

The dirty secret of IP calling, and how it will change the phone industry - AdamFernandez
http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/9/2782401/phoning-it-in-dirty-secret-ip-calling-phone-industry

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smiler
IP calling for me is a major disappointment at the moment - I've been on far
too many conference calls where people are on all manner of different VOIP
ways to connect to a call - Skype, Cisco etc etc - it's low quality, tonnes of
echo, missed words.

What's even worse is when you have people from another company with a
different VOIP provider / technology - then it becomes a joke.

~~~
dasil003
The main takeaway is that landline networks offer impressive reliability and
quality of service. If you have people calling into conference calls from
mobile phones you have similarly annoying problems.

However VoiP can work amazingly well, it just puts more responsibility in the
callee's hands. But if you have reliable internet, with ethernet wiring to
your machine, and a decent headset, VoiP can provide better-than-the-average-
telephone quality.

~~~
alexchamberlain
Don't forget a decent processor/GPU to encode the audio.

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coob
YOu don't need a decent processor or a GPU to encode speech quality audio, at
all.

~~~
EvilLook
Exactly. I was doing GSM voice over IP with SpeakFreely in 1996 on a 486DX2.

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gst
I'm currently using T-Mobile with an unlocked Galaxy Nexus (GSM version). The
only feature that I currently use from T-Mobile is their data connection. For
voice calls I'm using Google voice and Skype:

(1) With most of my friends I just use Skype for calls, as I have it running
on my phone all the time.

(2) As fallback, my Google voice number has Jingle (Google Talk) forwarding
enabled and on my phone there's a client that is able to accept Jingle calls.
So I'm also reachable on a traditional phone number.

Disadvantage: Unfortunately both applications considerably decrease battery
life.

Advantage: Skype voice quality is much better than regular phone calls. I
don't need to use one specific endpoint device (my mobile phone), but can also
use my laptop to receive calls. I can travel without having to give my new
phone number to all my friends.

~~~
pyre
The other disadvantage: E911.

I know that Skype explicitly states that it's not a replacement for a phone
and can't be used for emergency calling. What about Google Voice? I would
assume that it has the same restrictions.

~~~
ricky_rozay
I remember hearing about switching to voip when the 2nd gen ipod touch was
getting popular, and i was intrigued enough to put off any handset upgrades on
my tmobile account in order to stay out of contract in case this voip thing
took off. In the 3 years since i have barely touched my mobile phone in favor
of the ipod touch, but i keep the mobile for 911. i hope a fix for that comes
up cuz even at the cheapest cell plan it is still a decent 50 bucks/month that
i'd much rather throw at a mobile hotspot or data only plan

~~~
daeken
If you're in the US, then any phone you have has 911 service no matter whether
you're subscribed to a plan or not. You can pop the SIM card out entirely and
still call 911.

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mseebach
UMA seems to overcomplicate matters greatly. How about just giving me a SIP
endpoint that corresponds to my mobile number, and, when there's an incoming
call, query my SIP presence, if I'm present, ring the SIP, if not, ring
mobile. SIP also supports SMS if I'm not mistaken.

Baking this into a carrier-branded Android/iPhone/Symbian/WP app should be
fairly simple, as the SIP implementation already exists for all of these.

~~~
rogerbinns
UMA works very well. Take the data that would be sent over the cell radio and
send it over a wifi IPSEC connection instead. That is pretty much it. Heck it
will even do realtime handoff between cell and wifi (in either direction).

The reason why it isn't very widely used is because that requires a very low
level of integration. Typically the radio and wifi processing code have to be
made by the same company and in the same chip. Blackberries have used UMA for
years where it is fantastic. But you can't just add it to a random phone
because it is almost certain that there isn't that level of radio and wifi
integration available.

I've been in Sri Lanka talking to someone in Philadelphia using UMA (which
connects to Tmobile in Washington state) where the traffic was going half way
around the world and back again. It works perfectly - the other party didn't
even know until I told them.

The newer Kineto solution isn't doing UMA because it can't - the radio
interface and handoff isn't there. It does still work, but their code is
buggy.

~~~
mseebach
I don't contest that UMA works, I'm sure it does - I claim that it seems
complicated, and what you write seems to support that. UMA requires low-level
hardware integration, SIP is trivially achievable in software.

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wanderr
I used to be a happy t-mobile customer thanks to UMA...cell coverage couldn't
make it to my house, since it was only 1 bar in my front yard and I live in a
block house with a metal roof, but thanks to UMA it didn't matter. Eventually
I got tired of having a crappy blackberry phone, which was all they had that
supported UMA at the time, so I switched to Verizon which actually does get
reception in my house, just barely.

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learc83
I'm in the Republic Wireless beta, and it's working great so far. There were
some echo problems at the beginning, but they seem to have mostly fixed that.

$19 a month for unlimited everything, and it actually works everywhere in my
house, unlike AT&T and T-mobile.

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billybob
I think the bigger trend here is "internet protocols will win." We see it
happening in telephony, television, music, and lots of other places.

Brilliant engineering has gone into the IP stack, with modular support for
every aspect of getting information from point A to point B. Packetizing
information, routing around network problems, dealing with congestion,
choosing whether to prioritize getting every packet correctly vs getting
packets in real time, discovering other network nodes, authenticating and
authorizing, etc. The internet has all these problems solved pretty nicely,
and the stack is flexible enough to do everything from voice calls to email to
video streaming.

Yes, we still need infrastructure. Companies who provide cables and towers and
satellites and fiber optic links are absolutely necessary. But flowing over
those links, everything is moving towards IP.

It's silly that we still ship CDs and DVDs of audio and video data in boxes.
It's silly to have a thousand TV channels streaming one-way to your house with
no ability for the viewer to choose what they watch and when. It's silly, as
this article points out, not to always choose the best pipe for my purpose.

The big trend is that infrastructure and services are being decoupled. "Dumb
pipes" is an insulting way to say this: running a data network is still hard.
But yes, the pipes should be neutral. We should pay for the best connection
and, separately, use the best services we can reach over those connections.

As we keep finding ways to use the pipes for our purposes, we will keep
converting all communication to the IP stack. Because it's better. It just is.

Dumb pipes + smart protocols will win. It's just a matter of time.

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geophile
I have a T-Mobile phone (HTC Sensation) and I love wifi calling. It works
beautifully where my cell coverage is bad and there's a good internet
connection (home, work, a ski lodge I was at recently).

I'm on T-Mobile more or less accidentally, and before I got my smartphone, had
absolutely no loyalty to them. I didn't even realize the phone had the feature
until I got home and started playing with it -- they didn't play it up at all
in the store. It would be hard to pull me away from T-Mobile. A competitor
would have to offer a huge price break, or wifi calling.

Really puzzling that they don't make a bigger deal of this feature.

~~~
goldmab
Seconding this. I got my first Android phone recently, without even knowing
about wifi calling, and it's one of my favorite features. I wish I had it when
I was looking for a job and doing all of my phone interviews outside or in my
car.

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rogerbinns
And now how about a "dirty secret" for Kineto Wireless mentioned in the
article several times. When their code is running on an Android device, even
when wifi calling is disabled, it spews an endless stream of messages to
Android's log (aka logcat). Often several messages every two seconds. Almost
all at Error level even though it just appears to be signal strength
information. This is ridiculously amateurish. It is highly annoying as a
developer to have to keep filtering this crap out. It also implies they don't
bother to check what is happening with their own code.

I have emailed their support who didn't respond. I even wrote a Google Plus
post about it:

    
    
      https://plus.google.com/110166527124367568225/posts/h4jK38n4XYR
    

I often find their code gets wedged too. It gets into a state where it isn't
working, but you can't enable or disable it. The only recourse is to reboot
your phone.

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mrich
I love the seamless WiFi calling on my Galaxy S2 (running MIUI ROM). When I'm
at home or work and have free WiFi, I can make calls for landline prices (and
cheaper if the call goes abroad) without launching an additional app etc. When
I'm out of WiFi reach, the phone automatically chooses the mobile provider.

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kondro
Encryption. That's what I'm looking forward to with native SIP support on all
mobile devices.

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tomjen3
Am I the only person who just wants a ip telephone capability for my already
Skype capable smart phone? I mean the telcos are dumb pipes so why do we still
separately pay for sms separately from the data?

~~~
sliverstorm
cos SMS is more profitable for the carrier when billed as a special service.
The carriers have no real incentive to push "texting" onto data networks.

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kahawe
I find it sickening and pathetic that things like "tethering" and "making
skype/voip calls" are somehow special features that most providers are trying
to keep you away from in every way they can... I have this awesome little
device that could do almost all the things I typically do with my PC and I
can't do half of them just because a few big-enough corporations decided those
features are TOO frakking awesome and they would endanger their holy cash
cows.

There is something about lobotomized technology for nothing but greed and
political reasons that REALLY rubs me the wrong way...

