I am tired of paying for roaming, of being location tracked by my provider and running out of SIM slots.

So I have decided to connect some SIM capabilities to my server and set it up as a sort of proxy that I could access over the internet to send regular SMS and make regular calls through the server.

As far as I can tell it seems to be really complicated to do in linux and I just couldn’t find anyway that would actually support sound over calls.

The only solutions I found right now are to get an old phone (not ideal because of the price, battery and reliability) or use something like

https://www.makerfabs.com/maduino-zero-4g-lte-sim7600.html

Which can be connected to the server on the aux and serial ports. This is not too pricey but still seems like a bit much for my needs.

My question is, are there better ways? Really all I need is SMS and calls.

  • bdonvr@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    5·
    15 hours ago

    Please, be aware that the quality of the voice call depends and a lot of the data rate. Keep this in mind uif you are in remote locations with poor coverage.

    Nowadays most cell calls are VoIP anyhow. Heck in the US they shut off the old networks and only allow VoLTE/Vo5G

    • thelittleblackbird@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      12 hours ago

      Good point! I totally forgot that.

      But if I am able to recall correctly the QoS for the VoLTE and just regular data is totally different and the antenna may refused to provide you enough data for a non-prior service

    • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      2·
      14 hours ago

      Yea, buts that very different than software VOIP.

      I know this first hand by having VOIP-only voice on my phone via a service using Monocles Chat or Cheogram.

      Voice calls via my cell plan are much better quality and more consistent than VOIP via an app. I suspect this is because voice calls over 4G/5G are encoded by hardware.

      Even Google Voice for calls is pretty awful, which is why I’ve never paid to use it for voice calls.