After surviving with cellular Internet in rural Central Virginia for 15 years, T-Mobile Home Internet became available in September so I got it set up ASAP. The next step was relocate my local landline from a cellular router port it resided on for several years to an OBi202 ATA. After wrestling with a test line from VOIP.MS for a week, I figured out TMHI is blocking UDP5060. Using UDP5080 worked so I ported the landline number over to VOIP.MS & retained the test line. All was well until…
I like to have backup network hardware so I purchased what was advertised as an OBI202 on eBay but turned out to be a OBi302; this eliminated the possibility of moving the 202 configuration file over to the new device. I manually copied the configuration over to the 302 but couldn’t get the SP1 line to register with VOIP.MS. After some research, I discovered Obihai has a firmware bug that sometimes prevents the SP1 line from registering. I moved the line from SP1 to SP3 and got both lines working.
Ignoring the adage “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.“, I updated the 302 firmware. After reloading the 302 configuration file, both lines worked so I moved the line back to SP1 from SP3 and it worked. While working with the 302, I found a couple of small settings tweaks that I decided to add to the 202 configuration. After adding the tweaks, the 202 SP1 line stopped registering with VOIP.MS; restoring the tweeks to their original values didn’t restore SP1 operation. I did a factory reset of the 202 and manually entered the configuration but SP1 still won’t register. At this point, my only option seems to be reloading the 202 firmware and hope that restores SP1’s ability to register.
Does anyone have experience with this Obihai firmware bug and a work around?
For this reason, I’ve been hesitant about getting T‑Mobile Home Internet. I’ve heard there are quite a few glitches — some people seem to have no issues, while others run into constant problems. With my luck, I’d probably fall into the latter group.
When I was asking around, alternate service ports were often suggested as a workaround, and several people also mentioned switching from UDP to TCP. I don’t know much about the technical side of it myself, but I’m just passing along what I’ve heard from others.
TMHI is a stop gap measure until the miserable excuse for a cable company my county chose to provide FTTH delivers. Fiber is strung on my road, over my driveway and spliced at the main highway but they have pulled maybe 15% of the required underground backbone cable and don’t have the means to install drop cables measured in fractions of a mile rather than feet. The contract signed 2.5 years ago, stipulated 70% service delivery to residents by the end of 2025…
As far as VOIP over TMHI goes, UDP can be used with alternate ports; for VOIP.MS ports 5080 & 42872 work okay. TCP works as does RTP/RTCP, if you want to encrypt your voice traffic. All of this could change at the whim of big brother T-Mobile but there are no shortage of rood blocks raised by most Internet service providers. You have to be prepared to roll with the punches no matter who’s throwing them.
First, TMHI is still cellular internet like you already had but… It’s better than using the hotspot on your phone I guess.
I have TMHI I use strictly for backup purposes when Spectrum goes down. It’s OK not too fast but better than nothing when my primary goes out.
For what it’s worth and if you remove the obvious political love or hate (in the US), Starlink at it’s current pricing and options is making me wonder why I even have TMHI as my backup.
I have some experience using VoIP over Starlink myself and people that have worked for me answering calls for 8-10 hour shifts. It works really well for VoIP in my experience, much faster and with the right plan, you’ll pay close to or even less than TMHI. In fact, I’m not sure I would do it but they even have a standby plan that’s 1mb speed for $5/mo that I have had successful VoIP calls over. For me, I have a Starlink Mini with the Roam plan at $50/mo for 50GB but then I just leave it off when I don’t need it and I’m charged $5/mo for standby. In standby it still works for phone calls and super light browsing, email etc which for me is good enough during an outage. If it was my primary I would just pay the $160/mo or whatever for full time use.
As for your issue in particular, you could consider putting up a super cheap VM on one of the cloud server providers and setting up something like FreePBX. The FreePBX server could have IP Authentication with VoIP.ms and then you can register your phones to your FreePBX server. The FreePBX server would give you tons of other options and allow for your voicemail to be taken on the server in the event your home internet is down or registration gets flaky etc.. You could also set it up to ring both your home VoIP devices and your cell at the same time or one after the other and so on. For the $5 or $7/mo the VM would cost you, it would bring a lot of functionality to the table.
You would need time to tinker and learn FreePBX but it’s a good product and might be a fun project for you. Just my 2 cents.
Yes it is still cellular but with a twist; T-Mobile has dedicated channels for TMHI, at the site I connect to it’s Band 66. I noticed the regular cellular service being offline for varying periods over the course of several days and suspected they were making upgrades that might include TMHI. After regular service was stable for a few days, I checked the T-Mobile website and found TMHI was finally being offered at my address.
A FreePBX system is my eventual goal, except I will keep it onsite instead of virtual. I have a Wyse thin client PC and several Cisco IP phones waiting for a stretch of cold weather days with nothing else to do but run network cabling and create lots of configurations. The main upside of the FreePBX will be the feature phones and the ability to tie in our cell phones via Bluetooth.
I solved my registration problem. T-Mobile has an app for managing what little isn’t locked down on the TMHI router. One of the offerings in the app is the ability to block Internet access on a device by device basis. While working with the OBi202 and OBi302, I had both devices on the network with Internet access being blocked for the device being used as a configuration reference. I discovered the app Internet blocking feature doesn’t work so both ATA’s were trying to register with VOIP.MS. The ATA being rebooted multiple times for configuration changes losing out to the stable reference ATA despite the T-Mobile app showing it was prevented from accessing the Internet. When I finally physically removed the reference ATA from the TMHI LAN, the other ATA registered both channels as soon as the re-registration timer expired.
Thank you for the update — I am glad you tracked down the registration issue. I may give TMHI a try myself at some point. At my main home I have fiber with a gig connection, but at my camp I am on DSL and lucky to have even that. Options there are pretty limited aside from TMHI or satellite, and being so far from the central office my DSL speed tops out around 1.5 Mb. I am a tinkerer, so I might see if I can get TMHI working with VoIP.ms, and if it does, I would likely drop the DSL. When the DSL goes out, repairs take forever since the parts are not even made anymore — they just pull replacements from somewhere else.
At least you had the benefit of DSL, such as it may be. I live in a former GTE territory bought up by Verizon in 2000. Verizon turned around and sold a large share of GTE territory to Frontier that immediately added DSLAM’s to switch centers that weren’t providing DSL. Verizon flat out refused to install a DSLAM in the DMS100 switch remote a 1/2 mile down the road from me so my only option has been cellular Internet.
Today, most of the DSLAM manufacturers have gone out of business, like Nortel, or were absorbed, like Lucent, by companies that had no interest in continuing the technology. Parts to repair your DSL service come from refurbishment centers repairing defective modules or certifying hardware removed from service.
In case you haven’t seen it, T-Mobile has a TMHI plan for home backup. For $25/mo you can get 125GB which might be sufficient for a camp you don’t visit often. That is half the cost of their lowest unlimited plan. They also offer 30 day trial period, if you bring the hardware back to a store in 30 days or less they won’t bill you for the service. Grab an OBi200 single line device off eBay or other similiar seller for <$35 and you can do a lot of testing for little money. They might even set you up to get the ATA working at home then change the service address to your camp for further testing.Just don’t tell them you need to test VOIP!
