Ask HN: Is there a better VoIP provider than Skype?

[PaulHoule]

For more than 10 years I've used Skype to make and take telephone calls.

For a long time I think Skype has gone downhill, particularly the iPad version. More and more often it can't find the microphone or the user interface updates haphazardly like a bad React app or it will ring and ring and ring and there is no way I can hang up. On top of that I am getting an increasing rate of messages that seem like pig butchering scams and I am getting notifications about Donald Trump that I don't want.

It seems like you should be able to get a SIP number and access it with a tablet app, phone app or a desktop app but the last time I tried it it seemed all the SIP providers I found looked really sketchy and I struggled to get it working.

Is there some simple way to get SIP or another VOIP phone working as a consumer in 2024?

[solardev]

What is your use case, exactly? Are you trying to do some complex programmable telephony, or just make/receive calls across your personal devices?

If the latter, I think just having an iPhone and iPad or Mac will let you natively do that: https://support.apple.com/en-lamr/102405 without needing to route the call through some rando internet service.

Otherwise, there's still Google Voice, but the call quality (last I tried) was consistently mediocre to terrible.

Vonage is still around too, providing similar VOIP services to Skype: https://www.vonage.com/unified-communications/pricing/

If you want a brand-name SIP provider, Twilio offers those services: https://www.twilio.com/en-us/client/pricing

SignalWire too: https://signalwire.com/use-cases/voip

I think at the end of the day, VOIP call quality is typically too dependent on factors outside of your control (codec, bandwidth, network congestion, etc.). And there's going to be additional latency since they have to route voice calls out and through some data center and to you. If there were an easy way to up the quality consistently, probably the business providers would've done that long ago and upcharged it as "Premium Voice" or such. The cell carriers did just that with "HD Voice" and such, but that's only when they can control both ends of the conversation. That's also why purely-internet voice comms (Discord, Zoom, etc.) can sound so much better; they have end-to-end control of the traffic. Generic VOIP/SIP providers that terminate to POTS don't have that luxury.

[PaulHoule → solardev]

Thanks for the leads.

I live in Upstate NY where there are cellular dead spots larger than some European countries. I'd feel like a chump if I paid for an expensive cellular plan which doesn't work where I live or where I drive on the weekend. There is WiFi at home, I'm about to set up WiFi in my rental house, my wife wouldn't mind setting it up in the barn, WiFi works at work, WiFi works at every gas station, on the bus, etc.

(To be fair my son has an Android Go phone with AT&T prepaid and that sends calls over WiFi when it has to, plus it comes up as a real mobile number so you can use it to register for WhatsApp, dating sites, and things like that.)

Overall I have no complaints about the quality of Skype-POTS calls, they aren't any worse than cellular calls (how the hell can a salesman spend all day talking on a cell without having their neck knot up from the stress of listening closely through a bad connection?) It's the other aspects of the UI that drive me nuts (particularly the calls that I can't hang up on)

My take is Google comms products are decidedly inferior to competitors when your connection isn't the best. On my DSL at home I have a reasonable experience w/ Skype, Zoom, Go2Meeting, Discord and Slack but every time I try Google Meet or any of the other 1357 me-too products from Google people ask me "Is your internet connection really that bad?" It makes me really feel excluded.

I did take a look at Twilio but it came across as more of a construction set for voice applications and not a softphone for general use though I guess I could build or find that application. Building something big with Twilio looks like it would be a lot of fun though.

[solardev → PaulHoule]

> I did take a look at Twilio but it came across as more of a construction set for voice applications and not a softphone for general use though I guess I could build or find that application. Building something big with Twilio looks like it would be a lot of fun though.

I think it's just a "bring your own softphone app" situation, like find any generic SIP app on the app store and hook it up to Twilio or SignalWire. You don't necessarily have to build your own.

> My take is Google comms products are decidedly inferior to competitors when your connection isn't the best.

Yeah, I'd avoid the Google stuff in this area. (Although I do really like Google Fi, their cellular MVNO. But that probably won't help your reception issues.)

> To be fair my son has an Android Go phone with AT&T prepaid and that sends calls over WiFi when it has to

Calling over WiFi (both sending and receiving) is a pretty standard feature for any carrier now, I think, and it would solve your need to have a separate VOIP line. You'd still get reception anywhere you have WiFi, as you do now, but can also use it as, well, a cell phone.

Google Fi for example only costs $20/mo for unlimited calls and texts (metered data, but who cares since you're on WiFi anyway).

FYI there are also a bunch of active cellular signal amplifiers: https://www.weboost.com/boosters/cell-phone-signal-boosters

[Spooky23 → PaulHoule]

You picked the wrong carrier for your son unless you’re in western New York.

Either TMobile or Verizon is way better.

Sounds like a philosophical problem, unless you’re really in the boonies.

[PaulHoule → Spooky23]

It was a few years back but I drove a lot all summer and found that they all sucked.

[Spooky23 → PaulHoule]

No doubt. I would say it may be different today. Particularly with TMobile — they utilized Sprint spectrum really well and made a laughingstock service credible. (But that varies by region!)

In very rural areas, as I’m sure you are well acquainted with, terrain drives everything they don’t try to fill gaps caused by hills etc.

[jprd]

This is a great Ask HN, I'm excited to read any input the community has to provide. To be totally honest though, I didn't realize Skype was still a separate service.

I'm not personally aware of any SIP / VOIP solution that would include specific Apps and such - love to know more!

[PaulHoule → jprd]

I don’t need something as vertically integrated as Skype: I’d be totally happy to install a generic soft phone app if I can get SIP service from somebody. I’d be happy with some non-SIP protocol too.

To Skype’s credit the customer journey of setting up the account and paying for the service is great (10x faster than getting a cell activated), it’s the calls that are going downhill.

[toast0]

IMHO, most people using SIP providers are going to hook it up to something that feels like a traditional phone. Maybe that's a ATA that provides a FXS port to plug in a regular or cordless POTS phone, or as the backend for deskphones for a business. I've been using voip.ms for a long time for this; despite the domain, I think they're based in Canada. I think they got some investment recently and they've rebuilt their website to be more flash and less substance, but service continues as-is, at least for my minimal usage (except for the time they and a lot of other voip providers were getting DDoSed; that was kind of rough).

They've got a wiki about using their service from a smartphone [1], but I'm guessing it's fairly dated; I don't think Android has a sip client integrated into the dialer anymore? And with Doze and modern networking, I don't think you're going to have a good time with a plain SIP client, if you want to get unexpected inbound calls; and for iOS, you always needed a server assist to get a push notice for unexpected inbound calls. I don't know if a regular SIP service is going to let you roam from wifi to cell and vice versa during a call either. If you want things to work well, you really need an intermediate server built around how modern mobile apps can communicate ... and then you get awful close to just using one of the OTT messengers and whatever calling in that app.

Voip.ms also has a more recently published guide [2] in their blog... so I dunno, maybe? Vonage claims to have an app for android/ios for their business communications customers [3] that might work, too?

[1] https://wiki.voip.ms/article/Android

[2] https://blog.voip.ms/blog/voip-on-cell-phones-ios-and-androi...

[3] https://www.vonage.com/downloads/

[chippyty]

Just let go on these spyware.

Use Jami! https://jami.net/

[sandreas]

Why not use Signal? You can message and phone call securely, it's free and not too feature packed.