You would be surprised how many of our AGEphone Mobile customers ask us how to get started with the program, some having bought the softphone without even giving it a try beforehand. While we appreciate such enthusiasm for our products let me advise you to give the trial version a test before making your purchase. You'll get all the features of the full version, can test the softphone for as long as you want and the only difference is that in the demo each call is limited to one minute. This should be sufficient to check out both the sound quality and whether or not your provider is working without problems.
Speaking of which, the single biggest point of failure is the provider configuration. As many of you are starting from scratch here, it's time for some details! For starters, AGEphone Mobile does not work without a internet telephony or so called Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provider. It is just like your regular mobile phone in that regard: Remove the SIM card and it is pretty much useless. You can still make calls in P2P mode to other softphone enabled computers and mobiles, but as many of you probably want to place calls to regular lines it is time to start looking for a VoIP provider. If you expect yet another contract and high extra costs, rest assured that you are in for a nice surprise --
There are tons of internet telephony providers out there, some cheaper, some offering more features, some open and secretive, others open. This comparison page has proven to be a good starting point for most of our customers. It lists some of the most competitive prepaid price plans that don't require any monthly commitment. The company behind these plans is called Betamax (just like the old Sony video tape standard) and while they don't offer much when it comes to customer service they undercut your old provider and Skype by a multiple for many destinations. Compared to Skype, most VoIP providers support the open Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) standard and can be used with any compatible hard- and softphones.
Once you have chosen one of the price plans, please register on their respective page. There is no need to charge up your account just yet because you get a few free test calls each day to the locations marked as such. These calls usually last for about a minute and thus are a perfect match with our trial version. So you can use your provider of choice with AGEphone Mobile start up the softphone, click on "Menu" and then "Settings".
Next go to point "1. SIP Accounts",
click "Options" and then "Add".
Alternatively, if your chosen provider is already in the list you can click "Options" and "Edit". Either option brings you to the detailed provider configuration. On its first page you have to fill in
which is more detailed than in many other softphones. This is because some VoIP providers use very complicated settings in order to make it difficult or impossible to use them with 3rd party products. AGEphone Mobile supports all these cases, but luckily Betamax is not one of those providers which greatly simplifies the configuration. Let's pick their "voipcheap" plan as an example. Go to their homepage and click on "Instructions" in the top bar. Select "Using a SIP device" from the table of context after that and folllow the "click here" link. The next page brings up detailed 3rd party device and software setup instructions in which the most interesting point for us is the "General" section that lists
SIP port : 5060
Registrar : sip.VoipCheap.com
Proxy server : sip.VoipCheap.com
Outbound proxy server : leave empty
Account name : your VoipCheap username
Password : your VoipCheap password
Display name/number : your VoipCheap username or voipnumber
Stunserver (option) : stun.VoipCheap.com
This may look pretty complicated the first time you see it, but let's translate that list into the AGEphone Mobile settings and you will see that it is not that bad:
Please note that all the above strings are case sensitive. The "Realm" and "SIP Domain" are usually the "SIP Server" or "Registrar" string without the "sip." part. This is at least valid for all of the Betamax providers and so you can take this information and duplicate it with their other plans.
Once you have filled in the fields, please click "Next" and fill in your user credentials on the page that shows up. Please enter your Betamax user name into the "User Name", "Authorization" and "Display Name" fields and also add your "Password".
A click on "Next" brings up the detailed part of the server configuration which in our case is safe to be left alone. If you are still interested in what all the options mean, a look into the settings manual can probably answer your questions. But for now simply click "Next" and then "Finish" and you are back in the provider selection dialog. Since most Betamax providers don't offer a dial in number for other people to call you there is no need to check the box left of your newly created provider. Should you have a dial in number with your provider, please make sure to check this box.
Click on "OK" now to return to the main menu and go into the "2. Network" options.
I hope this little tutorial helps you to get your internet telephony provider up and running. If after reading this you still have trouble getting things to work please always feel free to leave a message in our the forums, chat with me here, drop me a mail or take a look at our support contact page.
1 comment:
Thats pretty neat!! Thanks.
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