(and Comcast Voice, Voicewing, Skype, and most other VOIP Companies you’ve probably heard of)
SIP. Asterisk. FreePBX. Open standards, Open Source. The back bone of VOIP. Yet most VOIP users have never heard of them.
I have an asterisk server set up in my house, connected to a Linksys PAP2 sip to analog client, which is hooked up to two phone lines in my house. I have an account with sipphone.com, which provides me with POTS (plain old telephone service) for free incoming calls and 1.5 cent outgoing calls. I have a direct SIP address for my asterisk box, which allows for completely free direct internet calls. Furthermore, my phone number is registered with ENUM (a service which allows for phone number resolution, ie this phone number goes to this sip address), which allows anyone using ENUM to simply put in my number and connect to me directly through SIP. ENUM allows completely seamless integration of VOIP and POTS: if you’re calling someone still using a regular telephone, your provider connects for you and you’re charged accordingly; if you’re calling someone whose also using SIP, it’s completely free. As more people switch to the new system, the system runs even better.
A few acquaintances of mine (who I apologize to for this rant) use VOIP, and are one of the reasons I set this all up — so I can have a cheap, low-traffic number which I can use from anywhere with an internet connection, and doesn’t wake up the whole household when someone calls. I gave them the number, but said that they could also just dial my sip address, to connect directly.
Their response?
“What’s that?”
The reason? Almost every provider handles all their telephony using SIP (or AIX) and uses asterisk (or similar) PBX to handle it. Yet, though the protocol is built to do it, none of them use enum, none of them provide a SIP address, and none of them support direct internet connections.
Can you imagine if you were charged every time you emailed someone using a different email provider, because your provider printed out the message, put a stamp on it, and mailed it to the other provider? Of course not! Yet we allow VOIP providers to take our call, run it over an analog phone line, to send it to another VOIP provider, and charge us for it. And why would they do otherwise? Comcast Digital Voice charges 27 cents a minute to make a call to Argentina. If you and your other party were both using a provider that used an open SIP system, you could connect directly, through SIP; instead, they’re collecting quite a bit of money for not a whole lot of effort.
As a result of greedy, commercial VOIP services, we’re transitioning from our analog phone system; instead of transitioning to free, ubiquitous voice service over open standards, consumers are buying into walled gardens, paying for cheap(er) phone service when they can be getting it for cheap(er(er)) and, much of the time, free.
The devices sold in stores are locked to a specific provider, locking out choices and other services. The PAP2 is a Linksys adaptor, coordinating SIP connections with analog phones. Yet, you’d be hard pressed to find one that isn’t locked to a provider, stopping you from having incoming or outgoing direct (and free!) SIP calls. Search for SIP at Best Buy, or Circuit City. Nada. Search for voip on Best Buy or Circuit City. Tons of stuff … locked to Vonage, Skype, or some other VOIP provider (many times this is in fine print). I ended up buying mine on ebay from a company in New York. You can usually buy SIP devices online, but you’ll never find an unlocked one in the store.
The world is slowly moving to VOIP, and those of you reading this will be among the first to switch over (if you haven’t already). Please, please, before switching over, consider how the provider you’re choosing 1) handles control over the hardware (usually you have none), 2) connects to other VOIP services (usually it doesn’t). Odds are, you’ll find yourself in a position you’re not very comfortable with. Look at asterisk (a free pbx server), FreePBX (a free frontend to said pbx server), and Trixbox (a free distribution that sets up said systems automatically). Check out Fabian’s How-To on installing FreePBX on an Ubuntu server if you’d like to use Ubuntu instead (like I do).
Most importantly, don’t accept a VOIP provider until you understand exactly what you’re accepting. There is choice, it just won’t be found in your local electronics store.
JoeTerranova.net
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Ciaran | 09-Oct-07 at 12:15 pm | Permalink
Hi,
Its a similar argument with instant messaging. A lot of people accept that they cannot mix and match AOL and MSN, but would find the idea of hotmail and gmail not working together absurd. Getting people to use Jabber is hard, due to a network effect of their contacts.
Can I reccomend that you take part in Open Discussion Day on 19th May next year? Its a day where you try and advocate the use of open communication standards.
Viva La Freedom.
Dave Miller | 09-Oct-07 at 2:40 pm | Permalink
I use Broadvoice and I’ve been happy with them. They do have locked hardware available because some people just aren’t technical to set it up, but they also let you provide your own equipment and will give you all the SIP connection details to set it up. They even give you a $5/mo discount on the lower-end plans if you provide your own equipment instead of using theirs (in exchange for giving up tech support for configuring it). I have an Asterisk box at home which registers with Broadvoice for my incoming calls, and a mixture of Grandstream and Polycom phones around the house (which are expensive to get, but pay for themselves over a year or two in the difference in monthly phone bills).
David A. Harding | 09-Oct-07 at 2:52 pm | Permalink
Joe, when was the last time you called me? Never. You’re my friend, and you’ve never called me, and that’s typical of my geek friends. I don’t have a telephone to talk to my geek friends; I have a telephone to talk to non-geeks.
Non-geeks aren’t going to setup SIP routing and so I don’t need it either. Someday the current generation of non-geeks will be dead or deprecated, and I’ll do all of my synchronous communication in my instant messaging client.
-Dave
jh | 09-Oct-07 at 4:53 pm | Permalink
Joe,
Fair enough. But, I have a locked PAP2 from Vonage. I paid full price for it. How do I “unlock” it to use another provider.. or will I need to buy another PAP2 that is unlocked? I wouldn’t mind ditching vonage, but, I need something to be a bit more.. reliable.. than a rant, as it were. I need a WAY OUT.
Jarrod
Russ | 09-Oct-07 at 8:27 pm | Permalink
I have teliax setup at home for calling internationally. I’d port my number and drop the local telco, but they don’t support E911. It’d be nice if there was some voip service out there that *only* supported E911 for some monthly fee and you could just tack it on.
Then again, I wonder how much just 911 access would be though my local telco (qwest)
Duane | 11-Oct-07 at 1:22 am | Permalink
Thanks for the linkage and I couldn’t agree more about being vendor locked.
It gets better though, some companies that were more open (like sipgate) decided to prevent inbound calls to their users.
The problem it seems is telco mentality, for about 100 years telco’s had things their own way and there was usually only one choice, bring things forward and now users have almost unlimited choices as well as the choice to handle their own calls between each other cutting the telco’s out of the loop.
Even VSPs that are new kids on the block so to speak are locked in the same mentality of protecting profits before all else including inter-operability with each other and everyone else for that matter.
There is an upside of course, using dyndns hostnames you can have calls sent directly to your SIP device or PC even if you register with a VSP, but it’s more difficult.
Obviously finding a provider that will play nice is the best option.
Also even those using IM clients for “everything” could benefit from enumlookups since all IM details etc can be lodged against a single “number”, even email addresses, websites etc.
Andy | 11-Oct-07 at 9:08 am | Permalink
Here in Australia the big VoIP provider seems to be Engin> who have a “BYO hardware” option, which just gives you a SIP address and it just works. I don’t work for them, but I put together my work’s phone system running on Asterisk, and it all just worked, so I’m pretty happy with people following standards.
Geoff Love | 14-Jan-08 at 6:27 pm | Permalink
Teliax is excited to announce that E911 is almost ready. Teliax will be launching a new website and it includes E911 capabilities. The improvements can be seen at Teliax.com . E911 should be ready in a few weeks or less.
If you have any questions about our service call me directly 303-629-8304
Thanks,
Geoff Love
GLove@teliax.com
Sales Engineer
Teliax.com
I HATE VONAGE | 07-Mar-08 at 10:09 pm | Permalink
I am having a night Mayer with Vonage – the issued me a # that belongs to someone else and at the mean time I printed some business card and marketing material..Etc
Make the long story short I lost the # and they don’t want to reimbursement me for the stuff they said that am using the phone line for business where it was designed for home – but I have a home based business – but who cares I just lost over $700.00 worth the marketing stuff and the phone # and I don’t know what to do any suggestion?
joe | 07-Mar-08 at 10:19 pm | Permalink
@I HATE VONAGE
The remedy for this is a common law term known as Estoppel. Your recourse would be to sue them, asking that the court order Vonage to either give you the number or reimburse your damages. There are two problems with this, however: a) if you really did try to use a home account for a business, you have little recourse (ie, I’m pretty sure your agreement prohibits that), b) bringing the claim will cost you more than the $700. If you make enough of a fuss with support, there’s a good chance they’ll pay the $700 out of good will (and to get you to stop calling), or, more likely, give you a year of free service or something.
Mr. Dveem | 12-Mar-08 at 1:24 am | Permalink
wow. thats exactly the set up I want to build in my house for the same reason i rejected vonage and comcast. can you possible tell me how hard it was to set up. I have my asterisk server runing already but having a HARD time figuring how to integrate with KIAX ( for testing purposes) and the account info provide by sipphone.com.
Regards,
Mr. Dveem
Bar Licensed | 19-Jun-08 at 10:42 pm | Permalink
Joe, estoppel is an affirmative defense, it is not an assertive right and does not form the basis of a claim for relief. I Hate Vonage cannot use the concept of estoppel to obtain reimbursement from Vonage. (And citing common law principles is the legal recourse of last resort – what most likely controls here is the contract terms of his/her service agreement.)
You should cease dispensing legal advice and provide more details as to how you integrated your various VOIP equipment into your home network for us interested users who would like to use an “open” solution.
Bar None | 08-Sep-08 at 1:17 pm | Permalink
Well, now that we’ve seen whose the bigger dick let’s get on with more details as to how you integrated your various VOIP equipment into your home network for us interested users who would like to use an “open” solution.