, Craig!

SIPphone is working on a Linux version of what they're calling Gizmo Project, and the public release has been pushed back from August to September. I've asked if it will run on tho Zaurus (in both SIPphone's forum and Gizmo Project's) but haven't heard anything yet.

I'll post again in OE Forums when I know more.

In the meantime, have you gotten any other VoIP softphone on the Zaurus to dial out to PSTN numbers?

It would be great of one of the "big" guys (Gismo, ...) supported the Zaurus. Unfortunately, I have noticed of late that "Linux" support means linux on x86, which unfortunately rules me out. I run Linux on PPC (Mac) and the Zaurus, neither of which have x86. So I am not holding my breath

I _have_ gotten Kppi (kphone) to work with PSTN, via FWD. I have dialed my phone provider's 800 number and then used my calling card to dial from there, works great, if a little on the expensive side. And I have also done SIP to SIP calls as well with other Kphones, and SJphone on MacOSX, worked great!

That said, I have not been able to make a PSTN call with Stannaphone and TerraCall, both report back 401 unauthorized when I try to make calls

I hope this helps,

Craig...

[drdank]

I've played around with Stanaphone a bit with my 6k using Kphone.  Free NY area numbers and a new fax service too.

drdank,

Any tricks to getting kphone (on the Zaurus 6k) working with Stanaphone? I have registered, have money sitting in the account, but can't make outbound calls. I can call into my Zaurus by using my PSTN phone and dialing the NY number. But outbound calls always give me "unauthorized" dialog box.

TIA,

Craig...

PS. the reason I would like Stanaphone to work, is that I would like to call the PSTN from my Zaurus, FWD doesn't really let you do that (unless it is a 800 number).

I haven't tried dialing out from the Z since I haven't put $ on account, but it works the other way with incoming calls. Are you still having trouble?

[christefano]

I haven't tried dialing out from the Z since I haven't put $ on account, but it works the other way with incoming calls. Are you still having trouble?

Please pardon the following rant, folks, but after my experience I cannot recommend SIPphone as a VSP (voice over IP service provider) to Zaurus users. I think this is really unfortunate because SIPphone seems to have a lot going for it. Their prices and features are great, and the Gizmo Project software itself seems like a terrific VoIP client. And I like how they're calling Skype out with the whole open/closed argument.

I still can't dial out to PSTN numbers with SIPphone as my VSP and KPhone as my client, though, even after checking and double-checking (and triple-checking) every setting in KPhone. Unfortunately, the users and admins in the discussion forums at both Gizmo Project and its parent, SIPphone, were of zero help to me. The only bit of useful information that I found was in an old post made by a SIPphone employee that says "sorry for the trouble, however the kphone sip implementation when making a call doesn't cover the full range of options specified in the sip rfc."

This, and yet KPhone appears to be listed as a supported client at their partner site, SIPsoftware.com.

To make matters worse, the trouble ticket that I submitted went unanswered for a week and then wasn't answered to my satisfaction (no solution for the problem was given, nor was an adequate explanation why it wouldn't work ~ I was referred instead to the developers of KPhone). It isn't a codec problem from what I can tell (KPhone supports two of the three codecs SIPphone uses, iLBC and g711u). However, the truth is that I have no idea what the problem is.

The reason I got a Zaurus in the first place was so that I could ride this new and exciting wave of free and near-free calls with VoIP and open standards. For this, SIPphone has turned out to be a disappointing dead end.

In the end, I created an account with Free World Dialup (FWD) on a whim, configured KPhone to use it and then dialed an 800 number ~ and it worked. It took less than 5 minutes. I'll be going with FWD as soon as I find an affordable PSTN provider for outgoing calls.

[cvmiller]

I'll be going with FWD as soon as I find an affordable PSTN provider for outgoing calls.

Let us know when you find that provider. I too have found FWD work quite well with the Zaurus/Kphone combo. But I still lack an out-bound PSTN provider.

TIA,

Craig...

[kmeaw]

I tryed using VoIP using esd. Well, it works, but slow (delay about 1500ms over 802.11b connection). Start esd servers (-public -tcp) and use esdcat & esdrec to transfer sound over TCP.