So Your Office wants to Use VoIP, eh?

The Telephones, They are a Changin’

Back in the 70s and earlier, offices were served by a system with the telephone company providing all the connections, and forcing the use of their equipment. In the office where I worked, it meant 4 separate lines, and every phone had four lighted buttons. If a button was lit, that line was in use. If you pressed a button for a lit line, you joined the call. If you put a line on hold, the button would blink.

In the 80s, more and more companies installed their own private telephone switching systems, or PBXes. This allowed the customer to rent a fixed number of lines that came into their own equipment, and their equipment would divide up the lines, manage directing calls, sharing calls, and optionally policing what kind of outgoing calls could be made.

Plain Old Telephone Service

All of these implementations were referred to as “Plain Old Telephone Service” or “POTS”. In fact, even today, what are referred to as landline telephones, are often implemented as POTS at the customer’s site, even though some high tech network method brings it to the home (for instance, fibre optic cables). FAX machines are a good example of devices that almost always use POTS. In fact, where digital phone networks are in place, a device called an “Analog Telephone Attachment” or “ATA” can be installed to connect to a POTS device.

The Rise of VoIP

In the 21st century, a new technology called “Voice over IP” or “VoIP” came onto the scene. The idea wasn’t new, it’s simply digitizing audio and putting it over data networks. In fact, the telephone companies have been doing this, at least conceptually, in various ways at least since the 50s, including using “frequency division multiplexing” or “FDM”. With the rise of the “Internet Protocol” or “IP” in the 70s and 80s, and the rapid expansion of such IP network capacity in the 90s, the Internet now has the capacity to reliably carry many individual telephone calls… hence the popularity of VoIP.

Use of VoIP

Generally, VoIP is just like POTS. It differs in the way that the sound gets transferred between the end points. In IoTS, the sound is converted to digital messages that are put out over an IP network, often (but not necessarily) the main Internet itself.

Enter VoIP

VoIP comes in several different flavours, each providing a mix of features and capabilities. Sometimes, VoIP is implemented directly from one computer to another, but more often, some kind of exchange is used. This allows a VoIP user to contact any one of the other users on that same exchange.

More often, users of VoIP phones want to connect to regular telephones. For that, a gateway is required. Sometimes even the telephone company will provide such an gateway. Others are available, often for astoundingly lower cost, such as the one I use, VoIP.ms.

Relaying a Call to a “Regular” Telephone

It is possible to have a VoIP system transfer or relay the call back to the POTS system and ring an actual phone number (mobile or landline). Note that when a VoIP system relays a call, you will pay for both the incoming call and the outgoing (relay) call – each one might be pennies per minute, but if it happens often and lasts long, it can add up.

VoIP Reliability

VoIP can only be as reliable as the data network it communicates over. If that data network goes down, there is no VoIP. If the connection is critical, for instance, for emergency calls, then each and every link in the network chain must be backed up for loss of power and potential disconnection (for instance, broken wires or underground lines dug up).

POTS Replacement

Traditional telephone companies have spent over a century improving their reliability, for instance putting battery backup in all telephone exchanges so the POTS system can work for days with the power out, and providing redundancy on links between exchanges. Our residential Internet service is generally not battery backed up, and therefore often is lost during a power outage.

Mobile VoIP

You can use VoIP to a mobile phone, using its data service. Here again, the VoIP is only as reliable as the data service. If the mobile phone is turned off, out of the service area, or in a “mobile service dead spot”, then there will be no VoIP service.

Note that sometimes data service will fail before actual mobile phone calling – so it may be possible to dial out using the phone (3G/4G/5G/CMDA etc) even though VoIP does not work.

Similarly, it may be possible to have the VoIP system transfer or relay the incoming call to your regular mobile phone number if VoIP is not functional.

Consult with Professionals

For these reasons, be careful in the implementation of VoIP where emergency calls are likely to be made, for instance with the elderly or those often requiring advanced care. Consult with professionals who specialize in telephone service. These days, the telephone company will often offer VoIP services, and they will understand this issue well.

Cost

For those who are used to the cost of a telephone company landline, the low cost of VoIP.ms can be astounding. For as low as 3 dollars (US) a month, you can move your landline number to VoIP.ms. One downside is that generally you have to pay for every minute of outgoing and incoming calls, but that cost is generally in the 1 to 2 cents a minute. It’s difficult to run the bill up past 5 or 10 dollars a month!

Interesting Possibilities

Some VoIP systems will allow many phones to ring at the same time, even very far apart, in an effort to get someone to answer a given call. The rules for which phones ring, and when, can be complex. For instance, this can be used in an office setting, where maybe some incoming calls, like from known clients in a database, will ring all customer service advisors at one time. If nobody picks up by the end of the second ring, subsequent rings can be made to every phone in the office.

Multiple Locations

Even more interesting, phones in another location can ring. For instance, if a company has multiple offices, all phones for all service advisors can ring… or ring twice in the local office, then the rest of the rings worldwide. Calls can be routed to different places at different times of the day or night. The possibilities are endless, depending only on the exchange software used.

Finding You Whereever You Are

If you have a desk telephone with an assigned external number (referred to as “Direct Inward Dial” or “DID”), then with some VoIP systems, you can have your desk telephone, your computer, and your cell phone all ring at the same time, allowing you maximum flexibility. If you are away from your office, in an airport or coffee shop, you can take the call.

VoIP End Points / Telephones / Clients

What would be called a telephone handset in POTS, can actually be many things in VoIP:
– An actual telephone device or something that looks just like a telephone, in which case you might call it a VoIP telephone or VoIP handset.
– An answering machine, automated attendant, or artificial intelligence receptionist, in which case you might call it an end point.
– A program on a computer or mobile phone, in which case you might just call it an application or simply a client (as in client on the VoIP system). This is often called a “softphone” program.

In any case, each has slightly different character and options. I will use the most generic term “end point”.

Our company uses Dialpad, which is both a company providing an exchange and connection to POTS phones, and provides a softphone that appears to work well across VoIP handsets, computer and mobile phones.

VoIP Desk or Wall Mount Telephones

This type of an end point looks like a traditional telephone, but instead of a traditional telephone jack, it will have a network connection. Inside, it can be far more complex than a traditional telephone. I have used the Grandstream GXP1620, and can recommend it. These phones can be used very much like a traditional telephone, with all the features you would expect, and more.

In the office setting, there are extremely fancy VoIP desk phones. These actually look like small computers, and can be confusing to use. Just because a company can put fancy features into a phone, doesn’t mean that they should!

Real Traditional Desk or Wall Mount Telephones

A real traditional telephone can be used with VoIP, using an analog adapter. This adapter has a network connection on one side, and one or more POTS telephone jacks on the other. I have used the Grandstream HandyTone 286 and Grandstream HandyTone 486, both of which work very well.

The POTS jack on the analog adapter could theoretically be connected where the traditional telephone company’s wires come into a residence, thereby allowing the use of all the original telephone jacks around the house. This works well, as long as the number of telephone sets connected do not exceed the ability of the analog adapter to drive them with enough power. Be careful and test the setup – it can take too much power to ring old “analog” POTS phones.

Be sure to disconnect the telephone company connection before connecting the analog adapter to your in-house wiring. If you fail to do so, you may cause the telephone company trouble, and they will charge you money to fix it.

The Computer as a Phone

There are many softphone programs that you can run on your computer. Generally, this would require the use of a headset attached the computer (using speaker and microphone is generally bad office etiquette). A good quality headset is recommended, I have found the Mpow 071 USB Headset to be inexpensive (less than 30 dollars US) and good sounding, although be careful with it – it can be a bit fragile.

Softphone Programs on Computer

In an office environment, use the softphone recommended by the company.

In a personal environment, look into these, in no particular order:
Zoiper – I found Zoiper cumbersome to use, although many love it.
Linphone – Linphone is rudimentary and lacks features, but worked well for me on MS-Windows and Linux.
3CX – 3CX did not work well for me on Linux.
MicroSIP

As always, your mileage may vary. There are lots of lists of programs online.

VoIP on the Mobile Phone

There are lots of softphone apps for your mobile phone. Be wary of the app lists online – many include not-really-VoIP programs like Skype and WhatsApp, and mediocre or scam-filled apps as well.

Check Your Android Device, May Have Softphone Built In!

Earlier versions of Android had softphone capability built right in. This has the advantage of allowing the choice of using VoIP to dial out by default, or asking on every call. It also provides full integration with the phone’s address book, although other applications can sometimes do this as well.

Start the dialling program, touch the three dots in the upper right to drop the menu, select “Settings” and then “Calling Accounts”. If the option “Add Calling Account” exists, use that to add your VoIP system.

Softphone Programs on Android

In an office environment, it is generally bset use the softphone recommended by the company – unless you consider yourself an expert!

In a personal environment, look into these on the official app store for your device, again in no particular order:
– Zoiper IAX
– OpenPhone
– GroundWire
– Bria

In this case, I have no recommendation. It turns out that I used some of these programs long ago, but each one had some shortcoming that I could not fix. They may well be better now!

Again, your mileage may vary, and there are lots of lists of apps online.

Sound and Call Quality on Mobile Devices

Like most modern mobile phones and digital TVs, the call quality on VoIP is quite good. It can vary depending on the technology used in converting the voice to and from digital, but it should be at least as good as a POTS phone. However, like modern mobile phones and digital TVs, as they get poorer and poorer signal, sound will get weirdly garbled, choppy and distorted. This may happen even when you do not expect it, since the mobile data signal can vary rapidly from area to area, or even block to block.

You would not notice your Spotify or other streamed audio have trouble, because they are not operating in real-time. For instance, Youtube will often save up to a minute ahead on your device, so it can keep playing without interruption if data is completely lost. They are assuming that the data connection will be re-established within 30 seconds or so, then just start storing more, and you will never hear the difference.

However, for telephone conversations, we expect the sound to be available instantly, or at least within a very small fraction of a second. A few tenths of a second of delay can make it impossible to carry on a conversation. Telephone call audio is considered real-time. If the data gets delayed by a tenth of a second, it is just thrown away, because it hasn’t arrived in time to be useful.

This becomes important when we have a weak or intermittent data connection. The real-time requirement of the voice data means that lost data can’t be easily replaced, so depending on how the softphone deals with the missing or late data, the result can sound awful. Do not avoid VoIP for this reason, just know that when it happens, the mobile device is not broken, it’s probably the poor data connection.

VoIP Data Usage on Mobile Devices

Since the voice sounds on VoIP are converted to data and sent over the Internet, use of VoIP can eat into your monthly data allocation. If your mobile device is using local WiFi, then the VoIP data goes out on that, and doesn’t go on your data plan. However, in the absence of WiFi, then your data plan will be used by VoIP. The amount of data consumed by VoIP per hour depends on different factors, including the CODEC that the phone uses. A CODEC is the method that the sound is CODed into data and DECoded back to sound. There are many CODECs in use, some of which are faster, some of which use less power, some of which give better sound… but generally we just use whatever the default is for the softphone we choose. A brief review of available literature indicates that, in the worst case, a constant phone call over VoIP might use 30 to 400 megabytes per hour. In fact, you will probably find it to be a lot less, this is absolute worst case. For most people, unless they talk using mobile data for hours and hours a day, there will be no issue… but it’s not zero.

Battery Life for VoIP on Mobile Devices

In order to be able to receive calls at any time, the VoIP Softphone will generally contact the main VoIP server constantly. This eats some extra data on the data plan (although not that much, maybe a megabyte a day), but the bigger issue is its power consumption.

The computer chips at the heart of mobile devices spend most of their time in deep sleep, consuming as little power as possible. Those chips only transition to active mode when there is work to be done, like when the phone provider tells it to ring and advise you of an outside call, or when periodic check says there is a text message, or when the user is shaking, touching, or interacting with the phone in some way. Of course, there are degrees of operation, so the power consumption can vary depending on whether WiFi or Bluetooth is running, how bright the screen might be, and other factors.

When a program such as a VoIP Softphone is constantly running and checking for incoming calls, the chips don’t get to go to sleep… sometimes they never get to reduce power, consuming power at a significant rate, causing the battery to run down quickly.

Push Notifications

Most devices are on charge most of the time, and mobile batteries should be kept as close to full as possible to prolong their life, but it is important to know that the battery won’t last long when off of the charger, unless you can configure the softphone to use push notifications.

A push notification is a message that comes down, unannounced, from the server, waking up the softphone program and advising it that there is a call or message. If the server and softphone that you use can do this, then the phone can go back to spending most of its time in deep sleep, regaining your battery life. Push notifications are used by other programs like WhatsApp and Messenger for this reason.

Not all servers can do push notifications, but most of the big commercial servers can. Not all softphones can do push notifications, ask or check to see if they will.

Information You need to Set Up Your VoIP Phone or Softphone

There are three key pieces of information that are required to set up a VoIP phone. Extra features, high security, complicated networks (for instance, behind firewall or router) can complicate this, but in general, here’s what you need:
– Internet name of the VoIP server, sometimes called Point of Presence or SIP Server – sometimes there is also a “secondary server” which is used when the first one is unreachable
– The user ID of the account, generally assigned by your system administrator and generally cannot be changed.
– The password to gain access to the account.

With these three settings, a client should be able to make and take calls.

Text Messaging on VoIP

Text messaging (SMS or MMS) is possible on VoIP, depending on the capability of the client and the VoIP exchange/gateway used. For instance, on the VoIP.ms system, those numbers that are designated as “SMS capable” can send and receive short (SMS) messages, and in certain circumstances, extra-long messages and media (MMS) as well. Consult your provider.

Texting Gone Wild

Long Text Messages

SMS text messages are historically limited to 160 characters (70 characters if in unicode). Years ago, devices would refuse to send a longer message, forcing users to break the message up themselves. These days, however, most devices will allow a user to create a much longer message.

So, what happens when you send a longer message?

There are two ways to handle SMS messages of excess length:
1. Split the text into multiple shorter messages, which might be reassembled into one message by the receiver, or might be presented as multiple messages. Each message is shortened by a few characters, to put in a reconstruction header that the receiver can use to put it together.
2. Change the text to an MMS message, which actually uses the data plan to communicate.

What is this MMS of Which You Speak?

MMS is an alternative texting data format that can also do images, sound files, etc. On most devices, if you try to send a text with a picture or other media file, the entire message is automatically upgraded to MMS. As mentioned, this uses the data plan to send the content, but uses the SMS channel to send meta-data that advises the receiving device to load the actual message using its data plan.

“Legacy” SMS Support on VoIP.ms

Up until August 2020, VoIP.ms did not support MMS. Neither did the two most common means of sending and receiving text messages on their platform. They do provide an API whereupon you can write your own interface (as Michael did for item 1 below).
1. The android application VoIP.ms SMS is an open source project developed by Michael Kourlas, an independent programmer. It only supports SMS, never has done MMS. Also, this application relies on his servers to transfer data – for which I am thankful, because I appreciate the service!
2. The “legacy” web application, has no MMS.

In both “legacy” programs,
1. If you try to send a long message, it splits it up automatically, according to the standard.
2. You can’t send any media.
3. If someone sends you a long text message, it’s a crap shoot – if it is split up by the sender, the pieces come through. If it isn’t split up, the message is just silently lost.
4. If someone sends you media, the message is just silently lost.

“New” MMS Support on VoIP.ms

Image of SMS/MMS Menu Entry
Per above, in August 2020, VoIP.ms started supporting MMS using a new web interface from the main page -> DID Numbers -> SMS/MMS Message Centre, or directly at the SMS/MMS portal. Here, you can do full SMS and MMS send and receive.

The new portal works reasonably well, but it has its quirks:
– It might display a green dot beside a person’s name if they send you a new message… but it takes a while, and it won’t auto update for you. You have to click on their name again, to get the message to appear.
– It appears that a refresh is required every night at midnight eastern time. To do this, click DID Numbers -> SMS/MMS Message Center and wait for the refresh.
– If clicking on the menu item doesn’t work, hit “refresh” in your browser. At times, this will cause a login prompt to be displayed. If you enter your login credentials and it does not appear to do anything, the site is probably doing reverse proxy check – press “return to main site”, login there, and click ID Numbers -> SMS/MMS Message Center again.

Now, can you use VoIP.ms as a “complete” alternative to your cell phone texting? Well… yes, and no.

Android Application Support

The Android app has been updated to support MMS. It appears to be quite reliable. Kick Michael over a bit of cash if you use it and it works well for you.

Not All Providers Can Send to VoIP.ms Text System?

Yes, if it works, then you are away to the races. I use it all the time to keep contact with folks in the US and elsewhere.

The interesting thing is that some texting systems will not send to VoIP.ms text system, not sure why. There is some kind of “provider matrix” used by each telco for delivery of their texts to another telco, and for whatever reason, VoIP.ms isn’t on some lists. For instance, my bank in the USA tries and tries to send SMS texts to my VoIP.ms number to confirm my login, but it never works. The telco automation provider Twilio sometimes has trouble too.

It all seems kind of hit-and-miss. Maybe harassing the VoIP.ms guys would get them to chase it down and get onto those “choice matrix” lists, but I have not tried.

Text Message Provider Matrix

This text message “provider matrix” thing has been around for a long time. Long time ago I found that every telco has an incoming E-mail to text message portal – and found out that you can just carpet bomb all of them with the telephone_number@each_telco. Those telcos who don’t have the specified number will silently ignore. By extension, connection between telcos is probably done the same way. If VoIP.ms were not on the list, then they would not get the message, and would not receive the text.

Other Means of Getting Your VoIP.ms Text Messages

You can also have text messages forwarded to a “real” cell phone, but you do have to remember if you reply that it comes from that “real” cell phone – so your correspondents will send to one number, get back from another. Worse if that number is out of country – you reply, it comes from your “real” cell phone, and you get charged for it.

You can also have incoming text messages bundled into an E-mail, but not sure how you would reply to that.

VoIP.ms SMS and Call Forwarding

So, here is how to set up VoIP.ms for SMS texting and call forwarding.

Important Term “DID”

The first thing to know is a specific term.  DID, or “direct inward dial”, is your telephone number that can be called.  In other contexts, it can mean the phone that will be connected to, when someone dials that number.  In our context, it will just be the number.

Why the distinction?  Outbound calls use a different system.  Simple as that.  Leave that for another time.

Follow the Money?

Bear in mind that, although the base cost for each DID is ridiculously low, nothing is free.  SMS texts cost something like ¾ cent each, inbound and outbound calls cost by the minute (something around 1 cent per minute).  I find this acceptable, because there’s no way that I could ever even come close to the cost of my old phone bill!

Accounting

OK, first thing is to create your account and fund it.  All amounts are in USD.  I would suggest using PayPal to fund it, and I’d suggest putting in US20 or US30 to start.  You can set an “alarm” on your account to send an E-mail when your balance falls below a certain amount.

Once you’ve got your account and it is funded, then for the task at hand, here are the main management menu items you will use.

Set Up Call Forwarding Target

First, set up a call forwarding target.  Select “Call Forwarding” and create an entry pointing to where you want calls to be potentially redirected to.  You can create more than one – you can select which one is the actual target, for each DID.

Here’s a sample entry screen.  You don’t have to touch anything else except to put the 10 digit phone number of the target to forward calls to.

Ordering Arbitrary DID(s)

If you don’t have any DID(s) yet, you will have to go to “Order DID” first, and create them.  The word “order” is a bit of a misnomer, because it’s all automatic and practically immediate.  You can create as many as you want, and it’s quick.  You can pick a telephone number in pretty well any area code in North America, and some numbers overseas.  Be conscious of their cost, they don’t all cost the same in monthly cost or in inbound & outbound per-minute charges.

Porting Your Number In

You can also “port” your existing number from a cell phone or landline phone carrier to VoIP.ms.  It’s a bit of a process – not that hard, you just have to read the procedure and go through the steps.  The telcos are anal about making sure you follow the steps – they are trying to prevent port-out fraud, which has happened in the past, with disastrous consequences – think “SIM hijacking”, not nice.  

Anyway, it is standard practice these days to set a port PIN on any mobile DID.  This is wise to do.  Be sure to keep it private.  If set, then without this PIN, port requests are ignored.  Of course, keep track of that port PIN, or else you won’t be able to perform a port either 😊   Keep these things in your password manager (use LastPass – don’t pass “go”, don’t do anything else – just do it).

When you port your cell phone number, be sure to indicate that it’s a mobile/cell phone.

Managing the DID Settings

Anyway, once you have any kind of DID in your account , go to “Manage DID(s)”:

On the left, under “Actions”, you will see three coloured icons – an orange pencil & paper (edit this DID settings), a blue paper with lines on it (read-only view this DID settings), and optionally a green cell phone, which indicates that this DID supports SMS & MMS.  

Click the orange pencil & paper icon, which should bring you to this screen:

Select “call forwarding”, and if necessary, drop the selection box and choose where to route the call.

Scroll down and choose the DID point of presence:

This simply is the Internet server location that you will connect to, when you come around to using a VoIP phone.  I would select one close to your primary use location.  You can change it later, but for your VoIP phone to work (inbound and outbound), your VoIP phone must point to the same server name.

Continue to scroll and you will see the SMS settings.  Above that are a few key settings related to the cost of calls, review each one.  

For SMS, you have to “enable SMS/MMS” and, if you want to SMS/MMS forward, to select this option and put the 10 digit target telephone number in here as well. 

The “SMS/MMS URL Callback” option is for use with the VoIP.ms Android SMS application, see below.  You can leave it unchecked, but the value should be “https://us-central1-voip-ms-sms-9ee2b.cloudfunctions.net/notify?did={TO}“, per below.

Save the changes, and it should work!

Installation of Android App to Support Near-Native Texting

There are a few limitations, but it works very well for me.  It’s how I keep in touch with my friends in Phoenix (and formerly of Phoenix 😊).  I ported my US cell phone number to VoIP.ms and use this app to text with them.

Here is the Android application:

Now, the difficult part – setting it up.  The app is open source, and its help page looks like this:

You have to enter that string into the DID\’s “callback” entry (see above),  then enable the API connection back on VoIP.ms, see below

Enabling the API Connection

From the VoIP.ms main page, select “Main Menu”, then “SOAP and REST/JSON API”:

Put in an API password (this will be what you give to the Android app, above), enable the API, and ensure that the “Enable IP Address” is set to 0.0.0.0.  You can restrict the IP address here, if it is well defined and won’t change.

Telecom Madness!

I find it cool that I still have the same telephone number that I had in high school.  Yes, if you knew what my phone number was in high school, you can still reach me there now.

Once upon a Land Line

My family moved to Headingley, just west of Winnipeg, in October 1971.  At that time, Headingley was an independent rural municipality, separate from the city of Winnipeg.  We got a rural telephone number (204)-864-xxxx, typical of St. Francois Xavier and Lido Plage, to the west and north, further out of town.  This meant that calling into Winnipeg was long distance, even though it was only about 9 km (5.5 miles) away!  Very annoying.

There was quite a fuss going on in Headingley at the time.  Manitoba Telephone System (MTS), the government owned monopoly on phone service, claimed that if we wanted to have local calls to Winnipeg, then we had to be part of the city.  That was crap.  Communities to the northeast of the city, like Lockport, had local calling to the city, and were not part of the city.  The city of Winnipeg was actually several independent cities at that time, each with its own council and mayor/reeve.

Nonetheless, around 1972 the province of Manitoba amalgamated all the independent cities in an effort called “Unicity”, and in so doing, subsumed Headingley into the City of Winnipeg.  Now, I think that the Unicity concept was a good thing, especially in the area of control of development – although on the other hand, Winnipeg hasn’t done a very good job of development control…  more on that, another time.

So, around 1972, my family got a new Winnipeg phone number, (204)-xxx-1334.   All of my friends knew this number, of course.  And I knew all my friends’ numbers.  It was what we did in those days!

Dean gets his Own Phone – in His Basement Lab

Around 1980 or so, while living at home, I was frustrated by not being able to use the phone when I wanted to, and I had decent income, so I got my own phone installed into my lab in the basement, (204)-xxx-5620.  I was so thrilled!  When I tried to call my best friend Dave, his number was disconnected… oh no!  It turns out that when I was at Polo Park getting my number assigned, Dave’s mom was at another MTS store getting a new number as well, and she got the one just before mine, (204)-xxx-5619.  My personal number is long gone now, but she still has hers, and that’s how I remember it – one less than mine, ha ha ha.

Grabs Control of Old Family Telephone Number

Later, when Dayna and I bought the house and moved out to Headingley with Eric, I called MTS and told them that they had my first initial wrong (my mom’s initial is “M”), so effectively transferred the phone to me, heh heh.  Later, we “ported” the number to Shaw, our cable TV and Internet provider.

When I moved away in 2011/2012, Dayna let the phone lapse.  I called Shaw to get my own phone, they told me it had lapsed, so I picked it up again.

Moving to VoIP… and to Arizona!

In 2013, when I moved to Phoenix, I ported it to VoIP provider Les.net.  I had a Grandstream HandyTone 286 adapter, with a 4-phone Uniden cordless telephone system.  It was very nice in Phoenix, as I could have several phones about the house.

Way cool, I had my long time Manitoba telephone number, and it rang in Phoenix.  Caused pollsters and telephone solicitors no end of confusion, hehehe.

Adding Numbers

While I was in Phoenix, I actually signed up for a couple of other Les.net numbers, including a conference call number in Winnipeg, conference call number in Phoenix, a toll-free (800) number, just going crazy 🙂

Toll Free Line

The toll free number was to encourage my mom, my son and my brother to call more often, if they had no long distance.

Conference Call

I used the conference call number for governing board teleconference meetings, when I was chair of SAE Arizona & Nevada Section.  It was a bit expensive, as it cost me 1.5 cents per minute per caller…   and, as I seem to recall, it cost me big one time that someone didn’t hang up before I did!

Features

All the telephone numbers rang to the same phone.  It worked well.  An additional feature was an embedded answering machine – a message left on any number would be converted to a WAV file and E-mailed to me.  I could get them anywhere, how convenient.

And the cost was low, low low!  It’s about 3 a month for an account, which includes an automatically assigned Winnipeg number, then about3.50 a month to maintain the 1334 number that I ported from Shaw.  Calls were about 1.5 cents a minute (one way more expensive than the other, don’t recall which), so it was really difficult to get up to $10 a month.  Nice!

Now, the sound on that system was not great.  The big challenge that I found was that there appeared to be a significant transit delay for the data.  It’s amazing how very small delays, say 100 mSec, can be extremely frustrating.   You think someone else is stomping on you during talking, but it turns out that it’s because of the small delay.  You have to keep that in mind.

Mom’s “Long Distance Phone”

It worked well enough that I got my mom a Grandstream HandyTone 486 and a 2-phone cordless telephone system, intended only for making calls.  She saved a lot of money using it to make all her long distance calls.

Moving back to the ‘Peg

When I moved back to Winnipeg, I ported my Phoenix cell phone (480)-xxx-5952 into Les.net as well, so I could continue to receive calls and exchange texts with folks who had that number.

Porting to VoIP.ms and Getting a VoIP Desk Phone

One day, I found out about another VoIP provider, VoIP.ms.  I started an account there, just to see how well it worked.  They had better sound quality, and more services, so I transferred my (204)-xxx-1334 and (480)-xxx-5952 to Voip.ms and got a Grandstream GXP1620 2-line VoIP desk phone.  I love it!   The sound is awesome, practically perfect, way better than my cell phone.  I have one line on each number.  Even better, the (204) number costs 1.70 a month, and the (480) number costs0.85 a month.  I’m paying about 1/2 cent per minute on the (204) number and about 1 cent per minute on the (480) number.

Headset Highly Recommended

When I started applying for jobs all over the place, and having to do so many telephone interviews, I got a DailyHeadset model 4332802404 (ASIN B076KP2SX4) on Amazon (where else 🙂 ) which plugged right into the GXP1620 and worked flawlessly.  It is fantastic.

SMS Almost as well as a Real Cell Phone!

VoIP.ms actually has an Android application that can text (SMS) through an SMS-enabled account, and my former Phoenix cell phone number (480)-xxx-5952 was such an account, so I can text message anyone in the USA almost as easily as before.  The only thing is that it doesn’t support MMS (pictures, songs, and videos), so, don’t even try.  On the other hand, you can do SMS from VoIP.ms’s web-based portal, so you can SMS from your computer.

They also have the “VoIP.ms SMS” Android application that can use your mobile phone’s data plan to do SMS almost as well as native SMS.  Follow the directions on the VoIP.ms website, you have to set up a “callback”.

The Android application can host SMS for multiple telephone numbers at the same time, allowing you to select between them.

A recent update: it appears that they’ve made SMS available on my original land-line phone as well, so perhaps they’ve lifted the requirement that it was originally a cell phone, to make SMS texting work.

Send and Receive FAXes Too!

VoIP.ms also has FAX numbers you can rent for $2 a month.  That lets you send and receive FAXes using E-mail to/from your computer!  It works great.  I’ve used it only a few times, but it’s a neat toy nonetheless.

Caller ID Foibles

The one challenge that I’ve had using VoIP.ms is the caller ID information on outgoing calls.

I don’t know if it’s my VoIP desk phone or the VoIP.ms system, but it sometimes gives the Arizona number for calls made from line 1 (the Manitoba line) and the Manitoba number for calls made from line 2 (the Arizona line).

Eric also reported that his phone claimed I was calling from Egypt (country code +20), so his phone was misinterpreting the caller ID information.  The start of the “204” Manitoba area code was getting interpreted as the country code.  Contrary to what VoIP.ms tells you, when it asks you to give the 10 digit caller ID number, give them 11 digits, prepending the “1”, and that fixed the problem.

Incoming Calls: the One Challenge

For some reason, incoming calls have been a challenge.  The VoIP server must be able to route back to your VoIP phone, in order to ring it and set up the connection.  Years ago, this seemed easy, and it all worked.  Of course, I didn’t make any notes about how to set it up (argh).  But recently, I found out that neither of my numbers would ring through to my desk phone.  Curses.

My solution was to forward a bunch of ports through my firewall to my VoIP phone.  UDP ports 5060 (1st line), 5062 (2nd line), and 10000-10200, to be precise.  Then I had to deal with my dynamic IP resolution.  Well, I have a subscription to dyndns.org, so I can readily resolve (say) something.dyndns.org (or whatever, they have lots of options for TLDs) to my local firewall’s outside address.  The challenge is getting the dyndns.org  (oops, now that it’s owned by Oracle, they call it dyn.com) server updated.  In the old days, I used an old WRT-54G firewall/router flashed with DD-WRT.  That worked well back in the day, but I’ve abandoned it recently because the WRT-54G got a bit sluggish and lacked features (like 5 GHz band support).  If you go that route, be careful – there are a lot of WRT-54G variants, and not all of them can be flashed to DD-WRT… and some that can, are restricted in functionality once flashed.

Anyway, without my handy DD-WRT router, I set up a Raspberry Pi that runs inside my network, with ddclient connected to dyndns (see directions), which keeps the IP address on dyndns pointed to my firewall/router.

 

S5 Flip Flap Flop

When we last left our hero (me? ha ha), he had installed the latest LineageOS installed on my second T-Mobile Samsung S5 (actually my original from T-Mobile). I like it! It’s not quite as pretty as the stock O/S (OK OK, stock ROM), but it works well, more quickly, and, most importantly (related to the quickness), uses much, much less flash!

I had to (re-re-) install all of my programs, of course, and that was a pain. Worse, several of my “go to” programs are now “abandonware”. Sigh. Notably, “Profiles”, which gave me one-touch change of settings – I used this to turn off BlueTooth, dim display, and, in earlier phones, change volumes etc. However, in the S5, even with the T-Mobile ROM, I had to use “do not disturb” to prevent overnight E-mail & text notifications.

Anyway, so now the phone works… mostly. Still adding programs…

My use case is to leave the phone plugged in, face down, on my dresser overnight. Often my tablet is sitting there as well, plugged in, because I like to read the news, devotions, etc., before going to sleep. Well, what do you know, the tablet is large and thin, so I put it on the dresser first, then the phone on top, face down.

The past two mornings, the phone is working – I can see notifications in my web-based “WhatsApp” and text messages on “PushBullet” – but it seems to be locked up! The clock is present on a blue background in the top half of the screen, but the bottom half of the screen is black 🙁 It’s doing the haptic feedback on button presses (including the “soft” buttons), but won’t change screens for anything. If you plug it into the charger, the blue background changes to yellow, whoo hoo. My only recourse was to open it up, remove the battery, and reboot the phone that way.

Well, it turns out that this is a known problem with the Galaxy S5 – well, actually, a feature! Ugh. Apparently, there are some cases out there (or “covers” as they are sometimes called) that have a magnet in them, so that the S5 knows when the face is closed. It’s called a “flip flap”. Well, when the face is closed for a period of time, it automatically goes into “flipflap” mode, which shows the clock on the solid background, per above, through a lightly tinted upper window in the cover.

There were posts on this issue from a year ago – see https://www.reddit.com/r/LineageOS/comments/6yzpn1/how_to_disable_flip_flap_klte/ . Apparently there was a setting to disable this so-called “feature” (does my disdain show here?), but it would keep re-enabling itself “automagically”, as one post put it. You have to use “debloat” under “Magisk”. Now, here is a journey down a rabbit hole.

Installing Terminal Emulator
Go to the Google Play store and install Terminal Emulator from Jack Palevich. It will eventually need root privileges, but that should be automatic. Just remember that.

Installing Magisk
There are two parts of Magisk – the actual program, which you download as a ZIP archive and install in TWRP Recovery, and the manager program, which is an Android program but is no longer in the Google Play store, so you have to download the APK and sideload it. Here is the installation guide. To perform the sideload, you download the APK, find it in your file explorer and click on it to “open” it. I use ES Explorer. This will ask if you want to sideload this ultra-dangerous application, to which you reply “yes”, and there you have it!

Optionally Check for Root
The next part requires root access, so you can check for root with Root Checker from joeykrim. This may fail the first time, because Magisk has to wake up and ask to give it root privileges, which, if you want it to detect root privileges, you will say “yes” to. Ha ha.

Installing Debloater
Unfortunately, you are just getting started. You may have to reboot to get Magisk Manager fully loaded. Open Magisk Manager, click the upper left menu, go to Modules. It will be empty. OK then, click the upper left menu, go to Downloads. Install Bash for Android. Do not install Debloater from here, unless you are on Magisk 19 or later – this is a bug in my opinion. Instead, that thread leads to a scary filesharing site to get old version. Now go back to Modules, click the bottom middle plus, navigate and select the downloaded older debloat ZIP archive, and it will install.

Now, reboot.

Doing the Deed in Terminal Emulator
Once I got Terminal Emulator running, I just:

  • su – up to superuser mode
  • debloat – if it says “module not found” then you have too new of debloat, go to this thread which leads to a scary filesharing site to get old version
  • 2 System Priv-Apps – which will list available applications to be removed / masked by debloat
  • 25 – FlipFlap program!
  • exit – to get out of “su” mode
  • exit – to exit the terminal emulator
  • – now, reboot the phone to apply changes
  • Load Terminal Emulator again, do “su”, “debloat”, “2 System Priv-Apps” again, and “FlipFlap” is no longer in the list, yay!

    Blank Terminal Emulator Screen
    I goofed and uninstalled Bash for Android instead of the too-new version of Debloater. ( hint: there’s no double check, it just does it – so be careful! )

    After I reinstalled Bash for Android, Terminal Emulator just gave a blank screen! I’m not sure if it was related. Maybe I hit the “X” to close a window, rather than typing “exit”.

    Anyway, it did come in after some fiddling. Not sure what I did. I waited a long time, I went to “windows” and tried to add one (killed the program?), and I tried to add a window using the big plus on the screen. I uninstalled and reinstalled Terminal Emulator.

    If this does happen, be patient. Click things, try things, it will eventually work.

    Better, be careful when clicking things in Magisk.

    Shall see if this fixes the problem. Maybe will find out tomorrow morning 🙂

    Samsung Galaxy S5 needs a boost

    Well, the Galaxy S5 was a nice phone when I bought it from T-Mobile in 2015 in Phoenix. Not a fire breather, by any stretch, but nice. Unfortunately, it has become a dog. I’m not sure that it’s the phone’s fault – with Samsung and T-Mobile putting all that “crapware” on it, taking way too much memory all the time. In addition to all that, T-Mobile is responsible for the base Android firmware updates, even though I’ve moved back to Canada and put it on Bell-MTS… and they haven’t updated it in over 18 months. They probably will never update it again.

    So, now I’m thinking that I’ll have to do what I did on my trusty old Motorola Atrix phone when it started to dog out some 6 years ago – root it and put Cyanogenmod, or equivalent, on it. No crapware (nothing that you can’t delete anyway), only what you want, and up-to-date Android firmware. Cyanogenmod has morphed into Lineage OS. I don’t recall what the reason for the morph was, but I think it was that the Cyanogen corporation that was formed to maintain & support the O/S, got carried away and did some dumb things (including trying to make their own phone and compete with Apple/Samsung/LG etc.). Anyway, it’s Lineage OS now.

    I actually have two identical phones, so I can modify one and not take the hit when I goof up. So I’m actually changing my original T-Mobile S5 phone, and my “newer” phone still has the original firmware. Ugh, it’s so slow that I can barely use it.

    The T-Mobile Galaxy S5 is model SM-G900T. Lineage calls it “klte” and firmware for it is at this location on the LineageOS website. Note that it’s not an ARM64 but just ARM architecture.

    You first need to root the phone. Go to this article in Tom’s Guide which will show you how to root your phone with a program called Odin. You should be able to boot the original Android firmware, but it will moan and groan about being rooted. Good!

    Next you install TeamWin Recovery Program “TWRP”, which is a middle stage loader that allows you to change OSes (“ROMs” in Android parlance). To install TWRP, you use Odin again. You power down your phone, power up with a specific key combination to get into “recovery”, and then blast the TWRP image onto the phone. See this TWRP page to get the image, which right now is version twrp-3.2.3-0-klte.img.tar .

    The instructions for Lineage OS installation , but ignore the part about “heimdall”, that didn’t work for me at all. You did all that with Odin. Skip down and use ADB to “sideload” Lineage, Google Apps “GApps”, and LineageOS SU Addon. If you don’t have ADB, here it is. The Lineage image as of today, is lineage-16.0-20190324-nightly-klte-signed.zip . There are links in the instructions over to Google Apps, present version is 20190325. There are several sizes of download, check out the chart of the different sizes. I used “mini”. Then also install the optional LineageOS SU Addon. Do not reboot until all three packages are installed.

    It seemed to take forever for the phone to boot, the first time after installing Lineage, GApps and the SU Addon – but it did boot. Have patience.

    Once you log in to your Google account, you can restore your applications, etc. In may case, I “restored” it from what was saved by the other phone (grin). I had to re-delete some of the crapware, but that’s a small price to pay.