Saturday, March 12, 2011

HOWTO: Free VOIP on Android Phone #2

Previously, I showed you how to get free voip with a combo of pbxes, google voice, and some other tools.   I since discovered there is an easier way that eliminates pbxes altogether which is described below.  Even more recently, I wrote a guide to setting up a high-quality and reliable solution for free home telephone using only Asterisk, an ATA, and Google Talk/Voice.

1.Get a free EKIGA sip address

Sign up for a SIP account with EKIGA here.

2.Get a free IPKALL number

Sign up for a phone number here.  Enter your sip account info for the account you registered in step 1.

3.Get or use your google voice account, and set it to forward to your IPKALL number.  More detail on this can be found in step 4 of the previous guide.

4.Get the "google voice dialer" (not google voice) and csipsimple apps for android.

In csipsimple, you follow the wizard launched by going to menu -> accounts -> add account -> worldwide providers -> ekiga.   It merely requires your ekiga login and password.  Now you are ready to receive calls to your IPKALL number (which will ring your ekiga sip address which will ring csipsimple).

To make free outgoing voip calls you need to configure the google voice dialer app with your google voice account info.  You can then customize the dialing to select when you want to make your calls with google voice callback to your IPKALL number.  Do not dial out with csipsimple through Ekiga itself since it will not work.  More detail on google voice callback app use can be found in step 5 of the previous guide (just replace any references to sipdroid with csipsimple as you read).

There you have it.  Free voip calling on your android cellphone with a relatively easy setup.  Have fun.

Coming soon, I am going to show you how to set up your own Asterisk 1.8+ server and get free high-quality, seamless VOIP at home using only google voice+talk and an analog telephone adapter.

10 comments:

brian said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
brian said...

got to step 3 and couldnt get google voice to forward to my ipkall number. said the number was already in use by 2 other people. how is that possible?

HeadSheez said...

Brian,
That should not be happening.

All I can guess is that people tried the ipkall number with their google voice accounts and stopped using it so IPKALL reclaimed it even though their GV accounts still have it registered. It might be worth registering for another number with IPKALL. However, that doesn't explain how a second account was able to forward to that number. I have no idea.

brian said...

figured out a way to do this without using ipkall! i used the gtalk/pbxes/sipdroid method and it worked great. now if only i could get the built in gingerbread sip client to work i could get rid of sipdroid...

Circumcised By Satan said...

Can't seem to get IPKall to forward to Ekiga - dialing it from Google voice doesn't do anything and I'm 99% sure I have my IPKall settings correct, they are pretty easy.

djhandlenfriends said...

worked out the way u said. got my g1 working with no carrier. made my 1st call to t-mobile's 1800 number and said f*ck off!

:)
thanQ

vmstuff said...

Great idea to connect Ekiga and IPKALL...,thanks.

Google Voice Dialer costs 1.99 now, but CSIPSimple could use the native dialer from mobile phone, so GV Dialer is not required any more for call out.

BTW, SIPDroid is not free any more, while no idea how long GV will be free either...

Only issue so far is that I hear noise but not normal human voice when calling over ATT mobile network. (HTC Inspire 4G)

Akeem said...

CSIPSimple will say call in progress, then hang up! Ekiga is working well (verified on comp) but CSIPSimple is not picking up the calls

ericwwheeler said...

Great article! I am having difficulty updating my ipkall account info. getting the 'invalid verification codes' message. I've tried every iteration and antisip as well as ekiga accounts to no avail. Any suggestions?

me said...

Good tutorial, my call connects just fine, however I cant hear any audio. Tried both Ekiga and GetOnSip same problem with both.