CodeB SIP SoftPhone

As the world goes virtual, flexible communications solutions are becoming more and more important. You might have heard of softphone systems when it comes to business communications.

Basically, a softphone is a software-based phone. It allows you to make phone calls over an internet connection without needing designated physical hardware. In short, Softphones help you make telephone calls without an actual telephone and without a physical telephone line. It features all the buttons you might expect a physical phone to have, including transfer, mute and hold.

Another great advantage is that Softphones are by nature portable. Remote workers and frequent travelers can now have their business phones with them wherever they are. They can make and take calls from anywhere as if they were at the desk.

With years of experience in the telecommunications business we noticed that recommending Softphones is quite problematic:

When the users starts the phone application for the first time, they are overwhelmed with all the settings and don’t know what to enter where. So they need your assistance with the configuration.
Most PBX systems use algorithms for security reasons like Fail2ban, so when the details are entered wrongly, beneath the surface, the softphone application starts to register a couple of times with the wrong details and then the (customers) IP-address is banned for minutes or even hours. So then the users tries to register using the softphone and immediately start complaining that the service isn’t working.
Some users start to use those free softphones and suddenly they receive an e-mail or pop-up: “You trial has ended” and now they have to pay. Or “You exceeded your free calling limits for today”. Seems that the softphone is only for personal / non-business usage. If the user wants more minutes, they need to upgrade.
When the free softphone providers are pushing and forcing software updates the user will get notified and start calling you what to do because it’s really annoying. After the update then was applied, they suddenly need to buy a new licence to continue.
In the past, when the VoIP was barely a mature technology free softphone applications used to be OK but not perfect. But after a while, the softphone business model changed and more and more users are forced to to pay for a subscription.
Additional to all the points above typically Softphones are using various different and changing network ports. For many people the required firewall and NAT settings are too complicated to configure correctly.

The Solution

CodeB decided to develop its own SIP Softphone. Not only that it exists only as portable version and thus does not need any installation (admin rights) it also does not need any specific firewall or NAT configuration when used together with the CodeB SIP VPN / Bridge. As it has the VPN Client built in for the firewall the Softphone appears only as one simple outgoing Web Socket Connection.

As the value of CLI’s is going to zero and Call Authentication is becoming a requirement in many jurisdictions the CodeB Softphone is the first Softphone evaluating Stir/Shaken Token.