Android VOIP.ms issues

[Kirbyprime]

Not sure if anyone use the service here, but I think there should be a fair amount of people that use / setup voip so I figured I'd ask anyways. To be honest, I should be messaging the voip.ms support line, but I figured might as well ask here since BG.

I'm having some issues setting up voip.ms on my android nexus 5. I followed their basic guide here ( https://wiki.voip.ms/article/Android_Sip_Client ) but so far all I've managed to get roughly working is that incoming calls "kind of" work properly? But outgoing calls are pretty much just busted in various ways.

Outgoing calls to my home which is using another VOIP service just plain doesn't work. I tried using both WiFi and 4G to call and didn't work.

Outgoing calls to other people kind of works? I think, but it's wonky where it doesn't terminate properly. If I don't pick up and attempt to hang up the call on the other end. It will just keep redialing the recipient again and again until they pick up. ( At which time the call ends ).

Incoming calls... umm... seems to work, but if I use my home VOIP phone to call in, the call works but I get a constant busy signal along with the call which doesn't stop. If I hang up from my cellphone, then my home line gets some weird double busy tone sound.

I presume there's probably a lot more issues that I just haven't gotten to yet, but can't really do much since I can't get incoming / outgoing calls to work well.

Any help is appreciated!

[orinthia]

Try a different client? Stuff like zoiper, csipsimple, and linphone could work, provided your devices are compatible.

[Kirbyprime]

Stupidly enough, I never thought about using another client... seems to have fixed some issues but not others.

Using CSipSimple
- Outgoing to home VOIP doesn't works
- Outgoing to non-VOIP seems to work
- Incoming from non-VOIP seems to work
- Incoming from home VOIP gives busy signal but connects ( doesn't terminate properly if mobile rejects call )
- Able to terminate calls properly ( except for home VOIP )


Using Zoiper
- Outgoing to home VOIP doesn't works
- Outgoing to non-VOIP seems to work
- Incoming from non-VOIP seems to work
- Incoming from home VOIP doesn't work
- Not able to terminate calls properly

EDIT: Hummm, live support wasn't able to help either. Might have to scrap my plan of getting a data only cell plan.

[orinthia]

Super weird, so voip to voip (on same service-provider?) wasn't working. Do you have google voice? If you have a google account, you can activate voice and get a phone number or transfer your number to it. Can have it forward calls to other numbers, act as your voice mailbox (can get it in your gmail if you want, transcribed), and have it ring on google hangouts app or even in chrome with hangouts plugin (it's pretty damn handy).

It's what I would do if you're looking to keep things as no/low-cost as possible. That and look into freedompop and ringplus.

fpop and ringplus shit in spoiler:

Spoiler: show

Fpop's service is data-based with their app controlling voip calls and texts, uses sprint's network primarily but they've got a global gsm sim going now (uses 3 network from the UK, latency isn't horrible but still need their app for calls). Free service is 200min/500text (voip-app based), 500mb, (gsm sim is 200min/mb and 500text, or 200MB if data-only since they have both on sale at different times) but they activate a number of their premium features upon purchasing anything, so you need to log into your account and turn it all off immediately or else start paying monthlies. Turning things off is pretty easy but they purposefully made some of the links small and easy to miss. You can also add people as "friends" to increase your monthly free data cap, by up to 500mb. There's a giant thread on slickdeals.net for getting freedompop friends for this, i've capped a number of my accounts from there within a couple hours of posting the account email. Fpop forums: https://forums.freedompop.com/

Fpop also tends to have decent used phone deals, like for older samsung galaxy (3-6), iphone (5, 5c, 5s), moto e, etc, which are usually posted on groupon, woot, and a couple other places at decent prices (grade b quality, so expect a quite used phone but sometimes it's better). They support a decent amount of android/apple sprint-cdma phones, and their global gsm sim works on anything after it has been activated (I have my data-only sim in a windows phone, no windows fpop app mind you, and a talk/text/data one in an old iphone4). If you have an old iphone4 (not 4s) and it's on the last ios version (7/7.1) you'll need to jailbreak it in order to put in the custom apn settings required if you get a global sim, because apple thought you would never need this. You can get as many of these things as you want, but make separate accounts for each so you can shift data around (you can share data with fpop friends, up to 100mb one time per month).


Ringplus uses non-voip calling/texting but injects audio-ads into your calls in place of the ringing-tones (ads are very short, delays your call by maybe 2-5 seconds before other side rings, can customize the ads to a certain degree (like can be music or news and such)). Also uses sprint's network, and only sprint. Ringplus is a little peculiar in that for the last year they've been having a lot of different promotions on free service but the promos only lasted like a week to only a handful of hours. We're talking pretty massive free service promos in the past, like 1500, 2500, 3k, 5k+ min/text/mb month (free). https://social.ringplus.net/ for their general forums, https://social.ringplus.net/categories/community for their discussion forums, there's a lot of things you have to consider when trying to get into this now. Sprint didn't like it when ringplus was registering pre-paid cdma phones from other carriers, like boost/virgin mobile (technically any carrier could do this, but r+ promos were making them sell-out of those cheap prepaids everywhere), so made it policy to have the phone in service for a year before it could be used on another carrier, so those nice $30 lg volt prepaids in stores won't work on ringplus without a year of service on boost (whoever is on the box) now.


In total, I have like 8 free service plans across both fpop and ringplus (impulse buys, I have a weak will toward this sort of stuff ), so if you're willing to look at the fine print and dig through their account settings to turn crap off, you can get decent service. Otherwise, you'll get headaches, stuck with monthlies, and no real phone support. Not that you'd have support outside of those couple forums anyway, and barely.

[Kirbyprime]

Reasonably, I'd say it's probably some issue with my home VOIP line. My parents had installed CitiTelecom's VOIP service. From the looks of it, their service works with other regular lines but does not play nicely with other VOIP. I've tried voip.ms and also TextNow call services. Both gives weird busy signals / instant disconnects.

Can't figure out how Fpop works, registered on the site but looks like some Facebook forum like thing. Haven't looked at RingPlus.

I mean, it's not the worst thing in the world I guess. The worst case is that I use my data only plan with super expensive call / texting ( $1 CAD per minute / message ). I rarely ( by which I mean never ) call people or text since I tend to use WhatsApp so it's not that horrid.

Only thing that I never managed to figure out is why both zoiper and cSIPSimple would refuse to terminate properly when the recipient rejects the call. Creates a weird situation where it would infinitely redial the other person if they don't have voicemail.

[orinthia]

I just linked the forums, look for fpop phone deals on groupon (like in here: https://www.groupon.com/goods/cell-phones , bunch of listings marked with fpop) or here (https://forums.freedompop.com/categories/deals ) since you need one of their phones/sims or a usable carrier-unlocked sprint phone for an account. Ringplus is primarily bring your own sprint device as they charge out the ass for used sprint phones (they have a classifieds section where members can sell their phones with any of the weird-number of ringplus free plans, but you need an account just to peek at the listings... ).

It's probably too much trouble to deal with if you're just looking for something quick that might work.

About the only thing I can think of you trying would be google voice if you hadn't already. Or switching your parents over to another homephone provider (if that's possible, and not too inconvenient), maybe something akin to straightalk's wireless homephone (if straightalk isn't available in canada): it's a little base station that gets a cellular signal, converts for use with normal landline phones, like $15/month unlimited minutes/long distance, was perfect for my parents to get them away from at&t charging out the ass for their landline while not changing their old phone. Service is pretty good but it rarely doesn't connect on incoming calls (my folks live between towers so the signal has never been very good on any cell service, like maybe once every month or so). There's also a base station that works with google voice, using your internet connection obviously but outputs to a landline phone (obihai I think it was, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...=-1&isNodeId=1 ).

Just some random options.