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Google Voice Discovered Allowing Pure VoIP Calls

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the who-needs-landlines dept.

From the article "Google Voice users learned late Monday that the service now has a way of making purely Internet-based phone calls. Making a SIP call with a 'sip:' prefix, the Google Voice phone number and @sip.voice.google.com skips the conventional phone network entirely, saving users cellphone minutes. Disruptive Telephony tested it and found that a call worked 'great.'"

9 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Not responding SIP traffic now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    sip.voice.google.com now silent. See --> http://www.onsip.com/blog/rob/2011/03/08/google-voice-sip-address-no-longer-available-sipvoicegooglecom-now-silent

    1. Re:Not responding SIP traffic now by mysidia · · Score: 4, Insightful

      My (faint) suspicion is some VoIP telespammers/tele fraudsters saw the Slashdot article/blog and immediately started abusing the feature...

      As nice as 'free SIP access' to the POTS network through Google voice might sound, it's not sane.

      Even less sane than having offering open SMTP relays, anyways; since the telephone network is so poorly equipped to deal with any type of abuse (other than it actually being a crime if the perp happens to live in a 'civilized' country, and happens to be traceable).

  2. Re:Sniffing? by Onuma · · Score: 5, Informative

    Unless I'm misreading the chart, it seems like gvoice has SRTP encryption.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_VoIP_software

    --
    What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
  3. Coolness, but you can already do this. by morgandelra · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you take an android device with google voice installed. Tell it use google voice for all calls. The get an Xlink device (http://www.myxlink.com/index.aspx). Peer the XLink to your android device via bluetooth. Now you have analog dial tone coming out of the XLink and you can put it into a PBX or regular analog phones.

  4. slightly offtopic but maybe of interest by thanasakis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Gizmo5 (acquired by Google) will be shutting down on April 3rd. So no more SIP from them. Does anyone know whether it will become possible to make calls to normal numbers by using a google account? Right now it is possible to make calls from within gmail by adding credit to one's account. What is not possible is to use SIP equipment (many good adsl routers and ATA devices have fxp ports and VoIP SIP functionality) to make these calls. So many of us that were using gizmo5 SIP are left in the cold. Any good gizmo5 alternatives anyone?

    1. Re:slightly offtopic but maybe of interest by bryansj · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I use an Obi110 device to make and receive calls on my home phone using Google Voice. It was the best $50 I've spent on a VoIP solution. It will remain free until at least the end of the year while GV is still free. Before that I used a Linksys PAP2 connected to an Asterisk server to do the same thing.

  5. Re:Intended? by Eponymous+Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I remember one time I accidentally created a SIP client. I was just trying to compute some fibonacci numbers.

  6. Re:Intended? by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is this intended by google? This would be wonderful if this was a feature and not a bug..

    Probably intentional. The fact that this happened after they closed Gizmo5 which allowed this feature, methinks isn't coincidental.

  7. Re:Not news - Gmail already does this by h4rr4r · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Newsflash, we have smartphones so we can leave the basement and travel out into the world without being computerless. Your solution would restrict us once again to the basement.