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| Privately held company | |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Founded | 2008 |
| Headquarters | , |
| Products | Mobile VoIP solutions |
| Website | https://www.acrobits.net |
Acrobits is a privately owned software development company creating VoIP Clients for mobile platforms, based in Prague, Czech Republic.
Acrobits was founded in November 2008, and builds mobile VoIP software with a polished user interface, supporting encrypted calls using SRTP/SDES and ZRTP, Google Voice integration, and the G.729 Annex A audio codec. [1]
In 2009 Acrobits Softphone was released on the iTunes App Store. [2]
The following year Acrobits released their SIP Client with business features, Groundwire. In early 2011 Acrobits Softphone was released on the Android Market.
In 2010 Acrobits also launched a service allowing SIP providers to appear on the list of pre-configured providers in Acrobits Softphone. [3]
In 2012 Acrobits added video calls over WiFi support for the iOS version of its softphone. [4]
Acrobits Softphone is a VoIP client which uses Session Initiation Protocol. Acrobits Softphone is the leading SIP Client on the App Store, featuring push notifications and the G.729 Annex A audio codec, backgrounding, Google Voice integration and encrypted calls through ZRTP. [1]
The first version of Acrobits Softphone was released on the App Store in April 2009. Version 1.0 supported only a single SIP account and the G711 and GSM codecs. During the following months new updates were released rapidly, adding new features, and the app quickly became the most downloaded paid SIP app for iOS worldwide. Support for push notifications for incoming calls was added to Softphone in September 2009, shortly after push notifications were introduced in iOS3. The G729 codec was added in Apr 2010. In August 2010, a business-caliber version of Softphone called Groundwire was released on the App Store, adding support for conferencing, voicemail, call transfers, call forwarding and other advanced features of business-grade phones.
With the release of Groundwire, the app reached the level of maturity and completeness and attracted much interest from VoIP providers, who asked for white-label versions of the app, optimized and fine-tuned for their network only. Until now, around 50 different white-label versions were created.
Later, the following features were added to Softphone: ZRTP support (December 2010), NAT Bridge to help NAT traversal in difficult networking conditions (July 2011), support for video calls (Dec 2011), support for ICE (March 2012)
Acrobits Softphone for Android was released in Feb 2011, followed by Android Groundwire in April 2012. Android apps are now on par with their iOS counterparts, with the exception of video calls which are not yet supported on Android.
Acrobits Softphone and especially Groundwire support all features and technologies expected of the modern SIP client, plus some unique features described below.
The challenge with VoIP on mobile devices is to make sure that the device is ready to receive incoming calls while keeping the power consumption as low as possible. Due to the inherent mobility of mobile devices, the network conditions change often and frequent SIP re-registrations and keep-alive traffic are needed to make sure the mobile client is properly registered and will receive incoming call at all times. This has a significant impact on battery life.
Acrobits Softphone uses a proprietary SIP Instance Server (SIPIS) to register on behalf of user when the mobile app is not running in foreground on the mobile device. As soon as the app is suspended to background or exited completely, SIPIS server takes over, registers the account and starts listening for incoming calls. When a call arrives, the mobile app is woken up using the Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) and the call is handed over to the mobile app.
The advantage of this solution is that the mobile app does not need to run at all on the device, consuming no additional battery power, and is still able to receive incoming calls. The media of the call (audio and video) are still transferred directly to the mobile app, for lowest latency and security - no extra relaying is done. Using push notifications doesn't require any support on the SIP server side and uses only SIP protocol standard.
An important point and a potential drawback of this solution is the need to transfer full SIP account credentials to SIPIS server, as it needs them to be able to register, which is an obvious security risk. One way to avoid it is to install the SIPIS server on the premises of the VoIP service provider, in which case the security risk is eliminated - the provider already knows the passwords anyway.
Acrobits Softphone supports encrypted voice and video calls using the standard SRTP protocol. It is able to encrypt media packets with the AES-128, AES-192 or AES-256 ciphers and authenticate them using either 32-bit or 80-bit HMAC-SHA1 algorithm.
For key exchange, Acrobits Softphone offers support for SDES and ZRTP protocols.
Acrobits Softphone supports the following algorithms employed by ZRTP:
In addition to their flagship products Acrobits creates white label SIP Solutions for VoIP providers around the world. [5]
The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, and terminating real-time sessions that include voice, video and messaging applications. SIP is used for signaling and controlling multimedia communication sessions in applications of Internet telephony for voice and video calls, in private IP telephone systems, in instant messaging over Internet Protocol (IP) networks as well as mobile phone calling over LTE (VoLTE).
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet telephony, broadband telephony, and broadband phone service specifically refer to the provisioning of communications services over the public Internet, rather than via the public switched telephone network (PSTN), also known as plain old telephone service (POTS).
A VoIP phone or IP phone uses voice over IP technologies for placing and transmitting telephone calls over an IP network, such as the Internet, instead of the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN).
A secure telephone is a telephone that provides voice security in the form of end-to-end encryption for the telephone call, and in some cases also the mutual authentication of the call parties, protecting them against a man-in-the-middle attack. Concerns about massive growth of telephone tapping incidents led to growing demand for secure telephones.
The Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) is a Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) profile, intended to provide encryption, message authentication and integrity, and replay attack protection to the RTP data in both unicast and multicast applications. It was developed by a small team of Internet Protocol and cryptographic experts from Cisco and Ericsson. It was first published by the IETF in March 2004 as RFC 3711.
QuteCom was a free-software SIP-compliant VoIP client developed by the QuteCom community under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It allows users to speak to other users of SIP-compliant VoIP software at no cost. It also allows users to call landlines and cell phones, send SMS and make video calls. None of these functions are tied to a particular provider, allowing users to choose among any SIP provider.
Zfone is software for secure voice communication over the Internet (VoIP), using the ZRTP protocol. It is created by Phil Zimmermann, the creator of the PGP encryption software. Zfone works on top of existing SIP- and RTP-programs, but should work with any SIP- and RTP-compliant VoIP-program.
ZRTP is a cryptographic key-agreement protocol to negotiate the keys for encryption between two end points in a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone telephony call based on the Real-time Transport Protocol. It uses Diffie–Hellman key exchange and the Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) for encryption. ZRTP was developed by Phil Zimmermann, with help from Bryce Wilcox-O'Hearn, Colin Plumb, Jon Callas and Alan Johnston and was submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) by Zimmermann, Callas and Johnston on March 5, 2006 and published on April 11, 2011 as RFC 6189.
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Mobile VoIP or simply mVoIP is an extension of mobility to a Voice over IP network. Two types of communication are generally supported: cordless/DECT/PCS protocols for short range or campus communications where all base stations are linked into the same LAN, and wider area communications using 3G/4G protocols.
Twinkle is a free and open-source app for voice communications over Voice over IP (VoIP) protocol. It is designed for Linux operating systems and uses the Qt toolkit for its graphical user interface. For call signaling it employs the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). It also features direct IP-to-IP calls. Media streams are transmitted via the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) which may be encrypted with the Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) and the ZRTP security protocols.
FreeSWITCH is a free and open-source application server for real-time communication, WebRTC, telecommunications, video and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Multiplatform, it runs on Linux, Windows, macOS and FreeBSD. It is used to build PBX systems, IVR services, videoconferencing with chat and screen sharing, wholesale least-cost routing, Session Border Controller (SBC) and embedded communication appliances. It has full support for encryption, ZRTP, DTLS, SIPS. It can act as a gateway between PSTN, SIP, WebRTC, and many other communication protocols. Its core library, libfreeswitch, can be embedded into other projects. It is licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL), a free software license.
The SIP URI scheme is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) multimedia communications protocol. A SIP address is a URI that addresses a specific telephone extension on a voice over IP system. Such a number could be a private branch exchange or an E.164 telephone number dialled through a specific gateway. The scheme was defined in RFC 3261.
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Jami is a SIP-compatible distributed peer-to-peer softphone and SIP-based instant messenger for Linux, Microsoft Windows, OS X, iOS, and Android. Developed and maintained by the Canadian company Savoir-faire Linux, and with the help of a global community of users and contributors, Jami positions itself as a potential free Skype replacement.
A softphone is a software program for making telephone calls over the Internet using a general purpose computer rather than dedicated hardware. The softphone can be installed on a piece of equipment such as a desktop, mobile device, or other computer and allows the user to place and receive calls without requiring an actual telephone set. Often, a softphone is designed to behave like a traditional telephone, sometimes appearing as an image of a handset, with a display panel and buttons with which the user can interact. A softphone is usually used with a headset connected to the sound card of the PC or with a USB phone.
Sipdroid is a voice over IP mobile app for the Android operating system using the Session Initiation Protocol.
CSipSimple is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) application for Google Android operating system using the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). It is open source and free software released under the GNU General Public License.
Media5-fone was a VoIP soft phone that uses the Session Initiation Protocol. It is interoperable with most IP PBX systems and Internet telephony service provider. Media5-fone is developed by Media5, a VoIP company based in Sherbrooke.
