So there are unofficial paths ways to use your Google Voice with FreePBX and it has been unclear if those ways will survive. Google said they were going to kill the hack back in may but it has yet to actually die. In the last few days Google has been combining Voice and Hangouts and chatter is once again happening about the access methods going away. The good news is the people at Obihai have partnered with google to provide official access. It seems you can now integrate in to your PBX without fragile hacks that could be gone at a whim…
Indeed…I went this route… SADLY, none of the guides work to actually DO what you’re talking to. One can easily and readily provide POTS service to a GV account and number with an ObiHai OBI unit…but it doesn’t want to register to a trunk on a FreePBX (via a RasPBX install…) system to save it’s misbegotten life.
If you’re going to flog this…provide WORKING examples (None of the online examples seem to work…). Otherwise, you’re not being any more helpful than the hacks at that point.
The nice folks at google do not intend for their service to be used in the former manner. They approve of the OBI manner. Easiest route would be to loop the OBI back to another ATA or in to an FXO card. I imagine this would keep you within he conveniently ignored AUP
IANAL but I am pretty sure “ignorance” is not a legal defense.
This is all ancient history, at least in Internet years. Google approves of connections to Voice using oauth2-authenticated XMPP+Jingle (the Google Chat service). Configuring Asterisk to do so or using a third party device or service to do so can all be considered “the right way” at this point.
I still don’t see a google voice API. Without an official API the following line says it is not ok
Do not modify, adapt, translate, or reverse engineer any portion of the Google Voice Service.
Remember the ability to do something is NOT the same as consent to do something.
Also lacking a public API there is nothing preventing random changes which cause instability.
In the end people choose to do as they wish. Bill as you probably saw on dslreports I pointed the xivo guy in your direction. I don’t endorse or personally agree with the service but it is an option for people who are going to do it. I would rather them add a simple sip trunk to a bridging service than breaking something else by making a bunch of copy and paste changes.
I think we are mostly on the same page, James. Let me try to clarify my point.
When making SIP connections, what is the “official API”? It is RFC 3261 and others that make up the suite of SIP-related protocols.
Our connections to the Google Voice service are a combination of published protocols: OAUTH2 for authentication, XMPP for signaling, and Jingle for media. There is no reverse engineering of protocols involved. There is/was trivial figuring-out of various necessary configuration parameters. Whether that constitutes “reverse engineering” is unclear to me.
That said, I believe that Obihai, GVGW, and Asterisk users that adapt chan_motif to use the secure OAUTH2 are in the clear to connect to Google Voice this way. It is understood that Jingle is published but not ratified as standard so it could change at any time, thus the possibility of something breaking down.
Someone asked about an “official” Obihai-Google relationship on the Google Voice forum. The spokespeople for Google Voice stop short of saying that Google approves of Obihai but does accept it because it switched to the secured login method.
If Google wants to give an official word, I’m sure everyone would appreciate it. Otherwise I think oauth2-secured Asterisk connections, in the same way as Obihai’s, are acceptable.