Making FreeSWITCH (and FusionPBX) work with VoIP Innovations

First of all, I don't like VoIP Innovations. My personal experience with them was not good and I ran away immediately. Besides the technical requirements, there are some commercial ones that I totally disagree. A good customer and friend of mine told me they are now asking for a minimum 200 USD monthly charge. This means, regardless if you have one DID or much more, they will bill you always two hundred American dollars minimum. I have not confirmed that, and I don't want. But don't take it wrong, for a reason VoIP Innovation is very popular in the United States. They totally support the intrastate and interstate thing (something that I have only seen in the US) and they give native SMS support with SIMPLE SIP.

The FreeSWITCH (and the FusionPBX) work with VoIP Innovation trunk, but they won't work out of the box. There are some configurations you should do in the gateway configuration. It is not just that it is annoying, it is that there are many restrictions, and a minimum parameter sends a 503 error code right away, without any further explanation. So, for those poor souls who still need to deal with this carrier, I will put this useful notes.

Minimum FreeSWITCH Gateway Configuration for VoIP Innovations

• No registration: VoIP Innovations, as far as I know, they only support IP authentication. This means that when setting up the gateway, it doesn't matter what username or password you put (as they are required fails). You must put the register parameter to false.
• Caller ID in the From: as a consequence of putting a random text in the authentication field. The INVITE Sip request by default will put that value in the From header. This totally breaks VoIP Innovation parameters. You just need to put the caller-id-in-from to true. This will force to put the value that comes from the effective_caller_id_number field. I will explain this below.
• Codecs: They only support PCMU, PCMA, and G729. So you should force those values before bridging. There are many ways to do this, and this depends on how are you doing your bridging statement.

Minimum FreeSWITCH Extension Configuration for VoIP Innovations

• Caller ID Number: As a consequence of the Caller ID in the From parameter, you should put a valid phone number in the effective_caller_id_number variable. If you are using FusionPBX, that value can be set in the Outbound Caller ID Number text box when editing extension details. Any 10 digits valid phone number will work.

Other Parameters

• DTMF Type: use RFC 2833.

Good Luck!