TekSavvy → Tektalk and my new Samsung s3

Hi everyone - please be patient because it has been many years since I've even owned a cell phone, letalone a device like my new Samsung S3.

I am currently a (happy) Tektalk customer, using VOIP at home for over a year (linksys phone adaptor). I use Teksavvy cable for my internet (again, a very happy customer).

And I just signed up for the Bell Fab 10/50 plan with my S3.

So, I what I want is to get the most out of this situation by marrying (if possible) my Tektalk service and my smartphone. My goal is to be the most economical with my minutes, and not worry about my outgoing/incoming calls not being part of my magic 10 phone numbers (unlimited calling to/from those numbers in Canada). I suspect that some combo of SIP, voip app, call forwarding, using my tektalk 'home' phone number as one of the magic 10, etc etc is the key.

However, at this point I'm lost. After fiddling with the SIP account settings (using voip.teksavvy.com, and my appropriate user/pw), I can't even seem to connect to anything (I suspect I need to do something different with port, outgoing proxy, transport type).

Can anyone help me get started here, or point me to a resource? Forum searches here and google searches haven't given me much that is teksavvy specific.

In case it isn't obvious, assume I know nothing if you have any advice

Thanks so very much in advance!!

Nanny

You first might to want to see (if possible) that you can set it up on your smartphone with wifi only. Reason I say that is some cell carriers will actually block SIP or due to the way they provision the data plan not make it work properly. It would not surprise me at all if Bell did that.

Thank mlerner...I talked to the tech guy at teksavvy, and he said that this could be done ala softphone (the same as on a pc), so it should work on the teksavvy end (but I don't know about Bell...).

Also, my first go at this was on the wifi only, and still no connection...but that could be the way I set it up.

thanks for the info

Which softphone are you using? Might be able to help with that as I've worked with a few, not with TekTalk but should be the same.

Well, he said the softphone can work with TS, but we were only talking in the context of some android app...so getting the android app to work like a softphone is the trick (as long as Ma Bell and TS both cooperate)

Carriers do not block SIP over 3G/4G afaik. However, some phones have a restriction on the native feature (which can be avoided by using different apps or roms.

If you're using the stock Bell SGS3 Rom with native android SIP, you should know that sending DTMF tones in-call is broken ( or was broken on 4.0, maybe they fixed it on JB)

In any case, it should work, it's just your usual SIP proxy, username and password setting.

SIP works fine on the smart phones. I've been doing it for years and before smart phones. The carriers don't block SIP but they won't help you if you have trouble.

You can use the integrated SIP client for most use cases. You have to decide how best to set it up for your needs and battery life. Personally for my needs I only use SIP for outgoing calls with forwarding to my cell number for inbound calls. I only give out the SIP number so I can take the call from various devices plus the cell if I'm out.

Have you disconnected your ATA? Your cell phone cannot be connected to your SIP account while the ATA is active.