Replacing Google Voice

[This article is intended for more technical users. I have a shorter article on this topic tailored to less technical users that are interested in the topic, which you can find here: Google Voice or 1999, Take Your Pick]

I knew before going into this exodus from Google (see the meta article for the back story on this series of articles) that finding a replacement for Google Voice was going to be painful, and might not even be possible. I have sung the praises of this service since I first joined it when it was still GrandCentral. At that time, I had recently been through 2 different work-issued cell phones, with different numbers since they were from different employers, and had also just started my first personal cell service on the original iPhone with a new family plan. It was mayhem and I routinely had calls from people saying they had been texting one of my old numbers and had wondered why I was ignoring them.

So when my cousin got me a beta invite into GrandCentral, I was ecstatic. No more giving out new numbers... no more changing numbers on my various accounts... no more worries about having to port numbers when I decide on a whim to switch carriers. It was life in the fast lane, and I told everyone who would listen. Then the announcement came that Google was buying them out. That was back in the days when Google was still the cool kid and could do no wrong, so I was hopeful. Each year thereafter, they continued to extend the free service, and it continued to work as expected, so all was well.

Do you hear the thunder?

Over the years, though, I have watched Google systematically kill any service they deemed unimportant, some of which my day revolved around, like Reader. So, knowing the economy of scale here, my gut has been telling me that it is only a matter of time before Voice gets the axe as well... unless they are doing something really nefarious behind the scenes to turn a profit off the service. I have been holding out hope anyway, though, for the last few years, because I never wanted to go back to life before Google Voice. I have even said to people, "The day Google kills Voice is the day I stop using cell phones." With this sense of unease growing, and the other reasons I mention in the meta article for leaving Google (see link above if you missed it), I finally decided to make the move away from Voice preemptively rather than wait for Google to pull the rug out from under me.

Imagine a world with only data plans

Like many other geeks, I have complained for the last few years about the concept of paying for voice service and text messaging as part of a mobile plan. Why are we still doing that? If we dropped all that legacy baggage and did all the voice as VOIP and treated the text messages as just data (that's all they are anyway), we could just pay for a data plan and have everything we need with only one meter for the providers to charge against. Plus, we would get the advantage of those services working over wifi when we are home or at work and not getting charged for them at all. The only reason this hasn't happened yet (and may never at this rate) is due to the profit levels cell providers are addicted to.

If you have a device with only data (whether wifi only or with cellular also), you could already achieve this with Google Voice by using the GrooveIP app for calls and the Google Voice app for SMS. Of course, you could just take the call on your computer through the web app if you set Google Voice to forward to your Hangouts account and leave Gmail open in a tab with Hangouts logged in. You could also set up a SIP adapter to connect to the service and plug in a regular phone to that. So, with Google Voice, it was possible to easily get a number and SMS without paying for voice and SMS service. I stress was since Google announced they are killing SIP access to the Google Voice service. Calls can still be made and received on the computer through Hangouts, but it is unclear if this will still be possible by any means on phones or tablets through the Hangouts app. So, at this point, it looks like you will once again only be able to use it for forwarding to a real number and will need a real voice service to make calls from a phone. Did Google get pressured by the carriers? Or is this the first stage in them trimming it down and rolling it into Hangouts rather than have it be a separate service?

Either way, I decided now is the time to try building the dream and using VOIP over a data plan. The other reason to go this route, for me anyway, is cost. I was able to add a 500MB data SIM to my wife's T-Mobile plan for only $10 per month. 500MB is more than enough for SMS and voice, especially since I do so little voice calling while away from wifi. Add on top of this the cost of a cheap VOIP service, and it still comes out cheaper than a Ting account and way cheaper than the cheapest cell plan you can get from any major carrier. The big advantage, too, is the ability to use almost any device as a phone and not be limited to the phones offered by your carrier. The only real costs here are the hotspot and the phone. Luckily, I had enough Best Buy points stored up to snag the T-Mobile hotspot for free when it was on sale. And, I already have a handful of different devices I could use as a phone. Nullifying those costs made this an easier decision than it would have been if I had been forced to buy new devices with real money. I can't actually afford new devices right now, so the only other option for me would have been to bring my old Motorola Photon out of retirement to use on Ting.

The options are... less than ideal

So, with the excitement of a trailblazer. I set off on this adventure with high hopes, but, fortunately, I am a realist and that enthusiasm was tempered by an expectation for the worst. The reality fell somewhere in between.

The first thing I discovered is that, if you want both voice and text messaging on a single number, your options are very limited right off the bat. Very few VOIP services offer SMS, and those that do tend to refer to it as a beta feature. Services that focus on SMS while also offering some voice functionality lack important features. I looked all over the internet, reading feature pages, lurking customer forums, and even testing some options before finally settling on a VOIP provider that included SMS. If you are willing to have separate numbers for voice and texting, your options are a lot better. I was trying to avoid this confusion, though, because I really wanted to port my Google Voice number to another service to avoid having to give out a new number. Of the options I tried, a few stand out.

MagicJack:
If you can live with having separate numbers for voice and text, this is actually a pretty good option for your voice service. It offers proper voicemail and there are mobile clients in the iOS App Store, Play Store, and Amazon Appstore that allow you to make and receive calls from your devices, as well as apps for Windows and Mac to make calls from your computer. We have a MagicJack number at work for faxing, so I decided to give it a test using the mobile client on my tablet which I downloaded through the Amazon Appstore. After logging in with our account, I was able to receive and place calls that sounded just fine over wifi and a Ting (Sprint service) hotspot (which we use as an emergency backup connection for work). The price is right, too. $50 for the device, which will give you 6 free months of service, then $30 per year after that. The only catch is that it does not include text messaging. If it did, I would probably have just gone with them in the first place. The only other hesitation for me was that I would be left stranded for mobile usage if I switch to using some device that does not run Android, Amazon's OS, or iOS, and I do plan to move to a Linux-based device as soon as something viable is available.
Verdict: very close, but not quite.

TextPlus:
If you are using iOS or full Android with the Play Store and Google services, this one is also a really close contender. They give you free text messaging (ad supported in the free version of the app) and phone calls at 2 cents per minute. This is pretty good, especially if you spend as little time on the phone as I do. The setup was pretty easy and it gave me a number in my area code. I have been using it as a backup option for texting in the midst of this transition and it has worked very well. There are a few negatives, though. The first is that apps for it are only available on the top mobile platforms (iOS, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Windows Phone, and Nokia) with no desktop options at all, not even the ability to log into a site to manage anything. The second is that the version in the Amazon Appstore only supports SMS and not calling. In order to test the calling feature, I had to download the app on a phone with Google Play, then use ES File Explorer to backup the app and move it to my CyanogenMod phone. Once installed, I could place calls, and it worked well enough, but it could never receive calls despite having the option turned on in settings. I can only assume incoming calls depends on one of the Google services that are missing from the AOSP version of Android. I could have lived with that if there were some form of voicemail, but there isn't. If someone calls and you don't answer, it just says you aren't available and hangs up. You don't get a missed call notification either. So, this would work fine, apparently, if you don't need voicemail and if you are using iOS, Android with Google Play, Windows Phone, or a Nokia feature phone. If you are using something that only gives you access to eh Amazon Appstore, though, this is really only usable for SMS.
Verdict: a decent backup option, but not a great primary number without voicemail, and not a viable voice option if you are avoiding the major companies.

VIOPo.com VOIP service:
After extensive research into the VOIP options, I settled on VOIPo.com, mostly because the price is right and it supports SMS (though it isn't ideal). Now that I have settled into using this as my main number, it has been fine, but it is not perfect and there are minor quirks. Whether or not you can live with these quirks will determine if this is even an option for you. Despite the quirks, some of which aren't the fault of the service itself, it has been a good decision.

The service is solid and has great sound quality, although the lag can become noticeable at times when your connection is less than optimal. The text messaging on the new number I set up has been reliable, but using it is a chore, which I will get into in a moment. Lastly, the support team has been helpful and responsive, not to mention patient with me as I pushed this service beyond its intended use case and had to ask a lot of questions to get this far.

The biggest pain point so far has been the limited options for SIP apps on CyanogenMod. After trying almost everything that was remotely viable and available in the Amazon Appstore and f-droid.org, I settled on the latest available revision of CSipSimple for a while. Its integration into Android, though, is so lacking that the number of workarounds involved finally pushed me over the edge and back into just using the SIP feature of the Android Phone app. Originally, CSipSimple sounded good because it supports SMS over VOIP, but I could never get that feature to work. The only other reason I was trying to stick with this was due to the fact that I could use it on my CyanogenMod Nook HD, which does not include the default Android Phone app. The one advantage it has over the Phone app is that it puts an icon in the notifications bar to let you know you are connected to your SIP account, which is comforting when you are moving from wifi to wifi hotspot and sometimes in areas when the hotspot may lose a connection. Using the Phone app for SIP, you are left with blind trust, hoping that all is well, or digging into the settings when in doubt to see that it says you are currently receiving calls. After trying to live with the oddities of CSipSimple, though, blind faith in the connection is worth the tradeoff to get proper integration with Android and the Address Book app.

Aside from that, if I am in an area where the hotspot is getting really poor reception, it can be difficult to get a call to go through. It is a minor sacrifice, though, for the freedom to change devices at will, especially since SIP support is much more ubiquitous across all platforms, including the Linux device I want to move to when I can afford it.

As for the text messaging, you have a few options in the VOIPo settings for the feature: "Online Only" where you use the control panel website for texting, "Forwarding" where you have it send to a real mobile number, "SIP account" where it should work with a proper client even though it didn't with CSipSimple, and "Email" where you can have it go to an email address. I chose the latter. It works fine, especially since my mail provider's IMAP support works even better than push with the K-9 Mail app. Apparently, the SIP servers generate a custom email address for each person that you SMS with. When someone texts you, you can just reply to the email and it gets to them as an SMS. If you want to send them something out of the blue, though, you either have to return to a saved message in your mail somewhere and reply to that, or log in to the website and send it through there. Either way, it is clunky, and it leaves you having to return to the good old days and party like it's 1999 by remembering people's phone numbers again. Yay. As far as I can tell, that auto-generated email address never changes once it has been assigned to any given number (or maybe it is just an algorithm based on the number in the first place), so the workaround is to copy the address after you get a text from someone and add it as an email address to their contact entry in your Address Book. It can be a lot of work if you text with a lot of different people, but it will make the whole experience almost as good as a real texting solution again. To be honest, I have not yet done this myself, but I haven't given this new number out to very many people yet, either, so I am only having to remember a handful of numbers.

Speaking of a new number... I originally ported my old Google Voice number into VOIPo in the hopes of not having to give people a new number. The porting went fine, even though it was a week long process (not sure why since Verizon can port a number in about 15 minutes max). I even checked in advance to see if they thought the SMS feature would be supported on this number and they verified it as "most likely, but no guarantee". Well, the texting was not working on that number after the port and they tried everything they could to get it working to no avail. After a week with no texting (aside from the TextPlus backup option), I had to throw in the towel and ask them to set me up a new number that was guaranteed to have working SMS. Once that was tested and working, I set my old number to forward to the new one. I will keep it going for another month or two before I shut down the old number. Meanwhile, I am doing what I had hoped to avoid... giving out a new number and changing my number on every account of every type we have. Oh well, at least my new number is easy to remember. So, if you go this route, just don't even plan to keep your old number and you will probably be better off.

The pricing of all this makes it worth it, though... $36 for a year, plus 1 cent per minute on outgoing calls, and incoming calls are free. When I first signed up, there was a $1 fee to enable SMS and they were going to cost 1 cent per message. Now, they say they aren't charging the fee during the beta period and SMS pricing will be announced after the beta. Assuming they resume the previous pricing, it still won't amount to much per month for my usage, maybe $2 or $3 at most. That's a small price to pay for the freedom to use any device that has wifi and a SIP client, especially for a Linux geek who wants to use devices that won't ever be supported by any major app developers.
Verdict: this is a good option if you are prepared to change up your workflow and deal with some minor inconveniences.

Remain in mobile slavery:
If none of the above options sound tolerable to you, then I hope you are happy where you are because you are going to have to stay there for a while. Let's be honest and just accept the fact that carriers have no incentive at all to do anything to enable the free device utopia we geeks want. If they were to give us our voice service as standards-compliant SIP and make SMS work with SIP or some other simple standard that could be worked into apps, all over nothing more than a data plan, they would have no more chains to lock people into their service. In a world of cheap yet decent devices and data only plans, they would have no more carrots to lure people into their clutches. Pay for only the data you use? Be free to use any device that supported the wireless technology they offered and had a SIP client? Why, then they would have to actually compete on service and support... and we can't have that, now, can we?

So, yeah, you either get to tough it out like I am for the greater good of freedom, or you learn to love your slavery. And if you spend a lot of time on the phone or do a ton of messaging, you are probably better off with your current slavery anyway because the method I have chosen will definitely slow you down a little. Seriously, you really have to be committed to the ideal, or just really itching to try the experiment for yourself to go this route at this point in time. Perhaps the day will come faster than I expect now that carriers seem to be converging on LTE as the common future for wireless service, but I wouldn't do this with any expectation that the situation will improve within the next 5 years.

Summary

Yes, VOIP over wifi by way of your home internet and/or a mobile hotspot can be done, but don't try it unless you are prepared for inconvenience and want the freedom of being able to use almost any device as your phone badly enough to outweigh that inconvenience. The up front cost and pricing need to be considered as well. It cost me less than it might cost you since I had ways of reducing the costs by way of the discounted data plan as an add-on to my wife's account and the free hotspot by virtue of having Best Buy points to spend. In the end, the only up front costs for me were the $3 number unlocking fee from Google, the $10 SIM card, and the $36 yearly subscription to VOIPo. The monthly cost is the $10 for data and probably an average of $2 per month for usage on the VOIPo account. We will assume you already have a phone capable of using a SIP client, but you would have to spend anywhere from $45 to $100 for the hotspot, $10 for the SIM, $3 to unlock your Google Voice number, $36 for a year of VOIPo, $20 per month for data if you don't already have a T-Mobile account you can add this to, plus whatever usage you accrue on the VOIPo. In that case, you might actually come out cheaper just starting a Ting account instead.

If you aren't discontent with Google enough yet to make it worth all this hassle to abandon Voice, at least keep these options in mind, and maybe do a little testing yourself in the near future, because we are already seeing signs that Google may be losing interest in Voice. And we all know what happens to Google products when they lose interest.