VoIP for IPhone

Source: MyVoIPProvider.com - Author: Audrey, September 16, 2008

The 3G iPhone has people scratching and biting to download the latest applications designed specifically for the elite few who were fortunate enough to get their hands on the phone. Those who are savvy enough know that if a traditional mobile phone call drops then the same call can be attempted via VoIP on an internet signal. Apple has opened the floodgates and asked developers everywhere to help develop new applications for the phone and developers are paying special attention to VoIP applications.

More than 60 million new iPhone applications were downloaded in 30 days and I bet a great deal of those downloads included applications that enable VoIP phone calls. Go ahead and make yourself comfortable while we review a few VoIP applications for iPhone.

Let’s start with iCall, not only does their name conjure up thoughts of making cheap calls on an iPhone, iCall functionality enables incoming and outgoing calls via a WiFi connection. Their super-cool feature is that the program will switch calls to a VoIP connection when a WiFi connection is detected. Can you imagine what AT&T must be thinking…”Hey! Wait a minute!” The marriage of AT&T and Apple could have AT&T thinking that Apple is cheating on them by allowing VoIP phone calls which means AT&T can’t charge their usual rates unless of course they have figured out a way to only allow calls over AT&T cable signals (trust me, they can’t do this).

Then there is Truphone, providers of quality service for the iPhone with great design and functionality the special feature offered by Truphone is the strong integration with iPhone’s GUI (Graphical User Interface). Truphone lets you see and search stored contacts and access easy to understand account information right on the phone. One must however ask, how do VoIP Truphone calls sound? Apparently, Truphone passed tests with flying colors and calls were made and received without delay. Truphone allows users to call one another freely and naturally there are no roaming charges either. The download of the program is free from the iTunes App Store and after setup there is an introductory free credit so you can test it out for yourself.

PhoneGnome service inclues many easy features but what we like most on the iPhone is that PhoneGnome boasts the convenient visual voicemail feature and 1-click calling.

Talkety is a web based application whereby users can simply log into the Talkety website type in their telephone number and the telephone number of the person you would like to call and Talkety will connect you both via the internet like your own personal secretary. Talkety also claims to save international users 85 – 90%. They also offer voice conferencing with up to 50 participants but that requires a Talkety pro account. Another cool feature of Talkety is the ability to sync your contacts with the Mac OSX Address book.

Jajah is known for being a supporter of the iPhone and is similar to Talkety in that calls are connected over the internet, just enter Grandma’s number and your local telephone number and Jajah will connect you to Grandma.

Thankfully, opening up application development and the increase of competition means big phone companies like AT&T have to open up and accept that VoIP phone calls are here to stay even on an iPhone.

Jajah goes Direct with VoIP calls

VoIP telephony firm Jajah has launched Jajah Direct allowing users to make VoIP calls to any destination around the world without the need for a PC.

The company claimed that anyone with a phone can now make use of its services even if they do not have access to the internet.

"Jajah Direct eliminates complicated VoIP solutions and archaic offline pre-paid calling cards single-handedly," said Roman Scharf, cofounder of Jajah.

"Over-complicated and overpriced solutions are now old school. The 21st century of telecommunication knows no boundaries."

The only time a user may require an internet connection is to look up the local number they have to dial to access the service. Once they have this, they dial the number to connect to the service and then dial the number they want to contact.

At the end of the conversation the user is sent a text to their mobile phone with a local number which they can use to directly dial that person again.

Daniel Mattes, cofounder of Jajah, told vnunet.com: "We have built a simple user experience, removing the internet from internet calling."

He explained that callers will pay for the local part of the call as normal, which is free if they are on a suitable call plan or using free mobile minutes.

The user's Jajah account is charged for the company's services and for the last local mile which is routed over normal carrier services.

According to Mattes, users can save up to 95 per cent of the cost of making a direct international call.

Callers do not need a Jajah account to begin using the service, but an account will be created automatically after connecting for the first time.

Jajah will initially offer the local number facility in 10 cities in the US, nine cities in Europe, including London and Birmingham in the UK, as well as Tel Aviv.

Jajah Direct calls can be made at anytime to any one of 122 countries worldwide. The company plans to add more local numbers in the coming weeks and months.

Jajah Direct Provides Cheap Overseas Calling Without the Web

"Unique" local numbers allow low-cost international VoIP calls from any phone.

Jajah made its name by providing cheap, Web-activated international calling. Now, the company has launched a service that aims to free callers from the Web altogether. No longer will users need to type numbers on PC or mobile browsers; merely dialing a local number will connect them to those they want to reach. It's a streamlined, VoIP-powered version of decades-old calling-card and callback services.

The new service, Jajah Direct, uses VoIP technology to make inexpensive Internet calling almost as easy as using conventional phone service. When you make your first call to a person overseas, you receive a "unique" local number that you can always use to call that person. From then on, when you dial that number, the service calls the overseas person from an exchange nearby and uses a VoIP link to connect that call to the number you dialed. The resulting end-to-end calls cost pennies per minute.

Making the physical process of Internet VoIP calling easier has been a longtime goal of providers. The earliest services used headsets and client software on PCs. They were cheap or free, but they were not very mobile. Users had to be in front of their computers, in the office or at hotspots. This approach wasn't very good for spur-of-the-moment spontaneity.

Connect-a-call services like the one that made Jajah famous were a big advance. Callers went online to enter their numbers and the ones they wanted to reach via a Web browser. The service called both numbers from local exchanges and connected the calls via VoIP circuits. That made it possible for people to talk using regular phones rather than headsets. It still, however, required access to the Web to initiate a call. And the callback wouldn't reach those behind switchboards or PBXes.

The next advance was putting client software on mobile handsets. The software could automatically enter both numbers so users wouldn't have to do so online. It could wait for a callback from the service or instruct the handset to initiate the local part of the call. The software could integrate with the handset's phone book so smoothly that users couldn't distinguish between regular and VoIP calls. However, the software required downloading and didn't work on all handsets.

Jajah's new approach is the smoothest yet. You can put the unique number you receive in your phone book and use it as if it were the person's overseas number, but you don't need to deal with international calling codes and rates. Once you have the number, you'll never have to touch a keyboard to make that call.

As noted, the new service resembles nothing so much as the venerable calling-card and callback services that international transplants have used for decades to cut the cost of calling home. Those services undercut traditional phone companies by leveraging differences in international calling rates between countries, rather than leveraging technological efficiencies the way Internet calling does. Such services also require keying in long card numbers or PINs.

Jajah Direct is the 21st-century equivalent of such services, made modern and user-friendly through the magic of VoIP. It should represent the state of the art for at least a couple of months— until another company comes up with something even more clever and convenient.

Phones That Listen

Hackers’ note sparks VoIP security worries. Could it have a big effect on business VoIP?

Paul D. Kretkowski on September 13, 2007

Sometimes, earthshaking news comes in bland packages.

Consider the plain-looking Full-Disclosure mailing list. On August 22, it ran a message with the headline, “Remote eavesdropping with SIP Phone GXV-3000.” The accompanying note is three computer scientists’ dry, technical explanation of how an attacker might switch on a VoIP phone — in this case, one from Grandstream — without the owner’s knowledge, and listen in on the phone’s surroundings.

By itself, this message doesn’t carry the historic weight of "Three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade." But some observers worry that it could have a big effect on business VoIP.

In the wake of the announcement, at least one security expert declared that VoIP is not ready for business use because it is inherently insecure. Paul Simmonds, a board member at the security-focused Jericho Forum and global information security director at materials-science company Imperial Chemical Industries PLC, told CNET News.com that "You can't run VoIP on a corporate network because you can't trust every single device on that network. VoIP as it stands certainly isn't secure. Going forward, everybody should be using inherently secure protocols."

They’re Listening

And indeed, Humberto Abdelnur, Radu State and Olivier Festor’s note doesn’t paint a pretty picture: “An attacker [can] automatically make a remote phone accept the call without ringing and without asking the user to take the phone from the hook, such that the attacker might be able to listen to all conversations that take place in the remote room without being noticed.”

So despite all the money you poured into securing email, HTML and your physical premises, a teenager in Belarus can use the VoIP phone on your desk to overhear the new secret formula for Pepsi.

The Grandstream hackers and Simmonds certainly are not the first to warn about VoIP’s insecurity, including the need for encryption, weaknesses such as the DoS (denial of service) attacks detailed on Full-Disclosure and inadequate hardware.

But there is good news here too, mainly that the Full-Disclosure note is part of a long tradition of white-hat hacking, where programmers attack systems in order to quickly expose their vulnerabilities. This pressures system administrators to improve security before the bad guys can exploit it.

To take another example, white hats have also been busy at VoIPSA (VoIP Security Alliance), which recently published a set of tools that lets you do nifty things like insert background noise or even curse words into someone else’s VoIP conversation. One author of these tools, Mark Collier, regularly screens some of the latest VoIP attack/testing tools at his VoIP Security Blog.

It appears that, in classic white-hat style, the Full-Disclosure hackers quietly alerted Grandstream in May so it could create a fix before any damaging waves of publicity or attacks. Abdelnur, State and Festor look good; Grandstream looks proactive; users get an improved VoIP phone; and corporate security experts elsewhere check their own systems for flaws.

Regardless of the reliability of any single device, VoIP security experts recommend a ground-up approach to securing a business VoIP system: firewalls, encryption, trusted devices and separate vLANs (virtual LANs) for voice and data to allow you to monitor each separately for intrusion or tampering. (For more information, see the VoIP-News Security Resource Center.) You should also keep anti-virus software up-to-date in light of a recently discovered virus that piggybacks on Skype chat messages.

Taking this comprehensive approach from the outset should make a weak link — like an unpatched Grandstream phone — much less likely to turn your desk into an attacker’s listening post.