01 January 2010

How to Turn Your iPod Touch into a SIP Phone with Nimbuzz and SIPGate

Many sites on the web that show how to make and receive phone calls on an iPod touch. But to anyone who has attempted it, you will quickly find that implementation is not fast or easy. The following shows how to make your iPod Touch into a SIP enabled phone using SIPGate. Note that these instructions will work with any phone that can load Nimbuzz (such as Nokia, Blackberry and Android) phones.

Get Nimbuzz software and SIPGate account
1. Get Nimbuzz. If you have an iPod touch, get it from the App Store. Otherwise, go to the Nimbuzz site and follow the download and installation and account setup instructions.

2. Get a SIPGate account at the site of your choice.  SIPGate is a German company, so European customers can get European numbers.  US phone numbers are available at http://www.sipgate.us/.  At this time, only California numbers are available.  SIPGate offers free accounts for one person (as of the time of this writing).

Configure Nimbuzz
Nimbuzz offers SIPGate as one of the native SIP integration options.  In my testing, this native integration does not work.  To make matters worse, the required SIP settings are hidden deep within SIPGate.  Here's how to configure Nimbuzz with SIPGate to make it work.  Please note, the instructions as follow are for the iPod Touch.  The UI for other phones may differ slightly or significantly.

1. Open Nimbuzz, choose Call (telephone icon) at the ribbon at the bottom of the screen.

2. Nimbuzz Out is the default provider.  You will see Nimbuzz Out        $0.00    > in the bar at the top of the screen.  Push the > to see the Nimbuzz call settings screen.  You will see NimbuzzOut, SkypeOut and SIP as options.  Push SIP to see a list of SIP/VoIP providers.

3. Go to the bottom of the list and select Other VoIP Account.  You will see Sipgate.DE/Sipgate.US as options - do not select either of these as they do not work.

4. Get your SIP username and password from the SIPGate website.   Note: Your SIPGate VoIP user name and password are not the same user name and password you use to log into the website.
  • Push Settings at the top-right corner of the SIPGate screen.
  • Click the left-most phone and choose SIP Credentials from the menu.
  • The SIP-ID is your user name and SIP-Password your password for connecting Nimbuzz to SIPGate.  The Domain and Proxy are sipgate.com (unless otherwise noted).
Once you have followed these steps, you should be able to make and receive calls from your Nimbuzz application without any problems.