SOLVED Problems with GV again?

[billsimon]

Ward is probably updating the modules again. I'm confident that it will be back. In the meantime Google Voice is working fine for me now.

See https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r32189847- . Google has spoken up and said (directly) that this violates their policies.

 

[ajonate]

I really hope you are right.

Realistically, the extent of downside to using Google Voice trunks is that they can make DNS changes that knocks out service for a day or so. Extended outages like when we saw after the major protocol change are rare.

In cases where Google service goes down on a server that can't afford much downtime, then switching over to a backup service is easy and inexpensive enough to do. Just have a commercial sip service available for that event. For example, you could have a standing account at callcentric.com, then cut over to callcentric as needed. You would only be billed for a day or two at a time, then switch back to Google when this forum posts an updated solution. You would still get free connectivity through Google 99% of the time. There's no reason to give that up.

 

[steve54301]

See https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r32189847- . Google has spoken up and said (directly) that this violates their policies.

So who is the google person? Google should really be more transparent. How they announce things, obscurely in their support forums is stupid. And its usually hard to tell an actual google employee from anyone else.

They could have announced things more formally. I have never seen an official announcement about whatever arrangement they have with Obihai.

 

[wangel]

For what's it worth ... it's dead again.

Even after making the changes. It worked for a few hours yesterday and now it's down again.

FWIW.... obihai.sip.google.com doesn't resolve now. And doing a reverse lookup on 64.9.242.172 doesn't resolve to anything either.

Guess it's time to find another solution =(

 

[shetu]

I wait for update solution.

 

[wardmundy]

R.I.P. GVSIP: A Final Farewell to Google Voice

 

[kdthomas]

Doesn't help when you tell the Head of Google Voice Engineering he doesn't have a back bone.

 

[schalykh]

Doesn't matter what he said. Reputation of Google in my eyes just dropped by 50%. I will start searching for alternatives and I'm not talking about Google Voice. I'm talking about Google services in general.

 

[Centar]

This latest move by Google doesn't make sense...What is stopping any of us from using Obi devices to give our servers google voice trunks again...I mean it all looks like, feels like, and tastes like discrimination. Google's terms of service do not provide for Obi and their latest decision seems to just overlook Obi.

 

[ajonate]

Doesn't matter what he said. Reputation of Google in my eyes just dropped by 50%. I will start searching for alternatives and I'm not talking about Google Voice. I'm talking about Google services in general.

The thing about Google is that few individuals interact with Google in a provider-customer relationship. We use their web search, their email, and cloud storage services, but we seldom pay for Google services. Google makes most of their money watching us and selling targeted advertising based on what we do.

But with phone service it's not readily obvious how they benefit. I hope they aren't selling our phone records, certainly not to the government. On an individual basis using an Obihai device or web interface they might be able to guess who we're doing business with and what we're buying, which would be valuable to them, but with multiple users through an Asterisk PBX it would be difficult to form any meaningful idea of what to market, and to who.

The point is that people aren't going to rally around a Google boycott because they aren't buying anything from them.

 

[ajonate]

This latest move by Google doesn't make sense...What is stopping any of us from using Obi devices to give our servers google voice trunks again...I mean it all looks like, feels like, and tastes like discrimination. Google's terms of service do not provide for Obi and their latest decision seems to just overlook Obi.

Well, yeah. Polycom has a business relationship with Google.

 

[wardmundy]

Doesn't help when you tell the Head of Google Voice Engineering he doesn't have a back bone.

The comment was made to an anonymous poster, NOT the head of any organization. Don't shoot the messenger.

 

[restamp]

What is stopping any of us from using Obi devices to give our servers google voice trunks again?

Nothing. Indeed, I'm using that approach now. (See my write-up at https://cboh.org/voip/obi/OBi_As_ITSP.html for instructions on how to do it.)

There are two significant impediments to this approach that NAF's implementation doesn't have: First, there is a bug in the OBi firmware that terminates an unanswered call after about 21 secs of ring time, and this typically prevents the call from rolling to voicemail or to an answering machine. (If someone can suggest a workaround to this problem, I'm all ears.) Second, the use of OBi devices doesn't work well with Asterisk on external VPSes because it is not strictly a software implementation; you need physical access to where you place the OBi device. On the flip side, though, this approach uses standard published interfaces and relies on products produced by a company with a business relationship with Google, so it is likely to be a more stable and robust solution in the long term. YMMV.

 

[patrick0525]

I have a voip.ms account and just got an iNUM. How do I configure my IncrediblePBX? I want to receive an GV DID call forward to my voip.ms iNUM and then connect to my asterisk/IncrediblePBX.

 

[wardmundy]

You have to have a real DID, not an iNUM. If you want the free way, open a CallCentric account and sign up for a free DID and an iNUM. Then you can forward your GV number to the real CallCentric DID and pass the call along from there.

 

[Kimberly]

The only value with a Google Voice number is that it was free and I could call in and out with it. If I have to jump through hoops to use it, it no longer has any value. To me there is no value in having a Google Voice number that is just used to forward to another number. You get a call in; you are not home, and they leave a message to call them back. However, to call them back you have to use another number they don't know. You may as well give them the real working number instead of the worthless Google Voice number.

I think Google realised that Google Voice without a real working in and out sip solution was fairly worthless; many may sign up for GV but not use it. That is why they partnered with someone that already had the hardware and the arrangement is probably that Google is getting revenue from the arrangement. Polycomm or whoever it was, probably complained that people were able to use free open source solution and not buy their overpriced hardware so Google came in with their heavy hand to crush us.

I say continue to use Google Voice if you can, I know that the gurus aren't walking away, they have the knowledge to continue. It is us poor saps that don't have the knowledge that have to throw our hands up in the air. Like I said, if Google wants to take my number, take it Google and shove it where the sun don't shine. There are plenty of VoIP providers that are not the evil bastards that Google is with their track all Chinese users so they can be reported to the Chinese Gestapo.