I have someone who lives in a rural area of their country where land line is not an option. They have no computer, and the computer i sent them is broken, and they do not know how to fix it.
They can get the wireless broadband for a reasonable price, but they have no computer to connect to, which would act as the middle man. So, there is nothing to connect the phone to. SO, does anyone know of an SIP phone that can connect straight to a USB internet card? There seems to be no other option or escape from paying outrageous telephone fees to call this country, and DIDs are not available for this country (PH).
What you mean “wireless broadband”? 3G?
If yes - there are lot of opportunities - but depend what is the price to go through 3G.
In Bulgaria - 1 MB can cost 0.01 - 0.015 euro.
They can get smartphones with OS and install there SIP client. Then you can connect that client to Asterisk outside and allow them to make cheap calls. Price of call in this case will have 2 components - price for termination, and price for traffic - something like 1.2 MB /min
You can search for modems - there are modems (combined with router) which can give you Internet (through LAN or WiFi) - at least I saw something alike for 3G.
Hmmm, i’m not sure if it is 3g, but i would assume it is. Here in the US, AT&T and Sprint and Verizon offer a small USB device that is actually a wifi receiver and modem at the same time. You just stick it into your computer’s USB port, and that is your internet connection. I assume that it uses cell phone network technology, like GSM. This is what they are able to buy there in PH, so i’m trying to find a way to make this work for them.
I have never heard of smart phones, so i will have to look into that later, as well as the modem thing.
3G is actually CDMA, rather than GSM technology. More precisely, it is UMTS.
In the UK 3G are selling phones that have built in Skype capability.
Have you already successfully used 3G over the wireless cards/dongles? Some operators may choose to block SIP because it competes with their normal telephony offerings.
No, i haven’t actually tried anything yet. At this point, i am only researching. I don’t have much money to experiment, and these people have no money at all, so i must be thorough in my research, so as to minimize costs.
I have seen the skype phones, but i cannot find definitive documentation that informs whether or not they allow SIP.
Skype is SIP incompatible.
And I expect - Skype phones are not good in this case.
You have to find what kind of broad band connection is in desired region and what are prices of that connections.
It could happen that prices are too high.
Whilst I’d agree it is unlikely that they would do SIP, because there is no one for a mobile phone company to partner with for SIP, the sort of phones we are talking about here are primarily GSM/UMTS phones, which have additionaly Skype software, not traditional Skype phones, or even standalone Skype phones.
As I understand it, it has already been established that wire or fibre based broadband, is not possible in the location, which leaves mobile phone network or satellite based. I believe typical satellite based approaches only use the satellite downlink, so would need a normal phone call for the upling. Two way satellite will exist, but is probably very expensive.
For the mobile phone based connection, the mobile phone company may well have decided to make using the mobile phone in the normal way the cheapest way of providing telephone connectivity, e.g. by blocking SIP.
If VoIP is permissible, a pure Skype solution may be the only practicable alternative, without installing a PC, of some form.
You could get a 3G phone for which a SIP client is available. For example, I have a Nokia N85 and have successfully connected to my Asterisk server with the Nokia SIP client over a 3G network. That said, the performance is not great and I would not recommend it as a solution unless there were really no other possibilities.