HELLO & WELCOME

[WelshPaul]

Gosh the past few days over on the OBIHAI forums has been interesting! For those of you that don't know, Google has recently updated their server certificates and this has been causing some, but not all, OBi Google XMPP connection attempts to be rejected by the server, when attempting to connect to one of their servers with a new certificate installed. Because Google's server pool is load-balanced, some users were affected, and others not. OBIHAI were quick to modified the device firmware for both the OBi2xx and OBi10x2 series devices allowing them to use the new certificates, those builds are:

• OBi 2xx series: 3.2.1 (Build: 5757EX)
• OBi 10x2 series IP phones: 5.1.7 (Build: 4666EX.1311)

Unfortunately the OBi1xx series ATA's are EOL, that means no more firmware updates! Without a firmware update, the OBi1xx series will no longer work with the Google Voice service. There does appear to be a work around though, see here and here. It's not all doom and gloom for us UK users though, Google Voice isn't available here in the UK and the OBi1xx series devices will continue to work with SIP based VoIP providers such as Voipfone or Voicehost.

As always the tin foil hats are out in force! Several members of the OBIHAI community are pointing fingers at OBIHAI and firmly placing the blame at their feet. Apparently it's their way of forcing customers to spend money on upgrading to the OBi2xx series ATA's. Come one? Seriously!?! One forum member was complaining about how his five year old OBi100 is now a paperweight and that OBIHAI should update it's firmware (he shouldn't have to upgrade to an OBi200). Let's put that into perspective shall we...

I believe the OBi100 was originally sold for £29 here in the UK? Google Voice costs nothing (just like sipgate). OK, you may have to pay for some outgoing calls here and there but you're paying the base price of 48p a month over those five years for a phone service! We all like to save as much cash as we can, but come on, how tight can one person be?