Eventually I gave up and went to Telnyx, which had a better KYC process and actual humans behind support that could resolve any quirks with KYC. Apparently not being born where you live breaks a lot of the automation behind some of these processes, go figure.
I nearly moved away from Twilio having read the negative feedback, but my personal experience so far was very prompt support.
This encourages me to revisit them, not because I'm unhappy with my current provider, but rather because Twilio offers what I need (a number that can receive and send SMS) in regions where my current provider doesn't.
I ought to caveat that from a KYC perspective, I likely would have been 'easy' since my career history involves many well-known companies and the requested account was for a UK company that has been running for nearly 20 years.
Though I'm no longer personally in the UK. Microsoft on the other hand: It was impossible for me to open up an Azure account even with their Customer Support. Suspect I will have to use Tailscale to bypass overly rigid geographical controls.
Obviously, this can raise its own problems -- you'll have to train the kids not to randomly dial 911! -- but you never know what circumstances might exist where someone in a panic reaches for the nearest phone.
I setup a phone system with Asterisk for fun a while ago and I avoided emergency calls because I didn’t know how to safely test it
And one might assume that it should work the same....and it may in fact be the same once a call reaches the greater telephone network.
But calling 933 does not necessarily test 911 call routing as it relates to a specific pile of local gear.
So sure: One should call 933 as an informal test and make sure it produces a good report.
One should -also- call 911 and make sure that works correctly and that the result of a call is a good report, too (after calling the local non-emergency number for the PSAP and making arrangements).
It's perfectly acceptable, OK, and appreciated (by PSAP operators and supervisors alike) to ensure that 911 calling is tested and working, end-to-end, upon the implementation of any particular telephone system. (But again, please let them know about it, first.)
Lives do sometimes rely on 911 calls working properly, and an untested system is at best an unproven mystery.
Please test it. "It -should- work fine!" is not good enough.
Unlike a landline, it's harder to say where it ends up or who'll get angry at you for "testing".
There’s an existing product that seems to have some mindshare in the space: https://tincan.kids/
Basically $100 for the phone, plus $10/mo to call arbitrary numbers. My main concern here is the company goes belly-up and you’re left with a phone-shaped brick.
Another option I considered was a cheap unlimited SIM coupled with a GSM “desk phone” e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Generic-Wireless-Telephone-Cordless-8...
The problem here is there’s no way to filter inbound calls. The last thing I want is spammers ringing the house phone in the middle of the night.
Really hoping the idea lasts, lots of good memories of dialing friends on our landline growing up and chatting casually.
Now if only it could replicate the dread of calling a crush’s house and her dad picking up the phone…
I wrote a tool that can extract and repack Grandstream firmware (https://github.com/BigNerd95/Grandstream-Firmware-HT802/tree...).
For example, I made a simple ARM patch that intercepts incoming caller IDs and triggers a bash script to decide what to do, in my case it checks a spam-lookup service and returns 0 or 1 so the ATA either rings or rejects the call.
[1] I don't quite remember what I wanted to do, so that's the first part! But I have a telephone controlled gate, with 3-pair wiring, and right now I'm using two pair for phone inbound and outbound, and one pair I can't use... If I can get the ATA to interface well enough with just one pair to the gate, then I can use two pair for ethernet, and I don't need to use a modem to interface with the gate over the phoneline.
Once you have asterisk set up and running, it becomes easy to also set up all sorts of other extensions like "check the weather" / "tell a joke" / "check the train statuses". I put up some code for it here: https://github.com/mnutt/rotary
Would it be possible to ditch Twilio and build it as a peer-to-peer system though? Or does that always require a coordination server?
Nice work!
One of the worst service providers ive ever had to work with.
It's easy enough to get a VOIP account with a local company, but the pricing is just insane. I really wish I could find an ATA solution that can do internal call and use a SIM to call out. They exist, but the prices rather high.
This is interesting. Was there a serious issue while using a regular landline?
As a former toddler myself, I think that the worst I got up to was calling the radio station and giving bad traffic tips.
My overseas family had such a long number, stored in a book in my grandmothers handwriting, that theres little chance I would have connected and woken them up.
Is this designed to counter a specific threat model?
So a few other issues with landlines, in other countries:
1) Crazy expensive.
2) You can't sign-up for one anymore.
3) They may no longer be available. The cables have already been removed in some parts of Denmark.
a) a phone using the ITU protocols, connecting to the router over ATM, or
b) a straight up SIP / VOIP phone which just happens to be operated by your ISP, but which could, in principle, work anywhere, as long as it was connected to the internet, or
c) a cell phone in a landline-like enclosure, perhaps with a carrier-side restriction that prevents its SIM card from working outside its intended local area.
Right up there with email servers and DNS.
It increases their attack surface and support costs without any real bottom line benefit.
I suspect I will be adding IPTV to that list in 5 years too.
The article is about a phone with one button per person, so the thing that stopped you from doing this is not applicable. You now have a toddler who can press a button whenever they want and dial someone - you don't see how a child who doesn't understand timezones etc. might cause a problem here?
It feels like you're forcing other people to take the effort of dealing with your child in that situation.
Theres potential for nuisance, but not one that seemed like a big threat for that whole period where toddlers routinely had access to phones.
I asked because I am interested in whats happening, maybe they have a unique situation/environment that requires this. Maybe they have phone jockey kids who mastered the technique.
>>> As a weekend project, I hacked together a physical phone, a Raspberry Pi running Asterisk and Twilio, to let toddlers safely make international calls.
how often do toddlers make international calls???
> I built this so kids of expats can easily stay in touch with family on other continents.
Just think of families fleeing from war or persecution. This isn't rare by any measure, unfortunately.
(The system is valuable for adults too, if some of your relatives live in a country which blocks Whatsapp and other voice calling apps, like Russia or China).