VOIP and Cellular

[seanbigdealer]

Like many people, I have a 1-1.5 hr. commute each way. Many days I pass time by calling family and friends, and sometimes see the fruits of my calls in terms of cellular bill at the end of the month. I have a 3-phone shared minutes plan with T-Mobile.

My plan contract is coming up in a few months, and thought I would look at options. My first option revolved around finding a unlimited cellular plan - so far I can get a Nextel for myself unlimited for about $135/month. My son and wife still need a plan though, so an unlimited plan will probably be too costly.

So, an additional option is to get a 4 phone plan with unlimited calling between phones. The last phone will be used to leave at home connected to a VoIP system. Thereby, reducing eliminating major additional cellular phone bills. My questions: what Anandtechies are doing this? What are their experiences with what products?

Some Revelant Links:
http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/104/C2825/
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+Connecting+to+the+Cellular+Network

 

[kalster]

thats an interesting concept, i run a asterisk pbx at my place and it works great, i guess you can have the last phone connected to asterisk dedicatedly and always call into that and make it act as a gateway, you would still need another line (pstn or voip) connected to asterisk so when you dial in using the cellphone connected to it, you can make outgoing calls (bridged calls), if your pstn/voip phone line is cheap/free then you should give it a shot.

another option is to get a phone with unlimited data plan and pair it with your pda (or get a smart phone) and connect to asterisk, so it will be like an extension. this is not really an option on gsm networks now, since QoS is not that good for edge networks, if you were to move to cdma it would work fine (provided you have evdo coveraga iin your area)

 

[Goosemaster]

Wouldn't it be simpler to get a data plan for a phone with windows mobile and use skype?

 

[kalster]

that would work too, if you have unlimited loca/ld plan in your pstn and want to call regular phone numbers you can setup your asterisk box that does the local/ld calls and you use cellphone and/or a sip softphone to use that, if no, skype out can be used (its pretty cheap)

easier would be to get vonage (or some voip provider), and take a softphone account and install a softphone client on your smart phone and use that (no need 2 mess with asterisk)

 

[seanbigdealer]

Thanks for the replies. I am leaning towards a box like this - http://www.phonelabs.com/prd05.asp, to connect into a PBX like Asterisk to then give me another dial tone. The softphone idea is another option, I am just unsure which will give me better quality as I am jumping through hoops either way.

 

[kalster]

if you are with tmobile , soft phone wont work, atleast the way the data networks are right now, edge is too slow and the latency is too high, i tried using a softphone client (xten) using the edge network and it was really bad, not usable at all

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: kalster
if you are with tmobile , soft phone wont work, atleast the way the data networks are right now, edge is too slow and the latency is too high, i tried using a softphone client (xten) using the edge network and it was really bad, not usable at all

I didn't know xten worked on mobile

 

[kalster]

its actually xten lite, actually they dont officially have xten lite for PPC anymore, they only have xten pro now (which is 40$) but if you google hard enuf you can find it

 

[Joony]

This looks perfect for asterisk! SIP support for a GSM sim card, dang!

Looks hard to find though.

Why aren't anyone in the US making one of these?! :|

 

[seanbigdealer]

That box looks interesting, take the SIM card out and it becomes a cellphone. I would love to get some English info. on this and a way to buy it here as well !

 

[seanbigdealer]

Here is that product in English:
http://www.online-translator.com/url/tr...iterate=on&psubmit2.x=71&psubmit2.y=13

Another option is a cable, or bluetooth connection from a cellphone.

 

[seanbigdealer]

http://www.sipcpe.com/fx300GSM.html

This looks like it will do the same thing, I may end up getting one giving it a try.

 

[Joony]

that's not as good though. You'd be going from a digital cellular network to analog which then gets digitized back again by a FXO card.

I have a FXO card connected to the PSTN line and it takes time to pick up and receive phone calls compared to a directly connected phone.

Find the real deal!

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: kalster
its actually xten lite, actually they dont officially have xten lite for PPC anymore, they only have xten pro now (which is 40$) but if you google hard enuf you can find it

Also, much of the VOIP software for phones and PDAs doesn't support Windows Mobile 5 (yet), so be cautious if you have a WM5-based phone.

 

[seanbigdealer]

And another GSM to PSTN (UK):

http://www.westlake.co.uk/Follow-me-GSM-Gateway.htm