EE in giant VoLTE-face as it tries voice calls over Wi-Fi... again It may be third time lucky for EE with an attempt to route voice calls over Wi-Fi, as the company has announced it is working on another service which reduces the often prohibitive cost of rolling out coverage to places with few people and difficult terrain. The new service will allow customers to use an unmodified handset …
This has been an ongoing issue for a number of people, since most new properties are built with foil covered insulation in the walls, a lot of new builds (especially flats) have very poor mobile signal. I used to use a blackberry purely because UMA meant I could make voice calls, SMS and data via wifi when I was at home. SignalBoost was an app which basically did the same job, although not nearly as smoothly.
Then Orange stopped offering the app on newer handsets, and BB seemed to drop UMA completely but that coincided with the BT SmartTalk app which lets me use my landline minutes through wifi on my mobile.
Strangely, none of these other services prohibited international calls, in fact I often make "free local calls" to the UK from other countries (although you do have to remember the free evening period is UK time not local, oops!) so I can't help thinking this restriction is a money-spinner.
It would be great if manufacturers/networks could get us back to a point where all services on a mobile worked via wifi again, including SMS. It used to work, why have we gone backwards?
Why are they doing this - I suppose to take the load off their cellular infrastructure? A benefit for them but not for you.
Anyone savvy enough to mess with VOIP over wifi probably expects to be rewarded with cheap calls for their efforts. Especially if they are roaming - I certainly enjoy my sub-1p/min calls over hotel wifi.
"Voice always takes priority over data"
So this will be locked down and will only work if EE are the ISP then? Because that is the only way I can see them realistically prioritising their VOIP traffic over Skypes (or any other VOIP service), and VOIP is how the ISPs determine what is (and prioritise) voice traffic, if they aren't using VOIP how is the ISP going to know to prioritise the traffic? are EE going to pay every ISP in the land to prioritise their traffic over other peoples?
They mean over the whole route of the call, if you use a service like Skype the call is always data, even on the recipient end. Using this service from EE it is data only until it reaches EE servers as is then sent as normal voice traffic over its network (unless of course someone your calling is doing the same thing as you)
What I don't get is why they think that a phone belonging to a user living in Liverpool, for example, can use WiFi calling in Calais, without confusing 999/112, but won't be able to do it 20 miles further away in Calais?
It's obviously about preventing people bypassing roaming charges.
Because once it reaches EE servers it is treated as a local voice call, so when you ring 112 in say spain, you probably want the spanish emergency services, as they are clearly more local to provide help than getting through to the British emergency services. They could however do what a previous poster said and detect if you were on a foreign wifi and rather than disallow the call, just route emergency over the normal phone call signal.
Not that easy. If the call comes over wifi it hits EE servers where it is mashed to go out on the network. So a call arrives and they would have to do a whois on the IP address to determine the foreign operator and country. But even then they would not have an area to forward the call too.
It is a devil of a job to do it in the UK so trying to do it for just the EU area is a major challenge.
I don't think any operator's Wifi calling will be compatible with anyone else's, because the operator wants to have control. They don't like people using Skype (or Apple's when iOS 8 is available) because it will kill their income stream from roaming.
Somehow I bet Apple will manage to solve the emergency calling "dilemma" without resorting to blocking wifi calling when you're roaming! EE could if they wanted to, but of course they don't.
We sell Office Phone systems that support SIP apps on smart phones and that not all WiFi networks will let you use VoIP over them.
I can sit in Weatherspoons & connect back to the office as an extension and enjoy a beer, if i liked over priced hot milk i couldn't connect as Starbucks blocks VoIP over it's WiFi.
Some of my customers with 4G phones want to use SIP VoIP extensions on 3G but its blocked.
So we have a Mobile phone network company expecting VoIP to work on others WiFi yet it like all the other Mobile phone network companies don't let VoIP work over 3G or 4G.
Fun, Fun, Fun
Okay, so I am still using an "old" phone from 2011, but UMA Calling is why I will not let this phone go. 3G coverage in my house is patchy at best, but since I got the UMA enabled phone I can make calls anywhere. And it does not have to be over an EE ISP as I use Virgin Media. The phone connects to my own WiFi access point.
The hand-offs between Wifi and 3G are surprisingly good. I can walk from my home wifi, down the street on 3G, and then into my friends house and jump onto their wifi without dropping the call. It "just works". Which is brilliant.
There is nothing funnier than being in a deep basement and answering a mobile phone. :D You see the confused look of the person standing next to you looking at their iPhone wondering why they get no signal....
This UMA implementation is 100% Blackberry. The only EE part is that I need an EE Sim to make it work. If I swapped to O2/Vodaphone/etc I would loose UMA. Yet my phone is not Orange branded.
Previously Orange made a UMA app which would work on some Android Phones. But it was too locked down as it would only work on an "Orange" phone and not an unbranded phone of the exact same model. Orange's own attempt at UMA is probably what make UMA not as successful as it should have been.
Where I live, sometimes I have the impression that the cellphone companies are not competitive enough, but after reading an article like this...my former telco provides a VoiP number even in the most basic tv+phone+internet package. If I connect to their network from abroad, using open wifi, I was able to call for landlines back home for free...
If you have control over both ends of a SIP n RTP session and have snags, then investigate the following:
Change the port from 5060
Change protocol from UDP to TCP
Enable symmetric RTP at both ends
Use a mobile VPN eg OpenVPN or IPSEC
Use IAX2!
The first two will get around basic firewalls. Sym RTP will get one way audio fixed. A VPN will get around deep inspection, for maximum points set up the OVPN server on port 443, the client end can even go through a web proxy. IAX2 is not well known outside Asterisk circles and may be a good last resort.
Cheers
Jon
Just a few comments:
0. Use strong machine generated password for all extensions even if this means getting rid of old SIP phones which cannot do more than 8 characters or special chars in the password.
1. Make sure you ACL any extensions to specific destination ranges. F.E. ACL any extensions that are local only to the local LAN so they cannot be re-registered from outside. This is especially so for phones that cannot do strong passwords.
2. Make sure you use _NON_ numeric usernames especially for outside extensions (just map them to a number in the dialplan). F.E. My-crappy-android-phone maps to 6731.
3. Set call limits.
4. Blacklist any Palestinian authority networks completely (you can get their address ranges from RIPE). 90% of brute force SIP scans I have seen come from there, rest are US based). The idea is - they brute force an extension password, register and then clock to a premium rate number in Maldives, Mozambique or somewhere else they control. If you have the correct ACL they cannot do it. If you have call limits they also self-throttle themselves (they try to originate 4+ calls so a 4 calls-at-a-time call throttle is an automatic killer). No comment where your money really goes as Hamas uses the same address ranges.
5. Blacklist all countries you are not likely to dial or pin-protect them in your dialplan.
6. Do not use 15060, 1506X, 25060, etc as a security through obscurity, these are scanned too.
7. If your phone supports it and if you have the time to set up SIP/TLS always do, it is well worth the effort.
8. If you are asking where do I know all that shit from - well, not doing it has costed me 40£ a year and a half ago. I was lucky - I had a call throttle and the idiots self-throttled. I know some people who have not been so lucky to the tune of 500$+
I have a UMA Samsung Galaxy S2 GTI9100P from Orange. I bought this model because I'm not a BB fan and my work was suffering from the lack of a mobile signal in the place I spend most time. I live in a village with no mobile signal from any network, but a class 3 BT exchange means lots of BT WiFi APs in people's living rooms. With the Signal Boost/UMA functionality and BT Wifi, I can get signal to make and receive call and texts all around the village.
To allow the rest of the family with non-UMA handsets to get a signal at home, I've also obtained an EE Signal Box (a Femtocell) with connects to my Broadband. As a result, I have fantastic coverage, most of my calls over the last three years have been over WiFi and I've turned down the handset offered by my employer as it would be a white elephant.
EE now plagues me with requests to upgrade my (admittedly battered and battery-tired handset) but I refuse to part with it until they again offer a handset with UMA or a similar technology built in. EE customer service and retail staff tell me that they no longer offer Signal Boost, or ask what it is.
In my use-case, 4G calling will never reach my family and I - a whole mile outside a major UK city - so WiFi is the way forward due to it's ubiquitous nature. I've gotten used to standing still while making calls (so I don't move out of WiFi range) so handoff between WiFi/4G/3G/2G isn't as important to me as just having a signal.
The truth of the oft-quoted 99% coverage is that it relates to population, not square miles. There are vast swathes of the UK with no hope of mobile coverage or fast Broadband and those of us who choose to live where we are part of the 1% would love to be connected somehow, without too much fuss.
Where do I sign up?
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