Using wifi calling on someone else's wifi

[micky]

The brother of my 85-year old friend has a brain injury, and can't live
by himself. He was recently transferred from Baltimore, where she and I
live, to a suburb of DC, almost an hour away by car (plus she does not
have a car). She also has a phone plan, lingo.com that prevents her
from calling another area code, other than the 2 for Baltimore. Plus
she has to call over and over because the nurses are rarely at their
station but are in patients' rooms dealing with patients, I presume.

So I thought of her using Skype and wifi-calling. Still working on
Skype, but I tried to implement wifi-calling already on this Moto G
Pure, and I got an error. The phone still lists as the cellular
providor Metro-something, since that was what the guy who gave her the
phone used. OTOH, she doesn't have a sim at all, uses with his
permission the next-door n'bor's wifi, and has used the phone entirely
for watching videos.

Is there any way I can get rid of Metro? I think I have a sim from last
month in Guatemala or one from Freedom Pop from years ago (a terrible
company. Avoid it at all costs) . Would inserting one of those get rid
of Metro without inserting itself? I suppose that is unlikely.

If she had a brand new unlocked phone, would she be in better shape?

For a while I was oonfused and thought that she'd be making calls on the
same phone line as the guy next door, but this is his computer's wifi,
not his cellular. That wouldn't present any conflicts, would it?

[AJL]

Might give Google Voice a try. I used it some years back and it worked well.
It has the advantage of the person being called not needing a special app.
It probably could be used on her current phone using its WiFi. Or most any
other device. I used to use a cheap 7" Android tablet. It was similar to
the phone 'phablets' of the day...

<https://www.tomsguide.com/news/how-does-google-voice-work>

[micky]

In comp.mobile.android, on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:45:06 -0000 (UTC), AJL

Thanks. I've never used it and I keep forgetting about Google Voice.

[Andrew]

micky wrote on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 10:07:59 -0500 :

> I've never used it and I keep forgetting about Google Voice.

I didn't understand the OP so I am only keying off this one statement
above, even as it has nothing per se to do with wi-fi calling features.

As noted, Google Voice is as good as a POTS line for making and receiving
phone calls as long as you have an Internet connection for it to employ.

While nothing works as well as Google Voice (I with it did), I tested all
the free (almost none are ad free) VOIP apps years ago. Talkatone is OK.

Bear in mind that Google Voice will create an account on the device the
instant you log into it, even if there isn't any account on the device.

I've never tested what happens if you already have a Google Account set up
on the device and then you log into Google Voice using another account.

I suspect it simply creates another Google Account on the device, or maybe
links to it, or whatever it wants to do, but I leave that for you to test.

Let us know how that works out for you.

[micky]

In comp.mobile.android, on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 16:57:37 -0000 (UTC), Andrew

Well, I've long heard good things about it (and then forgotten it) so in
preparation for her phone, I started to install it on my phone.

The first thing it said was, in bold, "You must have an existing
US-based mobile phone number to qualify." All of the readers here
would have had that and would have breezed by this statement and maybe
not even remembered it?, even if it applied when they signed up.

Then it talks about how your mobile provider will cancel your account
after porting the number is complete.

She's 85, a widow, short of money and doesn't have a mobile number. If
she did, she wouldn't need any of this. So Google Voice isn't going to
work for her, is it?

So I looked at Talkatone. It seems to really emphasize i-products, and
says "WiFi calling on Android is complicated." "For example, Verizon
only lets you use WiFi calling on Android if you have both WiFi calling
and HD voice enabled. If you can’t enable both of those features, you
can’t use WiFi calling. Meanwhile, Sprint has no restrictions on WiFi
calling." But she's not trying to use her next-door neighbor's
cellular. she's using his computer's internet. I don't even know who
that provider is, Verizon or Comcast, probably, but maybe it doesn't
matter. OTOH, the phone still lists Metro-PCS as the carrier.

Maybe there is another VOIP that will be simpler to use?

[micky]

In comp.mobile.android, on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:45:06 -0000 (UTC), AJL
<noe...@none.org> wrote:

Well, I've long heard good things about it (and then forgotten it) so in
preparation for her phone, I started to install it on my phone.

The first thing it said was, in bold, "You must have an existing
US-based mobile phone number to qualify." All of the readers here
would have had that and would have breezed by this statement and maybe

not even remembered it?, even if it was in forced when they signed up,
and it might not have been back then.

Then it talks about how your mobile provider will cancel your account
after porting the number is complete.

So I don't think it will work.


But I found 2nd Line, and I installed that. I had to provide a
creditcard or Paypal, so I used mine. I doubt my 85-year old friend
will use enough money to break me.

2nd Line lets you pick a phone number. I chose our actual area code
and one of the 5 numbers they offered. If you don't pick one in 30
seconds, it offers a different 5. Then, right away, it works.

I've only called numbers that don't answer, but it seems to work fine.
Ads that are hard to get rid of but they don't interrupt phone calls.
Mostly she needs to be able to call her brother in the "home" where he
lives, and with lingo.com on her home phone, she can only call numbers
in her area code (and probably the other one with the same geographical
area.) 2nd Line says you can call for free all over the US and Canada,
just using wifi

TextNow. Of all the others, the best one seemed like TextNow, which is
free but you can also buy a sim, for only $5, which will allow you, they
say, to make calls when you are not near wifi!! I wonder how that
works. But it would take a few days for them to mail the sim so I
postponed that.

I think both allow international calls if you pay. And one of the
others said you could call from anywhere in the world, but it wasn't
clear if you had to be near wifi or not, and it may well be you can only
call TO the US and Canada. And of course we're only talking about
calls and texting and if you are visiting a foreign country, I at least
want to have data too for tourism, restaurants, etc.

[AJL]

The tomsguide link (above) says (copied below) you have 2 choices. You can
port an existing number or you can get a new one from Google. That's the
way I remember it:

"When you sign up for the first time, you have the option of using your own
phone number that you can port to the service or getting your own. If you
choose the latter, you’ll need to input your area code and pick the phone
number of choice. If you care about the phone number’s digits (like if
you’re a business and want to get a vanity number people can dial), you can
input your desired digits and see if they’re available. Once you have your
phone number (it happens immediately), you can create your voicemail
message. You can then start making calls from your phone or your computer.
You can also use the service to send and receive text messages."

[micky]

In comp.mobile.android, on Wed, 21 Feb 2024 22:01:12 -0000 (UTC), AJL

Well you might be right, but I took that to mean you can port an
existing number or get a new one, but either way you have to have " an
existing US-based mobile phone number to qualify." And I only sawa it
on the phone, so I'm not good at copying it here, but on that same page
it had a weblink that gave more instructions (Learn how to use your
current number***) and iirc there were a lot about porting...

***Oops, this asumes you want to use your current number. I missed the
line at the bottom, which says only Search, and then offers me 3 towns
in Maryland to choose from, an 6 numbers in the town I chose. When I
didn't choose any of them, when I didnt' do anything, it started over,
this time it gave me 3 towns in Georgia, including Atlanta. Thanks for
insisting.

I was at my friend's today but I took her phone home with me, and I
could still install GVoice I guess. I'm looking at its Playstore page
and it gives 6 images of a phone's screen but no text!!! Can I assume
there are no, or very few ads?? That would be better than 2nd Line.
2nd Line looks great so far** but I think it has ads that could annoy
someone

**I called my hhome phone for it and called it from my home phone, and
it worked well. I left a message on the cell phone and it played at
very low volume, but I doubt she'll get any phone messages except spam.
She'll continue. give people her home phone number.

[AJL]

It's been years since I used Google Voice but I don't remember any ads. I
use many Google services but never see any ads that I can tie to them. I
know the paranoid here despise Google but I've always had great service
from them for my 2 bucks a month (I rent 100G). But I digress. Anyway I
guessed that you might have missed that you didn't have to port your number
to use the service so wanted to let you know...

[Frank Slootweg]

AJL <noe...@none.org> wrote:
[...]

<somewhat_OT>

> It's been years since I used Google Voice but I don't remember any ads. I
> use many Google services but never see any ads that I can tie to them. I
> know the paranoid here despise Google but I've always had great service
> from them for my 2 bucks a month (I rent 100G). But I digress.

Here, here, there, there! :-)

</somewhat_OT>