Stanaphone: Your Pocket PC Gets a Landline Number, and Can Call Them, Too

[Pat Logsdon]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?ContentId=3016' target='_blank'>http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.a...?ContentId=3016</a><br /><br /></div>"Stanaphone launched with an interesting proposition: give free US phone numbers to its users, and allow for cheap (sometimes free) phone calls using SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) technology. At the launch, Stanaphone also offered something unheard of before: 100 monthly minutes worth of calls to normal telephone numbers (in selected countries) for all users. Since then they also added a prepaid card feature, called StanaCard.<br /><br />So, how does it work? Users register with Stanaphone on their site, and are assigned a telephone number, within one of available US area codes. As long as the user is running Stanaphone on a computer this number is active. Calls to this number, independently of being national or international, will be redirected to the SIP client on the user's computer. Using this SIP client users can place calls to any country in the world, and calls to a list of countries will use the 100 free minutes available monthly, before being charged. StanaCard can be used after the included minutes are all used up or if calling a country not in the list of free calls."<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/logsdon_20040715_stanaphone.jpg" /><br /><br />To use this service, you'll need a <a href="http://www.sjlabs.com/sjp.html">SIP client</a> for the Pocket PC, a <a href="http://www.stanaphone.com/">Stanaphone account,</a> and a WiFi connection. The killer feature here seems to be the ability to call to and from POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) phone numbers. As far as I know, the only current competitor to this is Skype's upcoming <a href="https://secure.skype.com/store/help.globalrate.html">SkypeOut</a> service. If you've tried this, let us know what you think!

[Tierran]

I played with it...the sound quality is reminiscent of using those internet phones about 5 or 6 years ago. Not very good ;) But not unusable considering the PDA wasn't meant to do that at all.

[gorkon280]

"Stanaphone launched with an interesting proposition: give free US phone numbers to its users, and allow for cheap (sometimes free) phone calls using SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) technology. At the launch, Stanaphone also offered something unheard of before: 100 monthly minutes worth of calls to normal telephone numbers (in selected countries) for all users. Since then they also added a prepaid card feature, called StanaCard.

So, how does it work? Users register with Stanaphone on their site, and are assigned a telephone number, within one of available US area codes. As long as the user is running Stanaphone on a computer this number is active. Calls to this number, independently of being national or international, will be redirected to the SIP client on the user's computer. Using this SIP client users can place calls to any country in the world, and calls to a list of countries will use the 100 free minutes available monthly, before being charged. StanaCard can be used after the included minutes are all used up or if calling a country not in the list of free calls."

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/logsdon_20040715_stanaphone.jpg

To use this service, you'll need a SIP client (http://www.sjlabs.com/sjp.html) for the Pocket PC, a Stanaphone account, (http://www.stanaphone.com/) and a WiFi connection. The killer feature here seems to be the ability to call to and from POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) phone numbers. As far as I know, the only current competitor to this is Skype's upcoming SkypeOut (https://secure.skype.com/store/help.globalrate.html) service. If you've tried this, let us know what you think!


On the contrary, I thought it quite good although definitely not as good as if you setup VOIP at work. SJPhone is much better then the Xten client. Took me a few minutes to figure out how to configure it, but I was able to make calls by just dialing. I will have to try making a call from my hotel room tomorrow night (IF we have High Speed). One caveat....logging into Stanaphone's website is impossible on Safari or the Mac version of IE. I hate websites like that as there IS no reason to code non standard HTML.

[that_kid]

I signed up for it but I haven't tried it yet. I'm using x-phone pro so I'll be able to use stanphone, free world dialup and vonage at the same time. This should be good for comparison tests. Oh and stanphone isn't the only sevice that allows you to make calls to and from pots lines. Free world dialup has had this option for months and so has vonage. granted vonage isn't free but free world dialup is. The thing with free world dialup is that users have to call through libretel and enter your fwd number as sort of an extension number. It's actually great because they have local numbers everywhere so people all over can just call a number local to them, enter your fwd number and that's it. Vonage's softphone is a more direct route, I have a actual phone number on my ppc. Plus both fwd and vonage offer voicemail and you can call between fwd and vonage networks.

[x999x]

I signed up for it but I haven't tried it yet. I'm using x-phone pro so I'll be able to use stanphone, free world dialup and vonage at the same time. This should be good for comparison tests. Oh and stanphone isn't the only sevice that allows you to make calls to and from pots lines. Free world dialup has had this option for months and so has vonage. granted vonage isn't free but free world dialup is. The thing with free world dialup is that users have to call through libretel and enter your fwd number as sort of an extension number. It's actually great because they have local numbers everywhere so people all over can just call a number local to them, enter your fwd number and that's it. Vonage's softphone is a more direct route, I have a actual phone number on my ppc. Plus both fwd and vonage offer voicemail and you can call between fwd and vonage networks.

Could you please provide more information on Libretel or other Free PSTNs?

I tried visiting Libretel, and they have no information on signing up unfortunately.

[DiGiTYZED]

I'm trying to setup SJPhone for use with my Stanaphone account now... For profile type, do I select 'Direct SIP Call', 'Simple SIP Proxy' or 'Calls through SIP Proxy'???

[freitasm]

I'm trying to setup SJPhone for use with my Stanaphone account now... For profile type, do I select 'Direct SIP Call', 'Simple SIP Proxy' or 'Calls through SIP Proxy'???

Calls through SIP Proxy should do it.

[freitasm]

I signed up for it but I haven't tried it yet. I'm using x-phone pro so I'll be able to use stanphone, free world dialup and vonage at the same time. This should be good for comparison tests. Oh and stanphone isn't the only sevice that allows you to make calls to and from pots lines. Free world dialup has had this option for months and so has vonage. granted vonage isn't free but free world dialup is. The thing with free world dialup is that users have to call through libretel and enter your fwd number as sort of an extension number. It's actually great because they have local numbers everywhere so people all over can just call a number local to them, enter your fwd number and that's it. Vonage's softphone is a more direct route, I have a actual phone number on my ppc. Plus both fwd and vonage offer voicemail and you can call between fwd and vonage networks.

Yep, but we've discussed in another thread about the benefits of Stanaphone being available to any user in the world, while Vonage is only available in the US and Canada... This makes Stanaphone an option to any one of the other 6 billion human beings in the world.

[dean_shan]

Link to Previous (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=29741) talk about this subject.

[that_kid]

Could you please provide more information on Libretel or other Free PSTNs?

I tried visiting Libretel, and they have no information on signing up unfortunately.

Here (http://www.libretel.com/access.html) is the list of access numbers from libretel. I'm not sure when they are going to move to a pay based system but right now it's still free. The only problem that I have seen in the fwd forums is that some of the latest fwd numbers from new users don't work with Libretel.

I'll have to dig around for some other free pstn's, there was one I believe in seattle and another in new zealand.

[poolboy]

I have been trying to set up sjphone with stanaphone on my Ipaq 5550 but keep receiving an error:
You've entered an invalid address.
"Cannot dial phone number in current service configuration"

Also on the main phone screen it is saying SIP:
Stanaphone
SIP: not registered
Host address: 19......
Nat/Firewall: Blocked

I was able (not sure how to call my pc directly though).
I also was able to make a phone call from my pc to a land line.

Thanks,
0X [/img]

[szamot]

Truly then I must be the only person who had no problem setting it up, tip, use IP address vs. actual names, but the voice quality was horrid. I got to hear every 14th syllable at best. Totally unusable, but definitely easy to use and configure. Too bad it would be fun to play with.