World's Best WiFi SIP Phone

[someguysname]

hmmmm, over the air with no other software needed? I might just take a look at it then.

 

[wardmundy]

For those in the U.S., you then can add a T-Mobile SIM card for $20 and get a phone number and either free calling from 7PM-7AM and .10/min. calls from 7AM-7PM with a $1/day fee or add a 1000-minute refill for $93, and you've got close to a year's worth of phone calling at .10/min with no daily fee... when there's no WiFi around.

Call at: 1-877-778-2106 T-MOBILE TO CHANGE TELEPHONE NUMBER

OR SWITCH YOUR PLAN TO PAY AS U GO.

 

[phinphan]

The problem with Tmobile to go is that they do not have a data plan so no email, internet etc when away from wifi but for straight phone use it is pretty nice. For data centric people I think the At&t prepaid $20 per month for up to 5g data and .25 per minute or $1.00 per day and $0.10 might be the better choice. Skype is pretty useable over 3g so you could get a $3.00 per month unlimited dial out and use fring. Lots of ways to play with this phone. I can't wait to see how you get the sip configured.

 

[wardmundy]

I could not resist and went down to Best Buy and bought an E71 to try out. It is incredibly slick to use. I could not figure out the sip setup or how to configure the stun server but I used fring instead and now have it registered as an extension on my system. I was able to use it pretty well over at&t 3g. By using Fring I was able to take advantage of my skype unlimited minutes for calling out as well. The phone is quite small and has a good keyboard. The email client is not up to par with the Windows Mobile 6.1 client so I am not sure I will keep it. Can't wait to see how Ward configures it.

Got our E71 yesterday and have everything working. It was considerably more difficult to set up than the N95. WiFi in particular is quirky. Had to go into Wireless LAN Advanced Settings and disable automatic configuration, reduce Tx power level to 10mW, and disable power saving to get WiFi to work at all. We use dLink Gaming Routers which are great for VoIP. I've never seen a problem connecting any WiFi device until this phone arrived so this is definitely a Nokia buggy software issue. The phone came with the latest Nokia firmware for the E71.

Once WiFi was stable, there's an option on the Main Menu to configure Internet Telephone. Just choose that and update your downloads folder. That brings in the Gizmo5 setup. Click on it, accept the defaults, and everything gets set up properly. There's a much better Gizmo user interface in the version for this phone. It provides almost the same flexibility that you see in the Gizmo5 web interface on a standard PC or Mac.

The keyboard is very nice on the phone, and the phone's about the same size and feel as an iPhone, perhaps a bit thinner. Once you update your Downloads folder, there also are Communications options for Boingo WiFi, JoikuSpot Premium ($15 turns your phone into a WiFi HotSpot), Nokia ICC Cisco (30-day trial with SCCP to Call Managers or Asterisk) as well as Gizmo. The phone also supports VPN out of the box. Overall: nice phone!

 

[krzykat]

Joikuspot is awesome, had just found it about a week ago. I've been searching for another add-on that I know is possible but I haven't seen ....

Looking for Least Cost Routing for the Nokia so that let's say when you dial US numbers, it dials normal, but if you dial an international number (and your SIP is registered) it dials out that way instead.

 

[phinphan]

Ward - have you figured out how to use the sip client to connect directly to your pbxiaf box? I can get it to work inside the office where the pbx is, but I cannot get it to work from outside the office. I presume this is a nat issue and I downloaded and install the nokia sip/voip tools which allow you to configure for nats and such but I have had no luck yet.

James

 

[wardmundy]

Nokia's SIP client is going away so I wouldn't waste much time with it... not to mention it's quirky. The Gizmo client works perfectly to connect back to your Asterisk server with a SIP URI so frankly it wasn't worth the aggravation to wrestle with the Nokia solution.

 

[wardmundy]

Here's a good tutorial on the E71 SIP setup for Asterisk.

 

[phinphan]

Thanks Ward I followed that guide but it did not help with the NAT issue. The only downside I see to the gizmo solution is that it does not allow you to easily dial out on your system

 

[wardmundy]

One touch gets you to the SIP URI of your Asterisk server with dialtone. Then dial as normal. I think I already posted the modified DISA script that we use. You can even skip the password step with a little examination of the IP from Gizmo...

exten => s,5,Set(CID_TEST=${SIPCHANINFO(peerip)})

 

[wardmundy]

In showing some of this to a friend yesterday, a couple other tidbits came out that I hadn't mentioned previously...

One feature that FreePBX gives you in seconds is the ability to assign a SIP extension number to the cellphone even when you're using Gizmo. Assuming you're using 701 for the extension, just create a SIP extension in FreePBX in the usual way. The only change is modifying the dial field from SIP/701 so that it now shows the SIP URI of your Gizmo account, e.g.

SIP/[email protected]

That's it. Now when you dial 701 on your Asterisk system, the Nokia phone rings (for free) using your Gizmo SIP connection.

Also worth mentioning is that Gizmo on the E71 lets you use not only a WiFi connection for your SIP calls, but also 3G if you happen to have 3G service on your phone. The downside is that it drains the battery in about 3 hours or less. But, if you're on the road, you could plug the phone into an adapter in your car and make and receive calls all day long at no cost with an IPkall phone number and a one-button DISA connection back to your Asterisk server.

 

[ricoche]

Thanks very much for the info Ward. Much appreciated.

I was wondering now that you have the E71 and N95, which one do you prefer on the VOIP front. Which one do you find yourself using more?

 

[wardmundy]

If you need to type and send emails, the E71 is the hands-down winner because it has a great keyboard. The N95 has a phone keypad only. Someone described the difference in the E71 and the iPhone this way. The iPhone is for folks that consume Internet content while the E71 is for those that need to create it. I could never type reliably on an iPhone, and there is no tactile feedback from a touch screen.

Having said that the N95 is a terrific cellphone with an incredible camera and terrific multimedia software (unlike the E71 which has a camera and multimedia setup that looks to be 5 years old). All the VoIP stuff works on both phones, but it appears to work a little better and more reliably on the E71. We found we were rebooting the N95 every day just to get everything working again. Using Bluetooth on the N95 really seemed to screw things up without a reboot. Moving in and out of WiFi coverage areas also caused the N95 to stumble forcing frequent reboots. And I wouldn't dare try the WiFi HotSpot software on the N95 for fear of trashing everything else permanently. No similar problems on the E71.

It appears that Nokia has completely separate development groups for these two lines of phones. It's as if two separate companies produced them. But I'd take either one of them over the iPhone because of the SIP VoIP support which is incredibly easy to integrate with Asterisk thanks to Gizmo.

Now the problem is the same but worse than landline communications. It's hard to find a provider that will give you Internet service without also bundling phone service. Luckily, the original iPhone plan works great with either of these phones, but AT&T won't sell it to new subscribers. $60 gets you some cellphone minutes and text messaging for emergencies and unlimited G3 service for VoIP the rest of the time. This is exactly what they didn't want to provide to Apple, and Apple has in fact crippled the new iPhone to make sure you can't do it. Luckily, unlike Sprint, AT&T doesn't (yet) cripple their high-speed wireless service on certain phones so G3 just worked on these phones even though it wouldn't work on the original iPhones which lacked the G3 chipset. And AT&T's network certainly knows when you've put your SIM chip in a different phone. In fact, it shows up in your account display as a non-iPhone.

 

[phinphan]

Ward - go buy an AT&T prepaid sim and place it in the cell phone. Dial 611 and add $20.00 to it. Then order Media Net unlimited for $19.99 per month and you have unlimited internet (5gb) on the 3g network for $19.99 per month. You do not need to use voice minutes if you can live with the voip quality over 3g. If you install the Fring plugin, you can access all of your skype minutes and skype dial in/out as well. Fring also lets you easily connect to your PBXIAF server through SIP. This is one way to unbundle the services and get just 3g service.

 

[wardmundy]

Great tip. Actually adding $100 looks like it buys you phone service for a full year. Then you just add MediaNet. Thanks!

 

[krzykat]

Maybe a little off-topic, but how about the G-phone NOT allowing VoIP Man that could have been the phone we all wanted. I'm sure someone will break it so that it is possible sooner or later. Assume fring or someone will do it.

 

[phinphan]

I have a G1 coming to test out but I also saw the anti-voip article. However, since it is open source, that will fall pretty quickly I imagine. Fring turns out to work pretty well on a number of different phones. It even works well on my tmobile dash.

 

[wardmundy]

Little doubt that was a requirement imposed by the creeps at T-Mobile. They've been one of the verrrrrrrry worst about IP telephony. For a catalog of their shenanigans, start here.

 

[phinphan]

Unfortunately they have the lowest prices for cell service by far for family plans and text messaging, so we are mostly stuck with them.

 

[phinphan]

AT&T has decided to do away with the unlimited medianet on go phone accounts (prepaid). You can add 3 months now (before 11/12) and use it until the end of your 90 days. Hopefully in 3 months there will be another viable prepaid data plan.