TUTORIAL How To: Native Android SIP client with Incredible PBX

[w1ve]

"Afraid" is probably the wrong choice of words. As Bill explained, you can run third-party SIP clients and they do work. They probably disable the SIP stack because they would end up.supporting it, and it widens the security footprint. Certainly, Google seems to have done a good job with the client. Since much, if not all, of cellular backhaul is SIP, I do not see the big deal. Since voice calling is revenue neutral, I would not think SIP calling is a revenue threat, except perhaps for International calling. It's all conjecture on my point, I'm just a consumer and don't work for the carriers.

One would hope we get to a point where a smartphone is simply a software defined radio, and the carrier provides IP connectivity, not caring what traffic you carry on it, but I think we are a long way from that.

 

[kenn10]

Forum discussions with Lenovo regarding the SIP access on the Moto phones resulted in a final declaration that there were "legal issues" in allowing independent SIP calling and they therefore were not supporting it.

 

[w1ve]

Of course it does, but it requires you to make a logical connection. If you can run a SIP stack natively on your phone, then you could make all your overseas long distance calls using your sip server instead of your phone quite easily. Corporations could deploy it simply onto corp phones to extend the company PBX, when the carriers could get rid of PBX's all together and just have everyone in the company issued a cell phone. Imagine getting $25 -$40 per employee in revenue instead of $1 or less if they're on a PBX?

Further it follows logically that they don't like SIP because you can see them manipulate it at the wire line level sometimes; they make sure their SIP ALG's are pretty broken on their cable modems most of the time historically.

Makes sense, but is there that much International traffic? Most Corp phones are on all-you-can-eat plans without International.

It sure looks like a cool corporate play to build a pbx with cell phones and carriers that enable the SIP stack. Enough of those deployments and carriers would pay attention.

 

[atsak]

Makes sense, but is there that much International traffic? Most Corp phones are on all-you-can-eat plans without International.

It sure looks like a cool corporate play to build a pbx with cell phones and carriers that enable the SIP stack. Enough of those deployments and carriers would pay attention.

I guess it depends on industry for international. I consult/work with four not small companies (two American and two Canadian), one of each side of the border has international calling (the other two are exclusively either in US or in Canada) and it is expensive, especially in Canada, for overseas calling, and even from Canada calling the US is often 20 cents a minute, which is of course less than 1 with a SIP client. So I guess it depends where you are and your specific calling patterns. (I run all the IT infrastructure, but phones are part of that)

The latter comment is the program setup with GTI really in a nutshell IMO. In most corp settings there's not a telephony expert anymore though they are using hosted (8x8, Ringcentral, Vonage etc) like everything else to avoid the responsibility of running it, even though it's more expensive.

 

[w1ve]

I guess it depends on industry for international. I consult/work with four not small companies (two American and two Canadian), one of each side of the border has international calling (the other two are exclusively either in US or in Canada) and it is expensive, especially in Canada, for overseas calling, and even from Canada calling the US is often 20 cents a minute, which is of course less than 1 with a SIP client. So I guess it depends where you are and your specific calling patterns. (I run all the IT infrastructure, but phones are part of that)

The latter comment is the program setup with GTI really in a nutshell IMO. In most corp settings there's not a telephony expert anymore though they are using hosted (8x8, Ringcentral, Vonage etc) like everything else to avoid the responsibility of running it, even though it's more expensive.

Interesting. I'm Canadian but live in the US. Lots of cell plans here that include NA-wide calling as part of unlimited. Yes, the cell carriers nail you on International cellular. You are correct. No one it IT shops these days knows much about telephony. They usually go with whatever the telecom vendor recommends, or what is resold by the integrator.

 

[Samot]

Of course it does, but it requires you to make a logical connection

I'll keep that in mind.

If you can run a SIP stack natively on your phone, then you could make all your overseas long distance calls using your sip server instead of your phone quite easily.

This isn't a logical argument because it requires A) the phone to have the SIP client even as part of the OS (there are many that don't) and B) the user to have said SIP server to connect to.

Corporations could deploy it simply onto corp phones to extend the company PBX,

They do that already. It's a rather common practice. They just use a third-part SIP client because, again, not all phones have a native SIP client built into them.

Further it follows logically that they don't like SIP because you can see them manipulate it at the wire line level sometimes; they make sure their SIP ALG's are pretty broken on their cable modems most of the time historically.

Interesting you would use cable modems as the example here. Considering that cable is over coax and they *use SIP* for their voice services because, coax. So what happens here is the SIP ALG for devices behind their modem is a problem, you know for third party SIP services. That's not fear of SIP, that's fear of other SIP providers and well, just crappy business practices.

Also, I've spent my career at carriers and I can't logically draw that connection because I am well aware of the attitude towards SIP and it's not fearful at all.

 

[wardmundy]

I think the discussion regards corporate fear of publicly-available SIP rather than SIP itself. We're all well aware that many companies use SIP behind the scenes for their own profit-making purposes. It's opening it up for the public to use at no cost that causes the anxiety... at least for them.

Google shut it down with Google Voice. The Chinese shut it down on their Moto phones. These were affirmative steps. It wasn't a matter of having to add SIP and refusing to do so. The SIP stack was already there and in Google's case SIP was already being used behind the scenes.

 

[w1ve]

If you have spent your career at (cell) carriers, please explain why they disable SIP on phones?

 

[krzykat]

If you have spent your career at (cell) carriers, please explain why they disable SIP on phones?

 

[Halea]

Amazing that carriers are so afraid of SIP. Can confirm Verizon Galaxy S10 works, as does Telus Galaxy S9, with the aforementioned software to enable configuration. I wonder if SIP was enabled on some odd port if this would work. They can't disable RTP, as that would break many things. So, perhaps signaling on some odd port would work?

You make an excellent point. As for me, I am wondering if there isn't another function call that needs to be "activated" with the shortcut maker. I recall that we did that some time ago on a Verizon locked LG smartphone, but I can't recall what was the function that we activated. It was starting with com.something.something, but unfortunately I didn't write it down, and the user of that phone switched to different hardware and we don't know what happened to the phone.

My take away is; for a reason or another those functions are actually not removed from the base system. Only convenient or operational access is blocked by mickey-mouse menu modifications. And remember this is something that has been going on for a long time (since version 4.x of Android).
Unless suddenly something has changed that make those guys quickly and easily compile the android code with whatever exact configuration they want (which is not the case as Android is a little monster to compile), I think the code is still there. But maybe on some phones there is more to do than just to setup the SIP parameters.

 

[Stogg]

Hi everyone, I got the native Android call app to work with my SIP accounts totally by chance.

Basically Voip.ms who I have my SIP numbers from recommended that I install Zoiper on my Android. My problem is that even though the Zoiper app is configured to stay awake in the background, my cellphone cuts the connection to the Voip.ms servers after only 2 or 3 mins, so if someone called me most of the time, the call would not ring on my Zoiper app.

Hey Folks,

Here I've been messing with third-party SIP clients on my Android phone, and I've been very unhappy with any of them.
Come to find out, there has been a NATIVE SIP CLIENT built into Android since Version 6.0.
I'm currently on a Pixel 4XL with Version 10.0, so YMMV, and the menu locations may be slightly different, but I've tested this with a few
Friends, including some Samsung Galaxy phones, and same.

What's nice about the native client?
- As many SIP accounts as you want.
- SIP-to-SIP dialing, no need for registration
- Receiving calls works fine.
- Calls are in the native Call Log on Android -- so you can call back automatically.

This is awesome to integrate corporate PBX extension with your regular cell.
It is calling over 4G or Wifi, but I seem to be having great luck with it. I'd like to hear others feedback.

How to:

- Go to the native dialer on android, and click the three-vertical-dot menu:
View attachment 2978View attachment 2978

- Select Settings:
View attachment 2979

- Select Calls
View attachment 2980

- Select Calling Accounts:

View attachment 2981

Here, you see I already have a SIP account, and my Visible regular 4G SIM-based cellular account.
Notice the Make Calls With setting. If you select "Always ask", when you dial a number it will prompt you to select the Account (see later picture).

To set up a new SIP Account, select SIP Accounts.

If you want to receive incoming calls on the SIP account, check the selection. This will register with the PBX.

View attachment 2982

- Setting up new SIP Account:
View attachment 2983

Click the + in the upper right to create a new account:

View attachment 2984

Your username is your extension on the PBX.
Your password is the password for your extension on the PBX.
The server is your FQDN of your PBX.

Under Optional Settings:

View attachment 2985
I put in my extension as the autenticated username
Display name is your name (as you want it to be displayed)
Outbound Proxy Address is the FQDN of your PBX.
Port and transport per your PBX Configuration.

As I said,if you select "Always Ask" for "Make Calls With" setting, the dialer will prompt you for the account:

Here's what I see when I dial a pbx extension and press the call button:

View attachment 2986

Simply tap the account you want to use!!

As I said, it is integrated, works over 4G or Wifi, and is seemless. YMMV.

Gerry

Hi Gerry and everyone, I got the native Android call app to work with my SIP accounts totally by accident, and only after I’d experimented with several apps which I’d found to be useless.


I originally tried the native Android app but couldn’t get it to work for incoming calls. And anyway, Voip.ms who I have my SIP numbers from, recommendeded that I not use the Android native SIP function as it is very basic compared to features offer on apps such as Zoiper on my Android to make and receive SIP calls.


But life with Zoiper wasn’t exactly a bed of roses either - even though Zoiper is configured to stay awake in the background, my cellphone cuts the connection to the Voip.ms servers after only 2 or 3 mins to save on power. At Voip.ms suggestion, I tried other apps such as Grandstream Wave and Linphone. But I had the same problem.



But by installing Grandstream Wave or Linphone, somehow it seems to have fixed whatever was the original issue with Android SIP feature as I now receive SIP calls perfectly with the native Android app.

 

[w1ve]

Of course, there are challenges with SIP phones on mobile devices. You are using data for transport. As you well know, depending on where you live, data speeds can vary wildly. I have MNVOs on two phones -- one on Verizon's network, and one on TMobile. SIP works "fine" on either.

The challenge, as I've stated before, is unless you are stationary, or, in a very good coverage area, it is easy for a SIP call to go away or have significant dropouts. The other challenge is battery life. Constantly updating registrations eats the battery. Some SIP apps, depending on mobile OS, can't operate properly in the background.

I'm investigating some third-party software that will "wake" your SIP app through a push notification to the phone. this will solve the battery problem but won't solve the call-breakup issue.

My current favorite way for corporate integration, again which I've discussed here, is to forward calls to the cell phone from the PBX, and for outbound calls, route the call via a DISA and over SIP from the PBX. The incremental cost of the outbound leg is nothing, and with unmetered inbound DIDs, cost is not an issue. I like this because it is essentially platform and vendor agnostic.

I loved the Andriod app Prefixer, which is not supported anymore and old. However, still seems to play on my Pixel 4 and Samsung Note 9. With it, I simply dial a 3-digit PBX extension or a full telephone number (with the built-in dialer), and Prefixer takes care of dialing the PBX and doing the work. The .APK is available on various sites.

 

[christofarn]

I found I can use my normal native phone app on android as a perfect (ok, I just made a first check, but it works!) sip client, even so my phone is not unlocked, but part of a contract with in my case swisscom (Switzerland): https://www.boxis.net/en/knowledgebase/article/18/configuring-the-native-android-sip-client/