The Blog

Hello all,

Nicolas was kind enough to invite me to share my experiences with mobile VoIP, specifically with Sipdroid on the Android platform. I’ll start by providing a quick summary of the technology, and how applications are now utilizing it.

Simply speaking, VoIP – short for Voice-over-IP – is a general term for technologies which route phone calls over the internet, rather than regular telephony networks. The result is very cheap telephony, or in the case of pure internet-to-internet communications, free telephony.

The best example for this technology is the extremely popular Skype software: internet-to-internet is free, but whenever the regular phone network is involved (for example when calling a mobile handset via SkypeOut), a miniscule fee is charged.

Skype uses a propietary protocol for communication. What most people don’t know is that VoIP communications was standardized ages ago as SIP, a technology which currently is extensively used in corporate environments, but not (yet) that popular in the private sector.

To use SIP, you need either a VoIP-enabled phone (all the desktop phones at my workplace are plugged into the LAN!), or a software client, commonly called a “softphone”. This gets you the free internet-to-internet calls. For internet-to-regular-telephone calls, you will additionally need a service provider. There are hundreds of providers to choose from (most of them a lot cheaper than Skype), however for beginners I recommend sipgate.

[singlepic id=91 w=320 h=240 float=left]Luckily enough for Android users, there is a great SIP client for the Android platform: Sipdroid (http://sipdroid.org/). Sipdroid tightly integrates into your phone. When Sipdroid is active, all outgoing calls are automatically routed through your SIP provider. You don’t pay or use any phone minutes because your end of the call is going through the internet. You just pay your SIP provider’s minutes, which are dirt-cheap. Best of all: by using a WLAN hotspot, you can use SIP from any place in the world, for the same cost! There is no need for roaming, because all calls are going through your internet connection.

I merely touched some if SIP’s features here. There are tons of others (one or more phone numbers for incoming calls, online voice boxes, etc.). I can only recommend that you check out one of the “beginner” VoIP providers and see what you are mission out on

On a side note: I realize the above may be a too laborious or time-consuming solution for some. There is another SIP client for Android callue truphone. Truphone offers everything in a bundle (SiP provider, software, etc) – just register an account, and that’s it. The issue I have with truphone is that you are locked into their service, i.e. you can’t switch between providers.

[singlepic id=92 w=540 h=480 float=center]

Nicolas, thanks for the opportunity!