VOIP Tech Chat → VOIP.ms with Zoiper while in Europe

I live in Los Angeles and been using Voip.ms successfully for the past couple of years as a back-up home phone. My girlfriend just left to visit France and Italy for ten days. I thought it would be a good idea to install Zoiper on her smart phone and give her my number so she can make calls while abroad. I also purchased the optional U729 codec for Zoiper.

She has been in France for one day and our calls have been horrible. Extremely choppy where it's not usable. Once we made a connection, but the delay lag was way too long. Tonight, I went into my Voip.ms account and changed the routing from Los Angeles to London. She is now sleep, so I haven't tried again with this new routing.

I'm not an expert on this stuff and don't understand the majority of the settings in Zoiper or Voip.ms configuration. Wondering if someone can give me advice on what to do to make things better. Any specific settings I should look for?

Any help is appreciated. She has free wifi in her hotel and would be nice if she could make calls back to the U.S. using her smart phone and Zoiper with my Voip.ms account.

Are you both setup as extensions so that she just dials your extension number to call you? If you both register with the London server, then this will work.

I guess it's too late on this trip for you to both use IAX + GSM, but maybe you could try that for the next trip

No. I just un-registered mine at home and registered her smart phone's zoiper. She wants to be able to call others here in Los Angeles as well.

I heard you need different SIM cards for France and Italy. It's a short trip, so I didn't want to get SIM cards for the two countries. She wanted a simple solution.

A few months ago I was in Europe and I used my android phone and both voip.ms and callcentric to make phone calls back to N.America and even within that same european country. I should have used zoiper and/or csipsimple. The voip.ms was registered in London, but I doubt it mattered. I do not recall any of my calls to be that horrible, almost all were acceptable. My feeling is that the hotel wifi may not be up to par. You two should try a few more times in, preferably, different wifi settings.

As Voip2Go noted you can make intra-voip.ms calls (ie. free) if both of you are registered on the same server and use extensions.

I was in Poland earlier this month. I used Zoiper to make calls to my wife using localphone, Vestalink and my own Asterisk/GV server. All of them worked fine with 3G data. However, the hotel wifi is a different story. The hotel have different wifi services. The free one had the lowest quality. I usually didn't get good call quality, very choppy over wifi so I have to switch to 3G data. Then I found the Zoiper kept logging in and out on wifi but 3G data was always fine. Looks like the there was no QOS assurance with the free wifi. I don't know it is the same case for her but is certainly a possibility. It may not be the problem with Zoiper or voip.ms but just the wifi quality.
I don't think the codec will be a factor either.

You can work around the problem and/or try to fix it.

Calls to European landlines are cheap. On VoIP.ms, France is $0.0144/min; Italy $0.0162. So, just call her back on the hotel room phone. If she needs to call another US number, transfer her call to the new destination. You may need to enable call transfer; see »wiki.voip.ms/article/FAQ ··· fers_.3F .

Without your assistance, she can call the hotel and ask for herself. Even though it's real choppy, she can probably get her name and room number understood. Once the room phone rings, she answers then transfers the call to her contact.

If you can't fix the VoIP and want to talk for hours, consider getting an account with CircleNet.us. France landlines, $0.00693/min.; Italy $0.00565. Call transfer is enabled by default.

To troubleshoot VoIP, first check that the Wi-Fi signal is strong enough. On Android, Wi-Fi Analyzer is a good free app. You need at least -75 dBm for decent VoIP quality; -65 or better would be ideal. If moving around the room doesn't help, try the lobby, restaurant, bar, etc.

Next, some hotels have horribly overloaded Wi-Fi, installed when a few businessmen brought laptops. Nowadays, every kid has a smartphone and a tablet and the system crawls. If a speed test doesn't show at least 200 kbps both up and down, find a better location. In Paris, all parks and public buildings have free Wi-Fi, as do many businesses, including all McDonald's, which usually have plenty of capacity.

If you have a strong signal and good speed, but it still sounds bad, try another VoIP app such as CSIPSimple.

If still no luck, post what you found and we may be able to help.

My guess is Zoiper, especially if she has an iPhone.

Tried using it the other day and I know I configured it perfectly and the app itself is HORRIBLY written (lots of bugs, slow to respond, and ugly overall) and gave me HORRIBLE call quality on super fast/secure wifi over my home network.

Unfortunately, the SIP app themselves have a large say in call quality beyond just configuring them properly....Most success I've had with localphone (for iOS).

Thanks for everyone's response. We tried the Voip.ms London server and it didn't work either (extremely choppy). Wel also loaded Viber into our phones and it wasn't usable either. It was also choppy with poor quality, but a step above using Zoiper with voip.ms.

One problem could be the Hotel wifi. We haven't had the chance to try this out with other wifi locations. And Zoiper was installed on an HTC Andorid phone. It worked good here in Los Angeles.

I also appreciate all the work-around suggestions.

Zoiper works fine on my Android phone. I have been using it as my sip apps for a few months now. All of my calls made in Poland were using Zoiper. Never had any problem, except for the wifi issue. It is not so good for iPhone as I was told.

One thing I think we can learn here is that using VOIP as the only mean for communications in a foreign place is risky.

As another alternative you can consider iNum (if it's working this weekend....)

As a Voip.MS customer you can get a free iNum number, maybe two IIRC.

Then you or your friend use the local access numbers in Paris, Rome, Los Angeles, etc. to complete the call.
»www.inum.net/what-is-inu ··· numbers/

Link not working for me.

Try »www.inum.net/?page_id=42

Unfortunately, iNum (or SIPBroker, Localphone, Rebtel, etc.) is probably not useful in this situation.

Most hotels charge an arm and a leg, even for local calls. €0.50/min. is typical.

There are still lots of payphones, but they don't take coins. You have to go to a tabac and buy a prepaid card; AFAIK there is no way to get a refund of unused value, short of selling it on eBay.

If you can use a friend's fixed or mobile phone, this is moot, because most plans include the US in the "local" calling area.

I moved to France at the end of April, but kept my Asterisk server up and running in Canada. My DSL connection in my French apartment isn't ideal (3.4km long). My calls to/from my server are pretty decent. There's a bit of choppiness, but it's barely noticeable.

I'd say, as many have suggested, that the problem is probably with the Wifi connections.

If your GF's phone is configured to connection to Voip.ms's London server, she could do an echo test (dial 4443) and make sure she can get a clear connection to London.