posted by
Woods
on Friday May 16 2014, @11:22PM
from the contemplating-changing-cellphone-calling-carrier dept.
from the contemplating-changing-cellphone-calling-carrier dept.
I'm currently attempting to wean myself off of all Google services. This is mainly because I would prefer not to have all of my eggs in one basket. Replacing Gmail and Google Calendar was easy enough, but now I've hit a wall trying to replace Google Voice. I've been on Google Voice practically since its inception, and I use it to take all of my calls and to send and receive all of my SMS. I can't seem to locate any information on how to set up a similar service that is self-hosted. I would be willing to pay a reasonable amount for the phone bridge portion of the service, but I would like, if possible, to store the data on my own server (open source is a plus, of course). Suggestions?
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by gishzida on Friday May 16 2014, @11:38PM
What are you using for bandwidth?
What did you replace Calendar and gmail with?
How many 9's of availability do you need? 3, 4, 5?
Are you US Based?
Some of the regional based telco carriers in the US [CLECs] can provide the connection to their backbones... but that of course comes at a price.
(Score: 1) by kristian on Monday May 19 2014, @01:24PM
I didn't see this until today. I live in the US northeast and I have FiOS as my ISP. I replaced gmail and calendar with postfix and Apple's caldav server running on my server in my home. I got around the issue of port 25 being blocked on my home internet connection by using Amazon SES as an smtp bridge. I'm really a hobbyist. So reliability would be nice, but I'm the only one who's going to be using this, so if it breaks it's not the end of the world.
The opinions expressed in this post are those of the individual sender and not those of Kristian Picon.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday May 16 2014, @11:52PM
It might be better if you explain what Google Voice is, and how exactly are you using it, and what features you require. As it stands, only people familiar with Google Voice could answer your question - and they might be less informed on alternative solutions since they already have one that does what they need. Ideally, you simply enumerate what you need.
If this is, roughly, a telephone number that is terminated in a PC-based answering machine, there are many solutions.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Buck Feta on Saturday May 17 2014, @02:40AM
Google Voice is a Google product which replaces the client's own voice. Based on Google's assessment of your speech, email, browsing, and calender histories, Google calculates what the you would say in any given interaction. Google then says your words for you in any context imaginable.
"Honey, does this dress make me look fat?". "Define fat." -SLAP-
Or Google Voice can be configured to provide an optimal, rather than user-history generated response.
"Honey, does this dress look fat?". "Damn girl, that dress shows off your body like the frame around the Mona Lisa. Why don't you come over here and sit on my lap for a while?"
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Saturday May 17 2014, @04:42AM
s/my lap/my face/
Sorry - too much beer.
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Saturday May 17 2014, @04:12PM
Obviously too much beer. That's an inefficient regex, for replacing the single instance of "lap" with "face".
(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Friday May 16 2014, @11:58PM
You need POTS to Voip (direct inward dial) and Voip to POTS. (Plain Old Telephone System).
This can be had for Cheap, Dirt Cheap and Free.
Cheap is 15-20 dollar per month a local phone line, fed by a Linux box running Asterisk or Kamailio.
Dirt Cheap is something like PhonePower.com (there are dozens of these) which will supply in/out bound for $20 to 30 per YEAR.
Free is shopping carefully over the net to get VOIP/SIP to POTS gateway, and using something like APKAL for DID (calls from POTS to VOIP/SIP.
Oddly, outbound numbers (VOIP to POTS) are the hardest to find for free, because who ever supplies that has to be able to pay some other carrier to deliver the call to any random POTS phone. You will have to search hard to find this for free, unless its very limited as to who you can call.
Text Messaging? Time to break that habit. There any number of messaging platforms. World wide for free.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 17 2014, @12:29AM
Nothing odd about that. If the call goes over POTS at any point a carrier will want to get paid for it's service (normally by the party initiating the call).
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday May 17 2014, @12:44AM
Pretty sure I mentioned that.
Theoretically, this should be pretty cheap, and in the past there were schemes to accomplish this for free, by having a group of federated providers, each supplying local (non-toll) outbound calls in their area. You can do this with Asterisk, but it pretty much means dedicating an outgoing line to this use.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Informative) by damnbunni on Saturday May 17 2014, @12:36AM
It doesn't matter if there are other messaging platforms if I'm the only one using them.
Basically anyone with a cell phone can get a text message. Even if they have a dumbphone, unless they have a severe austerity 'no text messages' plan, and that's very rare.
Otherwise you deal with the '00s 'Are you in ICQ, AIM, MSN, Y!, or what?' all over again.
(Score: 1) by thegothicguardian on Saturday May 17 2014, @12:50AM
Most cell carriers have email-to-text functionality. Just send an email to their phone number as an email address with the right domain [20somethingfinance.com] for their carrier, and they can respond via text message.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday May 17 2014, @01:04AM
While you were asleep, the world changed.
All of those you mentioned are pretty well dead. (MSN slightly (very slightly) rejuvenated by windows phones). By dead, I mean fallen into disuse, ceasing to grow, but still available.
Odd you mention phones without realizing the 10 or 20 different clients available for just about every type of phone (except perhaps dumb phones) that will integrate messaging over ALL of those services. None of them rely on text messaging. Your teen ager is as likely to be texting with someone across the world as across town.
Whatsapp, Fring, Nimbuz, IMO, IM+ Skype, XMPP/Jabber, Google Talk/Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, etc. And many of the clients handle multiple of these and many of the platforms have gateways to the others.
SMS messages aren't free for everyone, and they are almost always country limited.
That is changing, because the big carriers realize the internet is here, and eating their lunch.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by damnbunni on Saturday May 17 2014, @11:37AM
Yes, I'm aware those services are mostly dead. I was comparing the situation with modern non-SMS message apps with the situation we had in the '00s with multiple IM clients.
The problem is that I can't count on anyone having access to anything BUT SMS on a phone. They might. They might not. They may have WhatsApp and BBM but not Facebook. They might have Facebook and iMessage but not Google Hangouts.
SMS is as close to 'universal' as we've got.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by iwoloschin on Saturday May 17 2014, @12:41PM
Until someone using an iPhone tries sending a "SMS" to multiple folks, including me, using a Google Voice number. Then I get random bits of conversation since Google Voice doesn't know how to deal with multiple contact SMS (which is technically not even SMS anymore).
Or I just yell at everyone to get on Google Hangouts, since it's free and available for every phone, and most of my family uses Android now, which, even better, forces you to use the same app for Hangouts or SMS, so there's about a 10 second learning curve to change habits. I don't know anyone who doesn't have a "smart" phone anymore, so for myself Hangouts has quickly become the defacto communication standard.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Saturday May 17 2014, @02:32AM
Call me crazy, but the cheapest plan I see is $100/yr.
I don't consider it a deal if I have to keep hunting around for, and changing providers when their brief promotional/advertising prices changes each year.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 1) by broggyr on Saturday May 17 2014, @12:42PM
MagicJack?
Taking things out of context since 1972.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Saturday May 17 2014, @06:34PM
The cost of electricity and maintenance, running a Windows computer non-stop for YEARS on end, easily trumps any savings you might get from their low price.
The MagicJack Plus, which doesn't need a computer, comes with a significantly higher monthly fee than standard magicjack.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Saturday May 17 2014, @12:19AM
Grandcentral user here.
What I want in a for-pay replacement:
o Multi-phone forwarding (ring multiple numbers simultaneously)
o Voicemail to email (transcription is nice, but even just an mp3 would be tolerable)
o Blacklists
o Per-caller voicemail greetings
o Scheduling (after midnight all non-family calls go straight to voice-mail)
o VOIP end-point (like obihai, recommendations on hardware also wanted)
o Anonymous payment - can't stop the collection of my call logs, but can make it hard to sell my logs to BlueKai
o texting - not everyone I talk to has a smartphone with a data plan
(Score: 1) by Yates on Sunday May 18 2014, @10:10AM
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Sunday May 18 2014, @05:03PM
WRT to anonymous payments one example would be prepaid cellphones, I can buy the phone with cash and buy a top-up card with cash too. They ask for a name when you activate the phone but they don't care if it is your name or your dog's.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Saturday May 17 2014, @12:23AM
https://jitsi.org/
http://www.ekiga.org/ - former GnomeMeeting
http://tox.im/ - sources on https://github.com/irungentoo/ProjectTox-Core [github.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy_%28softwar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by beardedchimp on Saturday May 17 2014, @11:38AM
Searching isn't the same as asking. You can tap into a wealth of experience by asking here and people can advise you against common pitfalls or projects that look good when searching but have heaps of problems.
(Score: 1) by Cornwallis on Saturday May 17 2014, @01:25AM
I've been worrying about this lately as well. And trying to de-Google as much as I can. I run my own mail servers and OwnCloud but Voice has been a sticking point. I cam across Twilio (twilio.com) which looks like it might be worth a try. Not free but definitely cheap.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Saturday May 17 2014, @05:36AM
Twillio
They do it all and have a proprietary platform that merges voice and SMS/MMS together seamlessly. You can use a full IP phone, or software available on many platforms.
Full API and integration docs allow you to create any number of complicated applications (there is a marketplace) that can fully replicate anything you can do with Asterisk. Asterisk is what is running under the hood of many different projects like Trixbox (God they suck), PBIAF (?), etc. that give you an established frontend. Asterisk barebones takes some experience. There is also OpenSips which is bit more difficult than Asterisk, and some other platforms like Avaya, Cisco, Snom, Aastra, etc.
If you are willing to put in some work you don't have to give anything up. You can have what amounts to a cellphone using your current number and SMS will be seamless. In fact, it can be better. You can route incoming calls based on CallerID and automatically look them up in SPAM lists (including debt collectors) and route them to an operator intercept (SIT tones) and an out of service message with monkeys fucking. I actually do that now for myself.
You can't do that with Google Voice. They don't allow you to program for their platform AFAIK.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 17 2014, @06:48AM
I don't use anything google or facebook. One of the best decisions I've ever made.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by arashi no garou on Saturday May 17 2014, @12:12PM
I'm curious then, what kind of phone do you use? Classic cellphone, smartphone, or no phone at all? And if it's a smartphone, which platform? I'm genuinely curious, as I hate my Android phone and Google in general, and I'm hoping to find a good alternative.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 17 2014, @03:00PM
I have an old classic cell.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Saturday May 17 2014, @09:47PM
Not the original AC, but I have a smartphone called the Nokia N900. Works well for what it did, but a bit long in the tooth and getting erratic as the years have passed. Also, not for those not initiated in Linux.
My best prospect for replacement is Sailfish OS and possibly the Jolla phone if it ever makes it stateside. Not quite ready for full "production" use though, from what I've read. Jolla phone with a good hardware keyboard "other half" add-on would be amazing. Still waiting for it to fully bake, I'm afraid.
But yeah, refusing to get on the Facebook bandwagon has been paying me dividends for a good while now.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 1) by arashi no garou on Sunday May 18 2014, @10:15PM
I have an N900, but it's not supported on my current (CDMA) carrier. I guess my only options, apart from going back to T-Mobile and the N900 until Jolla arrives in the US, are a Windows Phone or a classic phone. I do like Windows Phone as an OS; it is probably the most user-friendly of the three major OSes, and gets out of my way so I can get stuff done on the go. But I have similar reservations about Microsoft as I do Google.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 18 2014, @06:22AM
When rooted, you can strip all Google specific apps out of Android, and firewall everything else that doesn't need network connectivity. I use android and am fairly confident (through using wire shark) that my personal tracking device does not call home to Google (even if the telco can still triangulate the device). My PTD spends a lot of time in airplane mode.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 17 2014, @09:31AM
Ekiga does the job for me. It allows direct IP to IP calls without the need of any account.
So my friend enters my IP number (or domain name if you have one) in Ekiga, presses the call button, and we video-chat. This is without a need for any provider or account.
It's of course a standard SIP client, so you can also use it for regular telephony with any SIP provider.
#Allow people to call you:
iptables -A INPUT -p TCP --dport h323hostcall -j ACCEPT
#SIP signalling, listen port: 5060
iptables -A INPUT -p UDP --dport 5000:5100 -j ACCEPT