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iCall Brings Seamless VoIP To IPhone Users
andrewmin writes "iCall, a company well known for offering free VoIP calling for Windows users, has just announced the first iPhone app that offers free phone calls over WiFi. It's also one of the first legal (in other words, non-jailbroken) VoIP apps. I don't have an iPhone, but if I did, you can be assured that I'd be on this in a second."
I'm surprised that the contract between Apple and AT&T doesn't cover other ways of using the iPhone to call people (ie off AT&T's network). I mean this is great, don't get me wrong, I just expected Apple to not allow these kinds of apps on the iPhone because of a contract issue with AT&T (given their current track record).
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
Although they claim Apple has no issues with VoIP, I can't see Apple allowing such an application on the iPhone when it would threaten their business model. Unless Apple literally buys this and creates a proprietary system for coordinating it that prevents a scenario where it's used only for VoIP communication anytime you're within range of any open WiFi access point.
8==8 Bones 8==8
iWould love to make iCalls on my iPhone.
Although iWaiting for iPhone 2's release.
iDon't pay high sums for year-old tech.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
This type of application is specifically disallowed by Apple. It won't see the light of day.
Apple has SPECIFICALLY stated that VOIP is just fine, as long as it's WiFi only.
It makes sense: it reduces stress on AT&T's network, AND makes Apple's users happy.
-Daniel
This type of application is SPECIFICALLY ALLOWED by Apple. VOIP is fine as long as it is WiFi only, they have said.
If you really think about it, it makes sense. It reduces stress on AT&T's network while at the same time making Apple's users happy.
-Daniel
Yep, saw that after I posted.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Apple has SPECIFICALLY stated that VOIP is just fine, as long as it's WiFi only.
It makes sense: it reduces stress on AT&T's network, AND makes Apple's users happy.
Makes sense? Why? Apple/AT&T says the data plan is unlimited. Give me my unlimited data and let me do what I want with it.
If only you were using a real cell phone from a real company (Nokia/Blackberry/Motorola) with a regular SDK and documentation, you wouldn't have to go through this kind of crap from Apple.
If my data plan isn't unlimited, then stop advertising it that way.
AT&T has been making deals all over the place to speed up its network and reduce capacity requirements, for instance making a deal with Sbux to allow all iPhone users to use the AT&T nodes there for free.
-Daniel
This is the way I'd really love to manage my personal communications. Give me a data line (wired or wireless, whatever the circumstances demand), and then have a total 3rd party manage phone numbers, call-routing, voice-mail etc. Anything short of that gives the telecoms too much integrated monopoly power.
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
That's data and not voice, though. All iPhone subscribers get unlimited data, so there's no extra money to be made there. They do have limited voice time, however, and I'm sure that just like any other cell phone provider, the rates they get for overage are quite lucrative.
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Since the iPhone SDK doesn't allow for [3rd party] background processes, how are you going to be notified of an incoming VOIP call? Answer: you're not, unless you already happen to be in the VOIP app. So it will be fine for outgoing calls, but pretty limited otherwise...
"Mr. Jobs, tear down this wall!"
What I really want is for this to work over an iPod Touch. I'd like to use an iPod as a phone when I have wifi coverage.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Because it was one of AT&T's conditions for agreeing to sell the iPhone while providing it with all the network services Apple needed to make it work seamlessly. Would we all prefer we could do anything, sure we do. Should AT&T be allowed to place such restrictions, probably not. Now all you have to do is convince our politicians that listening to you and doing what is right for the people is better than letting AT&T do whatever makes them the most money.
IIRC, the iPod Touch doesn't have a microphone, but I wonder whether (a) headset mics are still accessible, and (b) if iCall will support them?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
That's one of the worst demo videos I've ever watched! They ought to enlist the help of a broadcast or film student to re-shoot the thing with proper audio someday. Unless it was a deliberate choice to bury the guys' voices underneath cacophonic street noise and obnoxious looping soundtrack...
And apparently the cafe that the guy was sitting at was actually a zoo? (every time his level was brought up, there were shreiking sounds that carried above his voice or the ambient street noise)
Wow.
-b
myselfmusic
What's this subtle wording here, implying that it's illegal to run non-apple approved applications on your iPhone? It really shows the sorry state of things these days, that people can believe there is anything wrong with running software on a device they own. I enjoy the many reverse engineers who perform their completely legal work in order to let me get more use out of a device that I paid for.
If I want to run a freeware/open source drawing application on my Nintendo DS that lets me save PNG files on a SD card, should that be illegal since it's not approved by Nintendo? Should I be forced to buy their crappy paint-by-numbers 'game' that's not even for sale in the US?
There are so many possibilities out there, that the hardware companies try to stop you from doing, because they are afraid of losing control. When in reality it doesn't stop piracy any, it only hurts the people who want to write their own code, and add new features. Take the Wii for example, it was possible to illegally pirate games for months before anyone hacked a way of running their own code. Well...I'm already quite offtopic, I better stop here.
sig? uhh, umm, ok
The implication is quite evident, and I wholly agree with you.
If I want to run a freeware/open source drawing application on my Nintendo DS that lets me save PNG files on a SD card, should that be illegal since it's not approved by Nintendo?
People honestly believe that corporations can write laws.
+++ATH0
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Since iCall also does SIP termination, my guess is that they have some sort of script to automatically make and answer a simple call transfer (i.e. VOIP app has a different phone number that gets the call transferred to). It's doable, but it's one of those things that almost nobody I know uses outside of the office.
Using the Freedom of Speech while I still have it.
Most people do not exceed their minutes. More so when you offer roll-over minutes.
The model is to sell you a basic subscription for big bucks and hope you never use the service. That way ATT get's money and no load on their service networks. That's a win for them.
It will help ATT a lot since they can now accept a lot more customers without the load on their network. One of the reason I left Verizon was their network is grossly overloaded. Unfortunately, I think ATT is even more so.
There is no sane cellular company that wants to actually have everyone use all their minutes all the time -- they can't afford the network load.
you mean once the connection charge and minimum call charge have already been made.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
But if most people don't use all their minutes, why would they go through the trouble of using some special WiFi VoIP app which will cut out as soon as they walk out the door when they could just use their cellular subscription to make a normal phone call?
The incentive to avoid using the carrier's network only exists if there's some cost involved. That cost is AT&T's profit, and they won't like losing out. The people who wouldn't be paying any extra money to AT&T have no reason to fiddle with third-party VoIP apps in the first place.
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You really think the VOIP would cut out when switching between WiFI and cellular? It doesn't do that with anything else, show why would it happen here?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
0) You set up call forwarding at the carrier level, to forward to the iCall number. Trivial and not free of charge.
1) the iCall s/w is able to detect an incoming cell call setup, and induce the iPhone's Air-interface stack to issue a call-forwarding response back to the origination. I'd have to check the Air-interface specs to see if that's even possible.
2) There is some extra-GSM standard messaging on the Iphone/AT&T network to allow a third-party (ie. the iCall) to initiate change/transfer of the terminating endpoint of an existing call. That would be funcationalily I've never seen in GSM. Of course, it is a SIP feature.
"Of course, it is a SIP feature" should have been associated w/ 1), rather than 2). SIP allows the terminating endpoint to redirect via the 3xx responses. ISUP (AFAIK) does not. The GSM air-interace (AFAIK) also does not.
I'm not sure of the date on this document (GSM Air-Interface), but see table 7.7 (Call control) where I don't see anything in the messaging that looks like a redirect message during call setup.
If you look at this ISUP docs you won't see anything there either. ISUP/TUP/etc are pretty basic call setup once the endpoint is known. Usually MAP/TCAP is used by the originating entities to do more sophisticated stuff (like finding the ultimate terminating endpoint, whether an artefact of call-forwarding, ported number, wireless roaming, etc.)
Now, ISUP is just call setup, and there's more in-call functionality (like sending DTMF digits, putting call on hold, etc) in the call control of the Air Interface. But, if ISUP doesn't support it (on the MSC->BSC interace) then it's not surprising that the Air interface doesn't either.
Ergo, even assuming the ability of iCall to interfere w/ the IPhone GSM stack behavior, no obvious ability to redirect an incoming call at the terminating point during call-setup. So, not betting the farm on that possibility.
You can get a Touch-4-VoIP adapter that goes in the iPod touch's Dock Connector.
Some guy figured out that the microphone logic from the iPhone is also present in the iPod touch and can be accessed through the Dock Connector.
He now sells adapters for this purpose:
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/12/touch-4-voip-mi.html
What doesn't do what with anything else? I don't really understand what you're saying with that.
A third-party VoIP app is not going to be integrated into AT&T's cellular network. Call handoff requires some pretty sophisticated routing to work properly. The original cell needs to detect that the phone is moving away and needs to hand off, but before it actualy gets out of range. At this point it needs to find out which new tower is within range, talk to it to tell it to take over the call, then coordinate with the phone to get it to talk to the new tower.
It's theoretically possible to do this between WiFi and cell towers but it requires active participation from both sides. I haven't heard of any cell phone companies opening up their equipment to third parties so that they can dynamically hand off calls in real time from other media.
If you're talking about switching between VoIP on WiFi and VoIP on a cell data network, that would be fine. But VoIP on cell data networks is poor anyway due to high latencies, and it's completely against AT&T's and Apple's terms of service, so it's a non-starter in this particular scenario.
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Still not convinced. Without some kind of background capability, this is questionable at best.
Since it sounds like the application relies on your regular cell coverage in order to switch over a received call, this might mean that you won't be able to receive calls unless you've got regular AT&T cell coverage. I wonder if you could switch over from a roaming network?
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out and how it compares with T-Mobile's Hotspot@Home.
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EDGE is not very fast and for VOIP you need some low latency which EDGE doesn't seem to provide most of the time. When they go to 3G then we'll see what happens.
I guess it's a little late for this thread, but Apple addressed precisely this issue at their developer's conference yesterday. They will have a solution in September. More info here: "iPhone Background Processing: Not Fixed But Halfway There."
I am assuming this is xferring ONLY YOUR PHONE CALLS THAT ARE INBOUND to your iCall PRO number. Meaning, that it can in no way intercept a call from someone to you over a landline or cell-to-cell system TO YOUR CELL PROVIDER'S # and route it over VOIP. This would SO be a security concern if they COULD , much less DID attempt it. It is both illegal and almost (for cell to cell calls) impossible.
What it CAN do (within the SDK parameters) is allow you to do the following:
Just like Grand Central, you go to iCall's site and get an iCall Pro account -- that also has an incoming number (this is standard with iCall Pro).
Then, using their web interface, forward any calls to your iCall PRO number to the (in the US) AT&T cell # on your iPhone. The friend then calls the iCall # -- NOT THE AT&T CELL NUMBER.
The call automatically gets xferred to the cell service if you are not at a hotspot.
Your iPhone rings and you answer what is a call that actually came into their pool of numbers...not AT&T's.
When you go somewhere that you have wifi, the iCall client then senses a wifi connection and offers to continue the call using VOIP. This, they CAN do cos the caller called the iCall Pro incoming phone number to begin with, so iCall puts the caller on hold for a microsecond, disconnects from the AT&T network and connects it to the VOIP over WIFI network back to the iCall app on your iPhone--thus the cell-minute charge stops.
Neither you nor the caller SHOULD hear a thing -- other than minor clicks or garble for a microsecond.
That is the only thing they can do. They CANNOT intercept a call that you placed using the AT&T network seamlessly. They CAN offer to redial the user on the other end of the call on iCall's VOIP WIFI network, but the user on the other end must have either call-waiting or must hang up. That is why the menu says "iCall has detected an INBOUND call in process...". It is simply that they know cos the caller called their pool of #'s.
Simple, really.
What I am NOT sure of is whether Apple's SDK allows them to terminate a voice over cell call -- or whether Apple's T&C's cover this. Not a biggie...but I would be surprised if they allow apps to do this.