Edit: "The FCC requires that providers of interconnected VoIP telephone services using the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) meet Enhanced 911 (E911) obligations." https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/voip-and-911-service
Also "911 Services: Providers of "interconnected" VoIP services – which allow users generally to make calls to and receive calls from the regular telephone network – do have 911 service obligations" https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/voice-over-internet-pro...
Yes, So what? Eat the cost.
Any life saved was worth it.
Donate the cash? To a business? … So, you mean, paying someone else's profit margin, while they hold lives hostage? Immanuel Kant says you don't negotiate with terrorists.
Frankly it's weird they're making a clone of a classic touch tone corded phone and somehow get around this. Especially for a kids product when we teach kids to call 911 in an emergency.
Most will probably hold back some or all of that money. They'll make it someone else's problem. If not, they'll limit how much they eat the cost of saving others' lives. Their justification will be to put the money into their own needs or pursuing more of something. Which is what the companies do when they don't eat the cost.
If it's right for most people to charge to cover their costs (or ignore other people's problems entirely), then it shouod be right for the companies, too. If they must be selfless at a huge loss, then so must any who demand they do thay.
I'm not sure I see the safety issue. My 7 year-old currently doesn't have the ability to dial 911 without an adult's cellphone. If I give them a Tin Can that has no 911, they are no more or less safe than they were before.
I disagree. They think they can call 911 from it, so in an emergency they will try that, and fail, and try again (because things fail all the time in today's world), wasting a ton of time.
Without this device they would try some other plan, maybe go outside and scream for a passerby to help.
Luckily, I am in the UK where a bunch of 12 year olds who've just watched Scream calling the police about shadows doesn't result in something getting shot, but still - I think I learned something about actions and consequences that day.
Surely it would be possible to create a test version which gets terminated by a computer instead of hassling an operator - you could send DTMF codes or something similar to indicate a test.
I suspect that there is a little more to your story. Probably that the fuzz had some spare capacity at the time and decided to do an educational exercise on you lot - which worked nicely. Nowadays you hear about all sorts of daft 999 calls - there is a TV programme about it.
Now we are moving into the SOGEA era in the UK. That's where we have "glass" phone lines (FTTP) that don't supply power but have jolly fast internets. 2025 is the year that the copper network gets shut down, except that it wont be! Oh and we will all be using VOIP ie SIP n RTP. The final pretense of circuit switching will trot off into the sunset and be bundled behind a green tent and a single shot will be heard.
EDIT: I should specify a great way to be sure this is okay is call the non-emergency number for your local law enforcement and ask them if you can place a test emergency call. In a lot of cases, you will end up speaking to the same people who answer emergency calls, and they can tell you if now would be a good time or not.
The generally accepted method is to subscribe to your TSP's emergency number provision, when doing VOIP. However, it never gets tested and what if a 9 was typed as an 8 in the dialpan?
I used to put in ATAs which are SIP to copper voice bridges (for want of a better phrase) but copper is going away and ATAs are bit thin on the ground these days.
I like change in general but there are some pretty fundamental changes that our gov have not noticed might cause a few issues soon.
Ironically for me: My house is within the nearest town boundary and has copper from the cabinet provision (FTTC). The cabinet is about 500m away. We have had four separate teams rock up to pull fibre to my door and failed. Each one have decried the last team and said it will be fine by close of play.
I am seriously considering putting in wifi PtP to my office from home.
Tin Can is probably not bound by these rules, but it looks like a phone and works like a phone. In an emergency where seconds matter, it better not fail anyone.
Enabling 911 calls for all could not only save lives, but also save the company from lawsuits.
My cynical side thinks there's probably unlimited money to be made taking items from Millennials' youth and marketing it to their kids on a subscription model (I realize there's a subscription-free way to use Tin Can).
The direct calls are free, and don't have a fee, because those go over the internet.
> Subject to a valid account & our terms of service.
Yeah, subscription aside (though that alone is a deal-breaker for me) I don't like it requiring an account.
Might there be a way that an open-software/hardware device could simply have a person enter, what, a friend's IP address to make a call? Or is there more middleware required to connect the two VoIP?
"†Lifetime calling subject to continued availability of our services, a valid account, and our terms of service."
Unless they open it up enough that you can change the VOIP server it uses.
Maybe instead of a flat $75, charge $5/month for the first 15 months.
Why is everyone looking at me? I'm busy obsessing over how to bring BBS's back.
To quote Dennis Duffy - The Beeper King - technology is cyclical!
There are so many real old school styles. [0]
[0] https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=vintage+phone&_sacat=0&...
[0] https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=scooby+phone&_sacat=0&_...
Your residential internet provider will probably already sell you VoIP that you can plug a real phone into.
Put that old hamburger phone to good use.
The value is in the app for the parents. I would pay $10 not to deal with shitty VoIP interfaces.
We've got a group of parents around us who'd likewise like to delay their kids' smartphone access for as long as possible - but if a smartphone (or even a dumbphone with no meaningful parental controls) is the only way for kiddo to make calls, then I know some of them will defect. Selling them all on this kit (or something like it) would keep the agreement intact for a while longer.
For rsync, a person would have to study it to learn it. They might want to look for potential gotchas in how they configure it, too. The experts at Dropbox already did all that for us, though.
Are you meaning that the SIP server is shared by all the friends in the network who want to talk to each other, or that you can get phone service via the SIP server?
My dad worked on a lot of VOIP equipment in his career, so I always kind of wanted to do this, but don't like the $10/month for something almost never used, and got my kid a phone anyway because the portability and camera are pretty key. We just control the phone so that it acts like a land-line. I might be templated to do a VOIP setup for the house any if were easy enough.
Here are many good options https://www.ooma.com/blog/home-phone/best-voip-service-for-h...
VoIP nerds out there, is there any simple PFSense equivalent for VoIP that would allow you to DIY this? Basically restrict inbound and outbound calls to a whitelist?
There are other comments about providers, but my way is way cheaper and you can run you EPBAX on a pi or even get a pre made VM from Azure, Amazon, etc.
Damn I hate paying rent.
SignalWire is the primary sponsor of Freeswitch but is mainly geared towards HUGE installations. BulkVS is cheaper and better in my opinion. You can also look at AnveoDirect, which is more raw than BulkVS, but you can become really really fancy with it. Like, call center fancy.
And again. Please avoid this kind of fulmination and sneering. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Information Collected from Children: As detailed in Section 3.C, we collect voice audio during calls, call log information, and utilize the Parent-provided contact list in relation to the Child's use of the Tin Can Device. We may also collect device identifiers and technical usage data related to the Service.
> C. Information Related to Child Users (Collected via the Service):
> Voice Audio Data: Audio data transmitted during calls made or received on the Tin Can Device.
Between this, and the civil and possibly regulatory liability of having 911 not necessarily work, this company might end up blowing their runway and more on lawyers.
> This includes the real-time transmission of voice packets necessary for the call to function. If voicemail features are implemented, this includes recorded voicemail greetings and messages.
So maybe it is “collecting” the data only in these limited capacities? (which seem necessary for the thing to function)
1. I love the idea, but I do not love the pricing. $10 a month for something you can get for free with a Voip box is tough to justify.
2. It looks like they are refitting "antique" phones for their Flashback model. If they just sold the standalone Voip kit with their service wrapped around it, then we could find our our vintage hardware to use.
3. Realistically, 90% of the time my son would be on this would be to voice chat while playing Minecraft. So knowing that it has a decent speakerphone would be nice.
It was painfully slow on netbooks, but it did work, and we used to use it to live-comment on LOST episodes with two other couples that we're friends with (but live in different cities, so we couldn't just have a watch party every week).
A decade-plus later, in my present (grown-up / sellout) job, I evangelized Dropbox Paper - which was sorta Wave-like, if you squinted a bit - and it Did. Not. Stick. No one else could stand it, and everything reverted back to interminable document-attached email chains and more-interminable Teams calls everyone's invited to "just in case".
I can't tell you whether that's because artistic people are more able to think non-linearly than business people, or because Paper didn't get some special something exactly right. I wish I could run the experiment.
Seriously, kudos, for a great concept, good website, and really, not that bad of pricing. Sure you can do it cheaper DIY... but where is the fun in putting an office-styled VOIP capable phone in a kid's bedroom? (though converting an old-phone to tunnel over VOIP sounds like a fun weekend project to do with my pre-teen)
But... dang, does it feel like yet another thing that will start great and get terrible over time or just dropped and be e-waste. Kid cell-phone plans that don't give me choice of provider, youth-focused budgeting/saving apps that are 4x more expensive than just a classic bank account and require an app to effectively use, and by far, worst of all, all the "kid" versions of tablets, youtube kids (which I can never get to not show ads even though I pay for premium!), that claim to give parents control... but really just seem like the minimum effort to make parents feel like they are putting in guardrails while still being designed to maximize the addiction early.
While I am really glad we are trying to build tech that helps kids have a better relationship each other while still using technology... it seems like most still fall to pressure of profit and either term into extremely over-priced offering that is hard to justify or can't make it and turn into junk with no re-use.
Once again, this product, right now, does not look to be that... but now having been bit a few times, I am much more cautious and either worry it will become e-waste or the price jacked up by 3x what it is today.
- buy an ethernet -> phone adapter (Grandstream, Cisco, and Poly sell these) and a cheap analog phone.
- get an inexpensive VoIP number[0] and set up the phone adapter to log into the service you set up.
- set up a Google Voice[1] number if you haven't already. When you want to make an outgoing call, use the Google Voice app to initiate a call to your VoIP number[2] -- that way you're technically receiving the call there, so it's cheaper or free, depending on your plan.
[0] CallCentric has a $3/month plan that gives you free incoming calls and e911 service: https://www.callcentric.com/faq/46/529. This works well if you initiate outgoing calls via the Google Voice app.
[1] As of 2023, Google Voice doesn't work directly with Obitalk VoIP service anymore, or with any other VoIP devices :(
[2] if you need to let kids make outgoing calls via Google Voice unattended, set up the Google Voice app on an old iOS device in Guided Access mode and plug it in next to the analog phone. (But make sure they know to make 911 calls using the phone itself, not the GVoice app. I suggest printing a "Emergency: call 911 on this phone" label and putting it on the back of the handset.
Please avoid fulminating or sneering like this on HN, it's clearly against the guidelines.
Let me encourage you to just keep scrolling if someone's idea doesn't fit you personally.
But all you did was to mention Google Voice, not exactly an obscure VoIP product and which, again, does not provide a whitelist. A whitelist is fundamental to this product's raison d'être, and to its appeal to parents. If you can't understand that, I don't know what else to say.
Geez this place has gone downhill.
/S
Now, whether the limitations of that form-factor/platform are worth it is a harder question.
A plastic receiver retails for $10 or less. The exact one they are selling is $18 (https://telephones.att.com/pd/200/210M-Black-Trimline-Corded...). They want $75.
VoIP is ~free (Facetime, Google Meet, WhatsApp, Messenger and a hundred others).
Saying "but it's for kids!" is a business strategy, sure, but charging $75 for the device + a $10/mo subscription for no reason is a bit too far.
Kids Love Landline Phones - 70 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43105961
Seems like someone decided to productize such an idea.
Our Uniden walkies get a lot more use. Calling into the shed, or kitchen to upstairs, or across the street to neighbours.
clutch89•7h ago
actionfromafar•7h ago