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Comment by windexh8er | Hacker News Reader

Ugh, this is nothing new and the author is relatively uninformed on VoIP in general. SIP trunks got hot in the consumer space around 2005-2006 and there are much better alternatives than the author describes as well as far superior hardware (IMHO that Cisco ATA is junk for the price).

Do your research. Use something like the PBXIAF forums and software if you want a good place to start. If you don't need 911, which all providers have to offer (paid is the Q), leverage GVoice with an Obi (someone already mentioned) if you want to get it on the cheap but have hardware you can grow into an actual PBX.

$0.02.

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You clearly know this stuff. You should expand this into a step-by-step article, with what to use rather than just what not to use. Denouncing the article we have without providing clear alternatives may give you and some in-the-know friends a good time, but it's useless to me. You might consider hooking the rest of us up with some actual knowledge, rather than a vague incitement to "do research" on "forums."

There are plenty of step-by-step articles out there. Personally, I use FreePBX to manage an Asterisk system with Grandstream, Cisco and Siemens endpoints. Any google search for FreePBX will find lots of guides.

Also, Andorid now supports SIP in the native dialer client and it works over wifi and cellular data, so you don't even have to install anything extra to get it working on an android phone.

Android can support SIP protocol in the native dialer, but most phones I've looked at do not have SIP in the dialer they ship with the phone.

If you have a Nexus 4, it does support SIP, but your audio quality is usually terrible in a real world, on the street situation, where there is background noise. I have had no end of complaints, regarding the audio quality on my Nexus 4, from people on the other end of the phone call.

Finally, after much grinding and nashing of teeth, and assuming I had bad hardware, I finally found the following thread.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2228361

Quoting from the thread

    SIP is unusable on the Nexus 4 because the device doesn't provide an 
    AcousticEchoCanceler[1], AutomaticGainControl[2] or NoiseSuppressor[3]. 
    Additionally, the VOICE_COMMUNICATION[4] audio source designed for VoIP 
    applications returns the same audio as if the application asked for raw 
    microphone data, which is completely unusable for VoIP calls.

This has been a source of great frustration to me, since I run my own FreeSWITCH installation, and wanted to use it via my Nexus 4. At this point, I am forced to go back to non-VoIP.

Yes, this is true: SIP is in Android but unless you have CPU-based AEC AGC, etc., which is for the OEM to license, and nobody worked this out with LG for the Nexus 4, it will sound like crap.

I'm still waiting for 4.3 so I can't say if this has been improved.

I've been watching that microphone issue for a while now - is there no hope of applying those quality functions to the device so that SIP usage would be bearable ?

These can't be added "in the aftermarket." They have to be baked into the build and provided by the OEM.

Google Voice™ Calling on the OBi202, OBi100 & OBi110

http://www.obihai.com/googlevoice.php

$40 - $70 on Amazon depending on model / features.

http://www.amzn.com/B007D930YO

Also, I think it's worth noting how great the Obihai is. It's a great little ATA with a ton of features.

My only complaint is that the Obi can be confusing from a consumer perspective. It's not clear, from their marketing, which services are on the Obihai and which are from the operator.

So yeah, the little Obihai is a kickass little adapter. It even does direct Obihai to Obihai mesh networking; a neat little trick.

OP here.

As a newcomer to VoIP, a lot of it is confusing. I don't consider myself dumb or technically naive, and I've found it pretty difficult to get my head around how all this stuff works.

The Obi is so close to being an awesome consumer device and it was no problem for me to set up, but it's not at the "I can buy this for my parents" level of easy yet.

(FWIW, people like windexh8er totally don't help this situation. Well-reasoned suggestions and links to good documentation would serve the community better than trollery.)

HI!

If you wanna get an idea of how stuff actually works in VoIP, we cover the topics in depth every two weeks in our Expert Q&A sessions (next one is on Porting here:[0])

Here's a link[1] to 4 of the past ones so you can get an idea. We'll be publishing the videos on youtube soon. If you attend these, you'll quickly start to get a good handle on the world of communication; it's just a TON of acronyms.

Here's a link to one of my favorite blogs on VoIP [2].

Hope that helps!!!

[0] http://www.eventbrite.com/myevent?eid=7476736119

[1] http://blog.2600hz.com/post/52151527067/2600hz-expert-q-a-re...

[2] http://200ok.info/

I would love to see videos of these sessions! I also have a pretty technical background, but a lot of the VoIP stuff I don't have a great understanding of.

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