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Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

As a personal hacking project in my spare time, I switched from T-Mobile to anveo and an asterisk setup. I can send and receive SMS on my server and can make WiFi calls on my phone. SMS gets sent to my email as well. This costs maybe $45 USD a year. I've thought about documenting my setup but I don't know if there is any interest.

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Some responses: Its reliable enough to pay my credit card bills over the phone using public bus WiFi

SMS is trickier as I only know enough programming to write a script in bash to send sms. I can't send pictures or videos, so I try to convince friends to use signal instead.

911 works with no sim card, as required by federal law.

I do have working SMS to email however, so viewing SMS is a piece of cake :)

I use Anveo for my "land" line and Google Voice for my cell. Instead of Asterisk, I use an Obi. The Obi also connects to my GV number so my home office can make/receive calls to either number.

I have an Anveo call flow[1] that implements a white/grey/black list setup that works great. There were a couple really persistent callers that I had to block the entire NPA NXX which is harder for the caller to spoof. I get almost no robocalls.

1. https://ibb.co/bBs2RsJ

For people who want this setup as a service, there's jmp.chat.

$3/month gets you an US/Canada phone number that you can make/receive voice calls using SIP, and send/receive SMS using XMPP.

Yes! I've wanted to decouple SMS from the phone I carry, be able to respond to SMS via other devices. Right now the best option I have is to convince as many people I can to start using Signal.

I am rarely in the same country very long and use https://www.aa.net.uk/ in the UK for a UK 07 number that can retrieve SMS and that I can use a VOIP phone with. As far as I'm aware they're the only service in the UK allowing this with 07 numbers.

How much do they charge for this? I looked on their web site but when you select that option they say:

'Sorry, you will need to contact sales to order an 07 mobile number at this time.'

Very very little. Paying a couple of quid a month I think. Yes, you'll need to contact sales, but also you can port your existing number in.

How reliable is it? Could it be used to replace non critical services twilio offers for say small business?

I definitely have an interest In hearing more about how you achieved this for such a low cost. My own sms/voip setup costs about $50 a month. I still gladly pay it for the control it offers, but would love to pay less but not lose reliability.

I use voip.ms in a similar capacity but with a much simpler/adequate setup. My problem is that certain senders (banks, credit card companies, etc.) are unable to text the number in question. Is Anveo better in this regard?

Is this just a number blacklist thing? If so, presumably you could get a regular mobile number and port it to your VOIP setup.

That's what I had done, i.e. ported the number from a regular carrier to voip.ms.

If you were to get a plan on a cheap mvno with a second phone number, would it work as seamlessly as if your main number were tied to your SIM?

I'm not sure I understand? The service I built is entirely WiFi based. I find most bars restaurants and coffee shops generally have WiFi capable of VoIP traffic.

It would be cool to get back on a mobile carrier, but only if I had enough network control to handle the kind of hacking attempts in the article

My interpretation is that the MVNO plan and number would only serve the purpose of keeping a constantly on data connection to then use your own infrastructure and number. The number from the MVNO would not really be used.

It seems this would solve the hijacking issues but you’d still likely get bombarded with robo calls to the MVNO number.

Does your setup have any mitigation against robo calls for the anveo number?

What do use for dialing? I’m wondering if it would somehow be possible to disable the device phone app to disable getting nuisances from the MVNO number.

I’m very interested in a write up. Thanks for sharing!

Yes this!

>you’d still likely get bombarded with robo calls to the MVNO number.

presumably all his calls are done through a VOIP app (he said astrix so probably SIP) and he can ignore all "normal" incoming calls, or is forwarded to his phone using a known number and he can ignore every number except that one.

In his setup, yes, this works as he does not have any phone number tied to the device. He’s using WiFi to connect to the PBX.

In the scenario where you use a cheap cell plan to have an always on data connection to the the PBX you will have to have some method of blocking all of the calls to the device number. I suppose you could have them all forward to the PBX and then your filtering could apply.

I am interested!

Quite interested!

i'm interested too.

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