

Google Voice Now Offers SIP Addresses For Calling Directly Over IP - danyork
http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/2011/03/google-voice-now-offers-sip-addresses-for-calling-directly-over-ip.html

======
gst
Amazing that they use Yate (which is unfortunately not that widely known).

Years ago I've examined different VoIP engines for a project:

While Asterisk is one of the most widely used VoIP engines the source code and
the whole architecture (at least few years ago) was ugly as hell. Instead of
designing the whole system for concurrency there were some pretty ugly
workarounds. In addition, it was trivial to crash the system with a little bit
of SIP fuzzing (and some of those crashes may have been exploitable).

Yate on the other hand - while not having as many features as Asterisk - was
just beautiful. A really nice architecture and extremely good readable C++
source code. In fact, it was a real joy to study the source.

Unfortunately I didn't really had a chance to study Freeswitch, as it was
pretty new at this time and therefore not an option. From what I've seen it
seems better architected and more stable than Asterisk. The main difference to
Yate is that Yate only has few external dependencies, while Freeswitch tries
to utilize as many external libraries as possible (e.g., instead of
implementing SIP itself it uses an external library).

If I'd had to choose a VoIP engine today (and if a simple SIP proxy wouldn't
be sufficient), Yate would be pretty much at the top of the list.

~~~
viraptor
And the team behind it is really cool - met them on the 2.0 launch party and
they were extremely friendly. They're honest about the project priorities too.
It's basically a "what feature do you want to sponsor" project. (and I mean it
in a good way)

------
wiredfool
It appears from the article that this is one half of the connection of Google
Voice to SIP voip, the inbound sip call to gv number.

The other half, delivering GV inbound calls to a SIP phone, is still missing
in action. It's also now getting a lot more attention due to the impending
shutdown of the Gizmo5 sip service.

As much as Google seems to want me to switch my gizmo number to GV, GV solves
a fundamentally different problem than I need solved. They are working on
getting one number to any end point, and I need to map one number to my desk
(without using a cellphone or hard wired phone.).

I'd love to find a good provider, but they all seem to be geared either to
monthly fee for all inclusive, which is way more than I need for this
application or not providing both an inbound number and the sip termination.
(like ipkall) I could hack a combination, but it's probably going to wind up
being less robust.

------
MatthewRayfield
If you want a round about way of receiving inbound Google Voice calls through
SIP (for free) you can do the following:

1\. Get free SIP service from IPTel (<http://www.iptel.org/service>).

2\. Get a free phone number in the Washington area with IPKall
(<http://www.ipkall.com/>).

3\. Add your new IPKall number to your Google Voice account.

Now when someone rings your GV number it will call your IPKall number which
will in turn call your IPTel SIP account.

~~~
barake
I tried to use a few numbers from IPKall but they were all already registered
with Google Voice. Sipgate[1] gives you a number free and was easy to setup
with some instructions[2] from XDA.

[1] <http://www.sipgate.com/> [2] <http://forum.xda-
developers.com/showthread.php?t=887131>

~~~
wiredfool
Sipgate has been out of numbers since the Gizmo5 shutdown notice went around.
They expect to have some soon, but no real info on a timeline.

~~~
niels_olson
Is this something like what's going to happen with IPv4?

------
egypturnash
God, these addresses. I hope that one of the features between now and the
actual rollout is letting the users assign _much_ more memorable identifiers
like 'username@voice.google.com". Still, the day when Android phones have out-
of-the-box solutions for IP calling is getting tantalizingly close!

------
dlsspy
Can anyone recommend a SIP phone for OS X?

As a semi-aside, I'm really tired of paying for skype since the service is so
awful and would happily redirect my money elsewhere.

~~~
wiredfool
Blink (<http://icanblink.com>) is ok as a client. I'm not 100% on the
interface, but it does seem to work well without crashing. It's gpl, and it
does seem to have some momentum behind it.

There's one called simply "Telephone" which is very simple, just a textbox to
call. No contact list or anything. (well, it wasn't much in december, since
then they've moved from code.google to github:
<https://github.com/eofster/Telephone>)

Gizmo5 is a crashy piece of ...something. It's the only app I've ever had on
osx that has crashed so hard it's needed to be reinstalled. Several times.
OTOH, you can't get it anymore, and Google is shutting down the sip service
behind it.

~~~
PStamatiou
any idea how to configure Blink for GV SIP? I used +1[my
number]@sip.voice.google.com and GV password but keep getting auth errors.

~~~
danyork
You can't register Blink for GV as an endpoint. You can use Blink to _call_ a
GV number via SIP (example here: [http://truvoipbuzz.com/2011/03/make-
unlimited-sip-calls-to-g...](http://truvoipbuzz.com/2011/03/make-unlimited-
sip-calls-to-google-voice-number-tutorial/) ) but you can't set up Blink as
one of the numbers GV calls.

That's the missing piece I mentioned at the end of my article and has been
made in several other comments.

~~~
PStamatiou
Thank you for the clarification.

------
robk
Google had enabled for a while a XMPP in/out gateway but they seem to have
disabled it. It's still working on my account though and pbxes.org has a nice
support for it built in, so it seems imminent they'll re-add this feature at
some point in the near future. Given the on-deck support for SIP calling in
Gingerbread, I figure they must be in the final stages of testing now.

------
zdw
Related: [http://blog.duh.org/2011/03/so-google-voice-sip-is-
actually-...](http://blog.duh.org/2011/03/so-google-voice-sip-is-actually-
coming.html)

Hopefully they'll fix the security issues (4 digit PIN to log in...), or at
least SSL wrap it soon.

~~~
danyork
That is a great post (and may be how the info got to the people who clued me
in to the existence of sip.voice.google.com).

He also has this post writing about the type of SIP integration we really need
to have with Google Voice:

[http://blog.duh.org/2011/03/google-to-kill-
gizmo5-on-3-april...](http://blog.duh.org/2011/03/google-to-kill-
gizmo5-on-3-april.html)

------
aedocw
If you want a relatively easy way to use your GV number for inbound and
outbound calls with the SIP client of your choice, just connect it with
Asterisk. The easiest way is to use "PBX In A Flash". I've been using it at
home for a few months and it's been fantastic.

------
sip_advocate
We found today this is no longer the case -->
[http://www.onsip.com/blog/rob/2011/03/08/google-voice-sip-
ad...](http://www.onsip.com/blog/rob/2011/03/08/google-voice-sip-address-no-
longer-available-sipvoicegooglecom-now-silent)

As for Yate, we believe it has the same issue we found with native Android SIP
support: It doesn't distinguish between auth username and username, which
creates limitations. (SIP Authentication username not configurable - RFC 3261
Section 22.1)

------
ja27
I think this is very similar to how some of us were using Gizmo5 with
GrandCentral before Google acquired both of them:

[http://groups.google.com/group/grandcentral-help-
poweruser/b...](http://groups.google.com/group/grandcentral-help-
poweruser/browse_thread/thread/8ac56b29429d3bc8?pli=1)

~~~
X-Istence
Yeah, I am wondering if Google is planning on getting the functionality I had
with gizmo5 into Google Voice.

------
Raphael
I signed up at sip2sip.info and just tried dialing my GV in SipDroid, but it
got stuck on "dialing".

~~~
gst
I've recently switched from SipDroid to CSipSimple
([https://market.android.com/details?id=com.csipsimple&fea...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.csipsimple&feature=search_result))
- which in my opinion works much better. The main difference is that SipDroid
implements almost everything in Java code, while CSipSimple is a wrapper
around PjSip (which is a pretty mature SIP library).

So if this doesn't work in SipDroid it may be possible that it works with
CSipSimple.

------
antihero
Why oh why is it still not available in the UK :(

~~~
detst
Likely because it's significantly more expensive to call a UK mobile than a US
one. I believe that they announced free calls until the end of the year. Maybe
they'll roll it out in the UK at that point but expect to pay for it.

~~~
weavejester
How much does it cost to call a cell phone in the US?

~~~
detst
For comparison:

Twilio: $0.02/min to all US and $0.03 to UK landlines or $0.32 to UK mobiles
-- yes, 16x the US rate.

Voxeo: $0.02/min to all US and UK landlines or between $0.14 and $0.35 for
mobiles.

Google wouldn't use Twilio or Voxeo for this kind of service so it gets
cheaper elsewhere -- especially on their scale -- but it shows the relative
difference.

~~~
oomkiller
UK rates really are a crapshoot. Voxeo and Twilio must just be averaging the
rates for mobiles. The rates I get at Flowroute for UK mobiles vary wildly:
<https://www.flowroute.com/services/rates/U/>

