You would be surprised how many of our AGEphone Gadget customers ask us how to get started with the program, some having bought the softphone without even giving it a try beforehand. While we appreciate such enthusiasm for our products we urge you to give the trial version a test before spending your money. You'll get all the features of the full version, can test the softphone for as long as you want and the only difference is that each call is limited to one minute. This should be sufficient to check out both the sound quality and whether or not your internet telephony provider is working without problems.

Speaking of which, the single biggest point of failure is the provider configuration. As many of you are starting from scratch here, let me provide you with some details! For starters, the AGEphone Gadget does not work without an internet telephony or so called Voice over Internet Protocol ('VoIP') provider. It is just like your regular phone in that regard: If you don't have a provider it is pretty much useless. You can still make calls in Peer-to-Peer ('P2P') mode to other internet telephony software or devices, but as you probably rather want to place calls to regular landlines and mobiles it is time to start looking for a decent VoIP provider. If you expect yet another contract and high extra costs, rest assured that you are in for a pleasant surprise called

There are tons of internet telephony providers out there, some cheaper, some offering more features, some open, others secretive. This comparison page has proven to be a good starting point for most of our customers. It lists some of the most competitive prepaid price plans that don't require any monthly commitment. The company behind these plans is called Betamax (just like the old Sony video tape standard) and while they don't offer much when it comes to customer service, they undercut your old provider and Skype by a multiple for many destinations. Compared to Skype, most VoIP providers support the open Session Initiation Protocol ('SIP') standard and can be used with any compatible hard- and softphones.

Once you have chosen one of the price plans, please register on their respective page. There is no need to charge up your account just yet because you get a few free test calls each day to the locations marked with a '0'. These calls usually last for about a minute and thus are a perfect match with our trial version. In order to use use your provider of choice with the AGEphone Gadget, start up the softphone and go into the settings. You are greeted with the following screen:

..which can be a bit confusing the first time you look at it. Don't worry, this is just because some VoIP providers use very complicated settings to make it difficult or impossible (e.g. many internet service providers that offer their own VoIP services) to use them with 3rd party products. The AGEphone Gadget supports nearly all of these cases, but luckily Betamax has nothing to hide which greatly simplifies the configuration. Let's pick their 'voipcheap' plan as an example. Go to their homepage and click on 'Instructions' in the top bar. Select 'Using a SIP device' from the table of context after that and folllow the 'click here' link. The next page brings up detailed 3rd party device and software setup instructions in which the most interesting point for us is the 'General' section that lists

SIP port : 5060

Proxy server : sip.VoipCheap.com

Account name : your VoipCheap username

Display name/number : your VoipCheap username or voipnumber

This may again look pretty complicated the first time you see it, but let's translate that list into the AGEphone Gadget settings and you will see that it is not that bad:

Realm: VoipCheap.com

SIP Server: sip.VoipCheap.com

Register Expires: 3600

Please note that all the above strings are case sensitive and a slip will prevent AGEphone Gadget from connecting to the provider successfully. The 'Realm' and 'SIP Domain' are usually the 'SIP Server' or 'Registrar' string without the 'sip.' part. This is at least valid for all of the Betamax providers and so you can take this information and duplicate it with their other plans.

Once you have filled in the fields, please click the 'Account' button and you will be shown the user credentials page. Please enter your Betamax user name into the 'User ID', 'Auth ID' and 'Display Name' fields and also add your 'Password':

The configuration is more complex than it needs to be in this easy case, but some of the other non-Betamax providers that may require different settings for these fields.

A click on 'Network' brings up a more advanced part of the server configuration which you can safely leave at the defaults shown below. You can enter 'stun.VoipCheap.com' into the secondary 'Sec. STUN' field as a backup so that the AGEphone Gadget will work without problems even if the primary server fails for some reason.

Click on 'Other' after that to see the fourth and last settings page which shows a field to enter the serial number that you are going to need once you want to convert the trial into a full version. It also shows the 'Direct Sound' option that might improve the sound quality a little if set. If you are interested in doing so, we recommend checking the box after you have successfully connected to your VoIP provider for the first time.

After that Hit the 'OK' button and that is it for the basic configuration. Give it a few seconds and the AGEphone Gadget should show a 'Ready', indicating that you can now place a call. Please remember that you need to use the international '+XX' / '00XX' number format for all contacts dialed with Betamax (and 95% of all other VoIP providers) without any exceptions for local numbers in your own country.

I hope this little tutorial helps you to get your internet telephony provider up and running. If after reading this you still have trouble getting things to work please always feel free to leave a message in our the forums, chat with me here, drop me a mail to michael // ageet // com (you know what to make of this) or take a look at our support contact page.

You would be surprised how many of our AGEphone Gadget customers ask us how to get started with the program, some having bought the softphone without even giving it a try beforehand. While we appreciate such enthusiasm for our products we urge you to give the trial version a test before spending your money. You'll get all the features of the full version, can test the softphone for as long as you want and the only difference is that each call is limited to one minute. This should be sufficient to check out both the sound quality and whether or not your internet telephony provider is working without problems.

Speaking of which, the single biggest point of failure is the provider configuration. As many of you are starting from scratch here, let me provide you with some details! For starters, the AGEphone Gadget does not work without an internet telephony or so called Voice over Internet Protocol ('VoIP') provider. It is just like your regular phone in that regard: If you don't have a provider it is pretty much useless. You can still make calls in Peer-to-Peer ('P2P') mode to other internet telephony software or devices, but as you probably rather want to place calls to regular landlines and mobiles it is time to start looking for a decent VoIP provider. If you expect yet another contract and high extra costs, rest assured that you are in for a pleasant surprise called

There are tons of internet telephony providers out there, some cheaper, some offering more features, some open, others secretive. This comparison page has proven to be a good starting point for most of our customers. It lists some of the most competitive prepaid price plans that don't require any monthly commitment. The company behind these plans is called Betamax (just like the old Sony video tape standard) and while they don't offer much when it comes to customer service, they undercut your old provider and Skype by a multiple for many destinations. Compared to Skype, most VoIP providers support the open Session Initiation Protocol ('SIP') standard and can be used with any compatible hard- and softphones.

Once you have chosen one of the price plans, please register on their respective page. There is no need to charge up your account just yet because you get a few free test calls each day to the locations marked with a '0'. These calls usually last for about a minute and thus are a perfect match with our trial version. In order to use use your provider of choice with the AGEphone Gadget, start up the softphone and go into the settings. You are greeted with the following screen:

..which can be a bit confusing the first time you look at it. Don't worry, this is just because some VoIP providers use very complicated settings to make it difficult or impossible (e.g. many internet service providers that offer their own VoIP services) to use them with 3rd party products. The AGEphone Gadget supports nearly all of these cases, but luckily Betamax has nothing to hide which greatly simplifies the configuration. Let's pick their 'voipcheap' plan as an example. Go to their homepage and click on 'Instructions' in the top bar. Select 'Using a SIP device' from the table of context after that and folllow the 'click here' link. The next page brings up detailed 3rd party device and software setup instructions in which the most interesting point for us is the 'General' section that lists

SIP port : 5060

Proxy server : sip.VoipCheap.com

Account name : your VoipCheap username

Display name/number : your VoipCheap username or voipnumber

This may again look pretty complicated the first time you see it, but let's translate that list into the AGEphone Gadget settings and you will see that it is not that bad:

Realm: VoipCheap.com

SIP Server: sip.VoipCheap.com

Register Expires: 3600

Please note that all the above strings are case sensitive and a slip will prevent AGEphone Gadget from connecting to the provider successfully. The 'Realm' and 'SIP Domain' are usually the 'SIP Server' or 'Registrar' string without the 'sip.' part. This is at least valid for all of the Betamax providers and so you can take this information and duplicate it with their other plans.

Once you have filled in the fields, please click the 'Account' button and you will be shown the user credentials page. Please enter your Betamax user name into the 'User ID', 'Auth ID' and 'Display Name' fields and also add your 'Password':

The configuration is more complex than it needs to be in this easy case, but some of the other non-Betamax providers that may require different settings for these fields.

A click on 'Network' brings up a more advanced part of the server configuration which you can safely leave at the defaults shown below. You can enter 'stun.VoipCheap.com' into the secondary 'Sec. STUN' field as a backup so that the AGEphone Gadget will work without problems even if the primary server fails for some reason.

Click on 'Other' after that to see the fourth and last settings page which shows a field to enter the serial number that you are going to need once you want to convert the trial into a full version. It also shows the 'Direct Sound' option that might improve the sound quality a little if set. If you are interested in doing so, we recommend checking the box after you have successfully connected to your VoIP provider for the first time.

After that Hit the 'OK' button and that is it for the basic configuration. Give it a few seconds and the AGEphone Gadget should show a 'Ready', indicating that you can now place a call. Please remember that you need to use the international '+XX' / '00XX' number format for all contacts dialed with Betamax (and 95% of all other VoIP providers) without any exceptions for local numbers in your own country.

I hope this little tutorial helps you to get your internet telephony provider up and running. If after reading this you still have trouble getting things to work please always feel free to leave a message in our the forums, chat with me here, drop me a mail to michael // ageet // com (you know what to make of this) or take a look at our support contact page.