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MagicJack Femtocell Gates Cell Traffic to VoIP
olsmeister writes "MagicJack is demonstrating a femtocell device at CES that will allow any GSM phone (locked or unlocked) to place free phone calls over the internet using VOIP. The device costs $40 and includes free service for 1 year. It supposedly will cover a 3,000 sq ft house."
I would love to have something like this that interfaces with Asterisk.
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
There's no "trick" to work with locked phones. GSM has no network-side authentication, so all you have to do is impersonate your carrier's network (this is trivial). But I can't imagine this being in line with regulations. Another issue is that encryption does not work unless you're a carrier and share a secret with the phone's SIM, which means that invariably your calls will be broadcast in the clear when you're using this device.
I'm not entirely sure this is a good idea. Femtocells are great, but impersonating carriers gets you into all sorts of sticky issues.
Does the MJ actually work worth a darn? How is call quality?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Say what you want about Michael Jackson, but he is def not a scam!
http://www.google.com/search?q=MagicJack++consumer+report+scam&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Seems like there is a lot of comments in the blogosphere against Magic Jack. I hardly had time to see if it is a campaign against Magic Jack or it is a legid.
Anybody?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Consumer reports said no such thing. In fact, they gave it a reasonably positive review (and yes, I realize that this is not consumer reports' website, but I read the print article when it arrived in my mailbox a week ago, and to my memory it is close if not a direct reprint). I am not endorsing the product, and I know little about it, to say that Consumer Reports said it is a scam is disingenuous.
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
Sorry to reply to myself, but I realized I was retarded and pasted the wrong link (and yet didn't realize that when I said it wasn't consumer reports' website... right... it's Friday, and I've checked out.). Here is the link I meant to post... right.
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
Completely agree. There is no way to uninstall it from your system without completely re-installing your OS. Read their Terms and beware.
I have one.
The software/drivers are in no way reliable enough to make it a serious replacement for a "real" phone, but as a backup when you want to make free calls around North America, it's not a bad solution. The call quality is perfectly fine. It's worth the $20/year they charge, but not a whole lot more. If they could get their software (and their abominable, laughable, seizure-inducing support) to work a little more smoothly, I'd be more willing to consider additional products from the company.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
I've had MajicJack for more than 6 months now, it's the best thing I have ever found for phone service. Yes it sucks at times when I'm downloading etc, then the quality suffers a little, but otherwise 20$ a year, ya, I bet anyone and everyone screaming "SCAM!" is a freakin phone service salesman... Phone companies and cell companies can't come anywhere near 20$ a year, not even skype, and I have noticed the quality IS better than skype... MajicJack == the end of the line for residential phone companies
The current MagicJack is a device about the size of a matchbox with a USB connection and a phone jack. The USB connector plugs into the user's computer, loads software onto it, and uses the computer's power, processor and broadband connection. The femtocell will also use the PC, but it will let users make calls with their cell phones instead of wired phones.
Why can't they make a standalone device!?
While I can see this working great for people out in the middle of nowhere that somehow have great internet and terrible cell service, I can't see this working for the average person to make free calls. For one, this solution would eliminate any encryption meaning your calls are able to be intercepted with ease, another is, I'm not entirely sure that Magic Jack would encrypt your calls going over the internet leading to possible interception there, and then if it was broadcast through another femtocell it could be intercepted through there again. In short, it may be a way for people to save a few bucks, but at the cost of any privacy.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
my dad uses this too and would agree that it is the shit. 20$/yr is nothing. That being said, why does anyone still want a land line? Being able to reduce my cell minutes because of this device would be MONEY!
You know, T-Mobile, a few years back, introduced UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) with some of their phones (which T-Mo has subsequently marketted under 3 different names, you know, to confuse their customers, I guess), but none of the other carriers picked up on it, and T-Mo pretty quickly abandoned it - I believe their network still supports it, and some/all of their Blackberries support it, but they pretty quickly stopped advertising it, none of the Android phones support it, and T-Mo has quietly gotten rid of every non-Blackberry phone that used to have the UMA feature.
It's really kind of a shame - UMA is a great idea: basically, any WiFi hotspot that you can connect to become a "cell tower" (well, it routes cell phone traffic over a tunnel on the Internet, to T-Mo's network, so it basically becomes VoIP). This Femtocell idea is something that some of the other carriers are sort of testing (I have some relatives on Sprint who got one because there is very poor reception at their house). But, I think UMA is a superior solution to these femtocells, because a) with UMA, you need a phone with UMA support, but you had to get a phone anyway, so adding UMA to phones would have been almost 'free' from the customer perspective, with the only other equipment needed being something you *probably* already have, and if you don't, you can get dirt cheap at Microcenter, Best Buy, Fry's, etc., and B) the femtocell will *only* work at your own location where you put it, whereas UMA would work with any Internet connection and most Wifi hotspots, which means that I could take advantage of it at other locations if they have WiFi (relatives or friends houses, school, work, shopping, etc) too.
Now, I think with the Android phones, you can now do some VoIP calling, but the advantage with UMA was that calls would seamlessly transfer between wifi and the cell network (if you left Wifi range, or entered Wifi range). It's really a damn shame that the cell phone industry didn't adopt UMA as a feature, because to me, it seems like a vastly superior approach than femtocells.
I suppose it's theoretically possible that UMA could rise from the ashes, but at this point, it seems kinda dead. More's the pity.
Some interference occurred when the tester tried talking while downloading a large file or playing an online game. If you can live with that, we think the Magic Jack is a great deal.
Something that could easily be overcome with a router that has decent QoS capabilities. Overall, it seems like a decent deal.
na, I was curious about it too, but it's gotta be the best phone type gear I've ever got.. I did have quality issues in the beginning, but after a call to customer service, after the results of their troubleshooting (and my tech skillz), THEY admitted to their server causing the issue, and said "we'll be updating the server soon". I didn't know what to think. A couple days later, the issue was fixed, and quality was 100%. I stand by this product, and those who say it's a scam, are either r-tarded, or are afraid for their phone company they work for...
and now I can call all my friends for free.
And then I realized, I have no friends.
FOR SALE MAGIC JACK, used twice. $1
Welcome to 1980.
When it takes only slightly more tech-fu to get a real SIP based setup working. However, if they are actually planning on selling a $40 USB peripheral than functions as a GSM femtocell, I am interested. Very Interested.
Reverse engineering the sucker, and getting a Free driver built would be a hell of a boon to small scale asterisk setups and similar. Most devices running asterisk or other software PBXs have at least one USB port, and being able to set up your own asterisk integrated femtocell would be awesome(either to let you take advantage of a lower priced/fewer minutes plan by doing all your home calling over a cheap SIP trunk or simply to take advantage of the fact that used and/or low-end GSM handsets are substantially cheaper than decent Wi Fi based SIP handsets are).
I don't assume that they would approve(and I can't imagine that team traditional telco would be too happy either) but if MagicJack is actually planning to make femtocells as cheap as USB wifi dongles, they get a gold star from me.
Why is this called a femto cell? The area covered is much more than 10^-15 of that of a standard cell tower. If this device covers a radius of 50 ft, and a tower works to a radius of about mile, then the fractional area covered is 10^-4, or somewhere between a microcell and a millicell.
Is it really that much better and more convenient than WiFi? When I am in my house, I press the Internet calling icon on my phone and it connects to my VoIP provider's server via SIP. I can then make and receive calls via VoIP rather than the mobile network. It also works when I am near other WiFi networks (great for traveling; hotels charge a lot for phone calls but often don't for WiFi, so if you make calls via their WiFi you don't pay anything). It uses slightly more battery, but not much. Calls to other SIP numbers are free, calls to POTS phones are competitively priced.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Now only if I could plant one in the movie theater... think of the possibilities!
Hundreds of dollars hard. Maybe $100 when mass-produced.
Besides which, if it was standalone then they'd lose their advertising revenue. For me, the ads in software on my machine are a complete turnoff. For that, I've never installed it.
SIG: HUP
MagicJack is designed to work with existing land-line type phones. It's quite a bit different than what you're talking about. It's a USB device you plug into your computer, the phone goes into the device and the software connects to the VOIP server. From one of the guys I know who has it, it's possible to plug the MJ into your household outlet and have your phones around the house as well. There is a power limitation on how much the phones can draw, but most phones made today do not have a problem with that.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
The link above points to an article about the regular wired MagicJack. Is there one for the GSM one?
Is it really that much better and more convenient than WiFi? When I am in my house, I press the Internet calling icon on my phone and it connects to my VoIP provider's server via SIP.
For starters it will work for ANY GSM phone. It doesn't matter if it has WiFi or not. Second, it's cheaper than your VOIP provider unless your VOIP provider can beat $1.70 mo.
I have been using T-Mobile's @Home service for the past year ($10 month as a third line) and it's been extremely reliable. I didn't like Magic Jack because I needed a computer and their software on it to have phone service at home. If this thing works as advertised I just may pull the trigger.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Not every phone has WiFi.
I've got an Ooma system. 3000 free local or long distance minutes a month, no monthly charge. The call quality isn't perfect, but I'm saving $300 a year after it pays for itself in 8 months (2 months from now), and I'm not going to complain.
That being said, why does anyone still want a land line?
A) Some people don't get Cell Reception (or it costs more than the land line)
B) A few of us live in places where the cell phones have gone down after mother nature had a fit, but the land lines were still working perfectly.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Not quite.
The device is $150. IF you sign up for an unlimited minutes plan, they will give you a $100 mail-in rebate. The plan's pricing depends on which test market you are in, and whether or not you have AT&T DSL or U-Verse service. But in any event, an unlimited minutes plan is optional. You can just buy the box for $150 and use your plans minutes as normal. The purpose the box serves under those circumstances is merely improving your coverage.
Lot's of people figure you can't negotiate with a cell or cable company, but that might not be true. I have relatives who use Sprint. They've been using Sprint for a few years, and had upgraded to a more premium voice & data package for 2 phones. They were generally happy with Sprint, but the coverage at their house was crappy. They talked to Sprint about this, basically told them they weren't going to pay additional monthly fees on top of the premium package fees they were already paying, but were unhappy with reception at their house, and were able to get Sprint to sell them the femtocell device at a slight discount and wave all monthly fees.
I don't know if AT&T will negotiate, but sometimes with things like this (which are basically add-ons), cell companies *want* to charge if they think they can get away with it, but if you tell them you won't pay and *additional* $10-20/mo on top of normal cell service fees and Internet access fees, just to get service, they might back down.
The link above points to an article about the regular wired MagicJack. Is there one for the GSM one?
You mean the GSM one that MagicJack JUST UNVEILED PUBLICLY A FEW HOURS AGO? Whatever happened to critical thinking?!?
My house is 3 feet wide and 1000 ft long. Am I covered, smart guy?
One of the weird things I've run into in doing 3rd-party tech support is that houses can, indeed, have Faraday cages.
If the house is of the right vintage (mostly pre-1950's) it may have plaster walls. One method of hanging plaster is to put up a metal mesh lath which can make a very effective Faraday cage out of each of the rooms.
A modern variation on the builtin Faraday cage is rigid foam insulation that is covered on one or both sides with a metal reflective coating, often used in external wall insulation.
When a new customer calls and says they are having trouble getting wireless to work in their house, one of my first questions is does it have plaster walls.
You made me think of something...
If I was ATT or Verizon or T-Mobil I would want everyone to own one of these things.
The reason being is that on my cell phone (I have the unlimited plan so I gave up ye olde land line years ago) 90% of my calls are made from home. I suspect my usage probably mirrors a lot of other users. (maybe a different pattern for teens running to friends all the time and what not but they like texting anyway so thats almost no bandwidth used)
They would save huge amounts of wireless bandwidth and put the burden on the broad band land lines.
Better yet they could keep charging the same amount of money for a lot less service.
Just one of my random probably insane thoughts but thats the way I roll lol
Consumer Reports likes it.
http://consumerist.com/2010/01/consumer-reports-science-shows-magic-jack-is-actually-worthwhile.html
There is a war going on for your mind.
my cell doesn't work at my cabin, which has dsl (natch). this would be perfect.
not every phone with wifi can do uma or any other "call over wifi" equivalent either. Mostly blackberries, I think? I don't see a lot of alternatives for gsm phones.
It's not even out yet.
There is a war going on for your mind.
I can just as easily make a call over WLAN. And most, if not all smartphones do WLAN already. Just install the software, if your phone doesn’t already have it build-in (as mine does).
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
gmail has no privacy yet 10s of thousands use it everyday, for blab and communique. what's this privacy problem now ?
I have a Magic Jack installed using a wireless phone and have access throughout my house. I don't understand what this new product gives that I don't have.
Ooma has much better call quality and reliability, although it cost $200 upfront. After that you pay $12/year regulatory fee for basic features, which include free long distance within US, Caller Id, Voice mail etc. Premium features are $10/month extra.
This product appears to be different from the late night "Magic Jack!" product you're referring to. This is a femtocell "mini-tower" that allows cell phones to connect to the VOIP provider on the other end of the magic jack tower - so you wouldn't be limited to land lines with this new product.
According to this http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5iVJAWp2WTjEYUHNGV8v2KY3JxlVQ/
And if you come within 2.4 meters of the device, your cell is supposed to register with it automagically.
If the carriers let this fly, nano cells in licensed band are next and they'll never let this happen.
The ability to ditch your wireless phone and use your existing mobile phone (provided it has GSM) as well as use the service without dedicating a computer to the task. Basically, when you walk in the house and walk past the femtocell your mobile phone re-syncs to the femtocelll and now you are no longer using your wireless carrier but Magic Jack for service. When you leave the house your phone reconnects to your mobile carrier. Why do you need this? You may not but there is still a large enough constituency that have limited anytime minutes who would find this wonderful. Especially if they consistently go over their minutes.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Can someone help? I'm having trouble finding the verb in the story title.
I'd say buy it quick before it's gone, but given it hooks to a service there is really no point. There's a commentary on the viability of the service model that everyone seems to be running toward there.
Mod me off-topic if you need to, but this title is why I my relationship with the English language is still slightly iffy.
MagicJack Femtocell Gates Cell Traffic to VoIP
So let's see, proper noun, noun, noun, noun, preposition, noun. Where's the verb? Who's trafficking cells through the gates here? Or wait, the cell traffic of the femtocell gates is to ... no, wait. With all the noun-as-adjective and ambiguous noun-or-verb words, your natural parser screws up---assuming your natural parser (like mine) is greedy and wants to impose structure as early and often as possible.
Would it really be that awful to say "MagicJack femtocell gating cell traffic to voip"? Then you need a smaller token (i.e. word) lookahead before you can reduce "MagicJack femtocell" into subject, "gating" into verb, "cell traffic" to object, etc. (or at least, you will sooner make guesses which later turn out to be correct, and so you won't have to backtrack).
I ar dum. Editor buffalo smurf easier to marklar and understand. Plies.
The TOS for MJ is one of the worst I have ever seen; they could write malware and get protected by the TOS you must agree to. Most people don't read it... At 1st I wondered if they were going 2 make their money by spying on me. (lotta luck I did all I could to sandbox it and later ran it in a VM... now I moved to a TK6000)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
You can't QoS the magicjack. it uses a HUGE range of ports making the QoS only useful if you don't do something else in that wide UDP range they use. It only initiates with a predictable port the proxy gets it going in some random range after that. Unless you have a fancy router that can figure it out somehow (by destination) you basically are taking the upper range of UDP to a higher priority. The software doesn't let you pick the connection; otherwise you could stick it on a second network port and handle it that way (which I've done.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I see a huge problem there. How are you meant to receive calls? Your cell is no longer on your carrier's network. And unless MagicJack has roaming arrangements with all the major carriers..., you're out of contact...
Perhaps it also connects to the carrier's tower and proxies calls through itself? Without that, you're right - pretty useless.
For a response from someone who actually knows something about the subject, see Harold Welte's blog
Google voice to ring all your numbers at once.
So I'm *paying* for a box that improves AT&T's coverage for the service.......they're providing to me.
The OP was referring to the "late night Magic Jack" in this case, not the new femto cell.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
I have it and the usb device plugs directly into the phone jack instead of a phone. This way all my phones in the house continue to plug into their phone jacks and use the service. The quality seems fine and its damn cheap companred to when we were paying $45 a month.
According to their FAQ it uses 2 ports
magicJack uses port 5060 and 5070 UDP.
http://service.liveperson.net/hc/s-61732089/cmd/kbresource/kb-137415081868036450/view_question!PAGETYPE?sc=13&sf=101133&documentid=345562&action=view
Does anybody know anybody who has one? They don't exactly have to be members of the Better Business Bureau.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
I know the AT&T femtocells have a GPS chip built into them to prevent their use overseas. Can this device be used in another country? I would love to carry one of these with me when I travel to avoid international roaming fees.
I saw the traffic. it initially uses those ports but afterwards it sets up the actual "connection" on a near random udp port in a huge range.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
no, it's still a usb thing that needs a powered-on computer.
I found out mine was costing me over $9 a month (Thanks, Kill-a-watt!) to leave on. Now, I keep it off and ditched the MJ.
This is still a USB device. From TFA:
"The femtocell will also use the PC, but it will let users make calls with their cell phones instead of wired phones."
still stupidly tied to an always-on pc. it would be an awesome thing (both the old and femtocell variety), but with the pc requirement it relegates it to a novelty for gabby business travelers with not enough cell minutes.
You sound like you are describing a wireless cellphone with built-in WiFi capability. The new MagicJack product would support GSM phones that don't have built-in WiFi. Once it gets on the internet, MJ is just another VoIP provider and provides service the same way your provider does, but they use advertising to supplement their revenue and reduce their phone rates.
The original product/service magic jack offers is basically a VoIP converter for landline (and in-home cordless) phones. The basic difference between the new product and the old is that they support different types of phones. Based on the service offerings, it sounds like they cater to the frugal who don't want to invest in new phones to use VoIP and don't want to pay a lot each month/year for phone service.
I wouldn't call them a scam, but they are definitely ad-ware/advertising supported, and people need to know that going in. My neighbor has their landline converter and as I remember, apart from the software, they also play recorded messages at the beginning of each call, or a certain portion of calls.
We are the 198 proof..
A zombie maybe, but not a scam.
We are the 198 proof..
Folks just need to be aware that it IS advertising-supported and be willing to put up with the inconveniences that causes. Fortunately MJ seems to be avoiding the trap of maximizing revenue by accepting ads from every scammy business that has money to throw around.
We are the 198 proof..
Could this become a hazard similar to the fake "free wifi" adhoc networks set up in airports, etc to capture passwords, etc? It would seem that a hidden one of these could capture many phone calls; in an area with many businessmen, for example, this could be used by criminals.
--- You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad- Neal (not Cowboy) Boortz
Second, it's cheaper than your VOIP provider unless your VOIP provider can beat $1.70 mo.
My VOIP provider is $0 per month. The only charge is for actual calls made.
Wrong product.
Can someone help? I'm having trouble finding the verb in the story title.
The verb is "Gates".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
How do you expect it to work? It's VOIP - that's where the cheapness comes in. And in order to have VOIP, you need broadband to tap into.
Which operator will allow its devices to operate on this femtocell? I think it is illegal to use licensed frequencies.
Second, it's cheaper than your VOIP provider unless your VOIP provider can beat $1.70 mo.
Mine does, so this doesn't seem like a very good deal - especially if the drivers and support blow.
I expect it to work buy tapping directly into my broadband--via ethernet, like every other voip service lets you do. The usb thing is a nuisance.
In Space, no one can hear you sing
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
1.) MagicJack is the product that parent & grandparent posters were talking about.
2.) If they are demoing it at CES that means it's not even being sold yet.
There is a war going on for your mind.
MagicJack is a company that sells multiple products.
The review is for the MagicJack product that allows a landline phone to be plugged into it.
The MagicJack product being demo'ed at CES is a femtocell for cell phones.
Different products
TFA indicates that MJ doesn't have any charge for calls made. So whether this is a good deal for you will depend whether your per-call charge stacks up against a $1.70 monthly fee