How Inbound VoIP Calls Could Happen on the iPhone
Imagine if you will, a VoIP service hooked into Apple’s Push Notification Service (APNS). An inbound call comes in on your VoIP service. The notification is pushed to your handset. From that notification, you can launch a VoIP app that essentially connects the incoming call to your iPhone or iPod Touch over WiFi.
While not perfect, this is basically a way around the whole lack of background applications on the iPhone. Any service provider could easily do this.
There are some logistics to work out with this system, such as what happens if APNS is delayed in delivering the message or the caller gets impatient and hangs up, but none of those problems are insurmountable.
So the question is: which service is going to implement this first?
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Tags: apple, iphone, voip Fnord
Comment by Ravens
iSip, a SIP client running on iPhoneOS has already implemented such a feature. A remote sip client is connected to your sip account and push notifications via APNS when an incoming call arrives. Works fine. Only Problem is, what to do if no WiFi network is available ? I think its need to implement a basic call forwarding to GSM when launching the app…
Comment by Ruben Olsen
As Ravens said, iSIP is doing this – another client is Acrobits. You might want to check out my comparative review on such clients at http://bit.ly/adz5x
There will be a followup post later today on why using the APNS is a very good idea, but a extremely bad implementation.
@RubenOlsen
Comment by Aswath Rao
I thought there are many apps that use this method, both in iPhone and Android. But I think this doesn’t work in Touch because the wifi radio is turned off when the device goes into idle mode. In other words, there is no Push Notification service.
Comment by Tsahi Levent-Levi
While this may work, it is an ugly workaround – a lot worse than what people are doing to plug holes in firewalls…
Comment by PhoneBoy
An independent client is one thing, but one integrated with a service provider–or a service provider itself offering it–is quite another. I’d love it if Skype did that
Comment by tom
you still have the problem on an itouch or an iphone with no SIM or a voice only SIM(such as prepaid). that problem is that the WiFi gets turned off when the screen goes blank. for me as a strictly prepaid type of guy it is very attractive to have an iphone with a voice only SIM but use VOIP most of the time over WiFi.
the current solution is to use jailbreaking and apps that force the WiFi to stay on. but this is not at all ideal.
Comment by Corvys
I say small companies may win the race to be the first, but Google will buy them all in order to be the first dominant player.