OBI1062 / Google Voice - Calls drop, transfers drop, callers can't hear us, vari

[Chris555]

Hello all,

We've been experiencing issues since about March or April of 2018 and those issues have persisted.  We've had over a year of great results prior to these issues.

I'll list a little background, the issues occurring, and the remedies we've taken:

I used three Obi1062 phones since about 2016 without issue.  We use Google Voice to forward/send/receive calls. 

March/April of 2018, we started noticing issues that have gotten worse.  I replaced one phone with a similar model, same issues.

Issues being: Calls drop in the middle, calls come in, we answer but either we can't hear them or they can't hear us, clients report we sound like robots and can't hear us, and the transfers between phones drop.

I contacted OBIHAI several times and only received one response which indicated Google voice was upgrading or changing. 

I will power down the modem, router (Netgear Nighthawk X4), and phones.  I will bring each up in order. 

This sometimes resolves the issues though they return and happen daily.

Any suggestions or advice?  What other info can I provide to assist?

Thank you!

[stevew72]

I am having the same issues, have you found any answer?

[29014021]

I am also having the same issues. Please any update to this issue?

[SteveInWA]

Given the variety of problems you're having (call quality, calls dropping, one-way or no audio, etc), you probably have an Internet service provider issue.  I have five different OBi IP phones at the moment, and all of them are working fine with Google Voice.  Rather than trying to fix Google Voice, I'd recommend that you at least try using a different SIP VoIP service provider, to see if you have a better experience.

Note that Google Voice is intended for individual consumer use, not for multi-line business use.  There is no direct customer support for Google Voice.  If this is impacting your business, it would be best to use something other than Google Voice on your phones.

[A_Friend]

We've been experiencing issues since about March or April of 2018 and those issues have persisted.  We've had over a year of great results prior to these issues.

As you may have heard, Google retired XMPP as a protocol for Google Voice.  If your devices were registered with and visible to Obitalk's portal, they should have upgraded sometime in the interim.  If for any reason your devices did not upgrade to the current SIP protocol version of GV, it's a miracle they work at all.  Some of your symptoms are reminiscent of what most of us who weren't upgraded experienced.

And, if you are upgraded, well, I wonder if the current implementation of GV might be incapable of doing whatever you were doing with the old version on your multi-phone system.  Was/is GV your only carrier?  Do you only have one GV account?  How many lines/extension were/are you running in your office?

[SteveInWA]

We've been experiencing issues since about March or April of 2018 and those issues have persisted.  We've had over a year of great results prior to these issues.

As you may have heard, Google retired XMPP as a protocol for Google Voice.  If your devices were registered with and visible to Obitalk's portal, they should have upgraded sometime in the interim.  If for any reason your devices did not upgrade to the current SIP protocol version of GV, it's a miracle they work at all.  Some of your symptoms are reminiscent of what most of us who weren't upgraded experienced.

And, if you are upgraded, well, I wonder if the current implementation of GV might be incapable of doing whatever you were doing with the old version on your multi-phone system.  Was/is GV your only carrier?  Do you only have one GV account?  How many lines/extension were/are you running in your office?

Pointless post.  XMPP has been completely shut down.  There are no OBiTALK devices working with Google Voice using XMPP at this point.  The XMPP forwarding destination (Google Chat) was deleted off of every Google Voice configuration via a batch job that Google ran a couple of weeks ago.  Clearly, the OP's device and connection to Google Voice over SIP work properly; the issue started before the XMPP turn-down, and those same issues persist today.  This is a network issue, not a Google Voice issue.

[A_Friend]

Pointless post.

Quite possibly.  Still curious to see what the poster has to say.  Any sort of broadband connection is enough to support any of the voice codecs, so I'm not sure I'd blame the ISP just yet.

So far, all we can read from the original message is that he has 3 IP phones and one GV account.  It strikes me that that (i.e. his configuration) might be the problem right there, even with everything converted and up-to-date.

[Chris555]

Thank you for your replies.

Yes, we are having the same issues and it appears to have gotten worse.  We use WOWWAY for ISP.

I am concerned that possibly GV will not work for us - we have 3 phones though we only get maybe 20 calls a day.  And most of the time the calls fail OR the transfer from one phone to the next is a hit/miss.

@A_Friend - I've upgraded the firmware on all the phones.  Actually, we reset the phones to factory and reloaded updates.  No change.  

@SteveinWA - I replaced our router (Netgear Nighthawk 4S with the XR500) and problems unchanged.  Is there a router you would recommend?

@A_Friend - It's interesting you mention configuration.  I am too wondering what could be going on.  I don't play with the settings and I do not have a custom operation.  Just standard call comes in, we answer it, transfer it to one of the 1062's or make calls out.  

Looking over our log of errors, it seems the errors occur with incoming calls and when a call is transferred between phones.  Typically outgoing calls are generally successful.

I have one GV account being used.

[SteveInWA]

Pointless post.

Quite possibly.  Still curious to see what the poster has to say.  Any sort of broadband connection is enough to support any of the voice codecs, so I'm not sure I'd blame the ISP just yet.

So far, all we can read from the original message is that he has 3 IP phones and one GV account.  It strikes me that that (i.e. his configuration) might be the problem right there, even with everything converted and up-to-date.

No.  Just no.  "any sort of broadband..." is meaningless.  I'm not even going to waste my time explaining why to you; this is getting too tiresome.

And... no.  There is no problem using as many OBiTALK devices as needed with one Google Voice account.  All current OBiTALK devices support multiple device connections to a Google Voice account.

[SteveInWA]

Thank you for your replies.

Yes, we are having the same issues and it appears to have gotten worse.  We use WOWWAY for ISP.

I am concerned that possibly GV will not work for us - we have 3 phones though we only get maybe 20 calls a day.  And most of the time the calls fail OR the transfer from one phone to the next is a hit/miss.

@A_Friend - I've upgraded the firmware on all the phones.  Actually, we reset the phones to factory and reloaded updates.  No change.  

@SteveinWA - I replaced our router (Netgear Nighthawk 4S with the XR500) and problems unchanged.  Is there a router you would recommend?

@A_Friend - It's interesting you mention configuration.  I am too wondering what could be going on.  I don't play with the settings and I do not have a custom operation.  Just standard call comes in, we answer it, transfer it to one of the 1062's or make calls out.  

Looking over our log of errors, it seems the errors occur with incoming calls and when a call is transferred between phones.  Typically outgoing calls are generally successful.

I have one GV account being used.

Ignore the "A_Friend" posts.  They are incorrect, uninformed guesses and speculation.

What ISP are you using?  What applications are using the Internet?  Have you tested the quality of your ISP service?  It is crucial to understand that raw speed ratings are not the determining factor for VoIP call quality.  VoIP is very sensitive to faults on the Internet connection, including jitter, packet loss and round-trip latency.

If you have a Windows or Mac computer on this network, then install the Visualware test software here:

http://vac.visualware.com/

Run repeated tests, at various days and times of day.  The test will give you the "Mean Opinion Score" or MOS for the connection, along with the underlying measurement results.  Anything below about MOS 4.1 will be unreliable.

[Chris555]

@SteveinWA,

Wowway - 500gb service.

Applications accessing the internet - MS Office (Outlook), firefox, Asana.  No security suites.

I am running the tests you suggested.  Thank you.  I will run this at variable intervals throughout the day.

[RichD]

After reading all the posts related to the 1062 rebooting and dropping calls in the middle of a call, I ran the VisualWare Assessment and over a period of time, 4 days, my average score was 95.5% efficiency.  I have FIOS 940/880 mbps.

I've set the OBI202 and 1062 to factory defaults and started from scratch with google voice, 1 number.

Any other suggestions?

Rich