Hi everyone!

Welcome to the latest edition of your pseudo-monthly JMP update!

In case it’s been a while since you checked out JMP, here’s a refresher: JMP lets you send and receive text and picture messages (and calls) through a real phone number right from your computer, tablet, phone, or anything else that has a Jabber client. Among other things, JMP has these features: Your phone number on every device; Multiple phone numbers, one app; Free as in Freedom; Share one number with multiple people.

JMP at SeaGL

The Seattle GNU/Linux Conference (SeaGL) is happening next week and JMP will be there! We’re going to have a booth with some of our employees, and will have JMP eSIM Adapters and USB card readers for purchase (if you prefer to save on shipping, or like to pay cash or otherwise), along with stickers and good conversations. :) The exhibition area is open all day on Friday and Saturday, November 8 and 9, so be sure to stop by and say hi if you happen to be in the area. We look forward to seeing you!

Cheogram Android in Amazon Appstore

We have just added Cheogram Android to the Amazon Appstore! And we also added Cheogram Android to Aptoide earlier this month. While F-Droid remains our preferred official source, we understand many people prefer to use stores that they’re used to, or that come with their device. We also realize that many people have been waiting for Cheogram Android to return to the Play Store, and we wanted to provide this other option to pay for Cheogram Android while Google works out the approval process issues on their end to get us back in there. We know a lot of you use and recommend app store purchases to support us, so let your friends know about this new Amazon Appstore option for Cheogram Android if they’re interested!

New features in Cheogram Android

As usual, we’ve added a bunch of new features to Cheogram Android over the past month or so. Be sure to update to the latest version (2.17.2-1) to check them out! (Note that Amazon doesn’t have this version quite yet, but it should be there shortly.) Here are the notable changes since our last newsletter: privacy-respecting link previews (generated by sender), more familiar reactions, filtering of conversation list by account, nicer autocomplete for mentions and emoji, and fixes for Android 15, among many others.

To learn what’s happening with JMP between newsletters, here are some ways you can find out:

• The chatroom remains the heart of the community. You can also join from your web browser or from Matrix.
• The blog, where you may be reading this. Can also be followed in a client like Movim.
• The Lemmy Community
• The Subreddit
• On ATprotocol
• On Twitter

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the latest edition of your pseudo-monthly JMP update!

In case it’s been a while since you checked out JMP, here’s a refresher: JMP lets you send and receive text and picture messages (and calls) through a real phone number right from your computer, tablet, phone, or anything else that has a Jabber client.  Among other things, JMP has these features: Your phone number on every device; Multiple phone numbers, one app; Free as in Freedom; Share one number with multiple people.

eSIM Adapter

We’ve talked before about the eSIM Adapter, but today we’re excited to announce that we have a good amount of production stock, and you can order the eSIM adapter right now. Existing JMP customers who want to pay with their account balance can also order by contacting support. Have a look at the product launch on Product Hunt as well.

JMP’s eSIM Adapter is a device that acts exactly like a SIM card and will work in any device that accepts a SIM card (phone, tablet, hotspot, USB modem), but the credentials it offers come from eSIMs provided by you. With the adapter, you can use eSIMs from any provider in any device, regardless of whether the device or OS support eSIM. It also means you can move all your eSIMs between devices easily and conveniently. It’s the best of both worlds: the convenience of downloading eSIMs along with the flexibility of moving them between devices and using them on any device.

For JMP Data Plan Physical SIM Owners

Our data plan has always had the choice for a physical SIM. For people who just want the data plan and no other eSIMs this works fine, and we will continue to sell these legacy cards until we run out of stock. However some of you might be wondering if you need to buy an eSIM Adapter now in order to get some of these benefits. The answer might be no! If you order just the USB reader, you can use the app to flash new eSIMs and switch profiles on your existing physical SIM! This isn’t quite as convenient as the full eSIM Adapter, you will need to pop out the SIM and put it into the USB reader even to switch profiles, but it does work for those who have one already.

Cheogram Android

Cheogram Android 2.15.3-3 and 2.15.3-4 have been released. These releases contain some improvements to the embedded “widget” system, funded by NLnet. You can now select from a large list of widgets right in the app. More improvements to this system are coming soon, and if you’re a web-tech developer who is interested in extending people’s chat clients, check out the docs!

Email Gateway

We sponsor the development of an email gateway, Cheogram SMTP, which is also getting better thanks to NLnet. The gateway now supports file attachments on emails, and will soon support sharing widgets with Delta Chat users as well!

To learn what’s happening with JMP between newsletters, here are some ways you can find out:

• The chatroom remains the heart of the community.  You can also join from your web browser or from Matrix.
• The blog, where you may be reading this. Can also be followed in a client like Movim.
• The Lemmy Community
• The Subreddit
• On ATprotocol
• On Twitter

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful rest of your week!

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the latest edition of your pseudo-monthly JMP update!

In case it’s been a while since you checked out JMP, here’s a refresher: JMP lets you send and receive text and picture messages (and calls) through a real phone number right from your computer, tablet, phone, or anything else that has a Jabber client. Among other things, JMP has these features: Your phone number on every device; Multiple phone numbers, one app; Free as in Freedom; Share one number with multiple people.

Access to our new SMS routes is slowly rolling out, with some users having been moved over already. The process of moving people is a bit slower than we’d hoped, but it is coming along. Let support know if this is a priority for you.

The JMP Data Plan has for some time been providing an option for people who want a privacy-conscious mobile data option for small usage. We do receive feedback from time to time that people would like a similar plan built for heavy data users. We are contemplating adding an “unlimited” (100GB full speed, throttled after) plan to the lineup. If this is you, please reach out to us at support or in the chatroom to let us know of your interest. Pricing is still being worked out, but will likely be in the $80-90 per month range. We may also have an option to access JMP voice and SMS services over the SIM if there is interest.

We have quietly rolled out a feature to allow any JMP customer to receive incoming voice calls from only SIP. While Cheogram SIP has allowed calls to your Jabber network app for some time, calls routed to sip:+yournumber@jmp.chat now ring according to your JMP account settings, including going to your JMP voicemail if not answered. This can be useful in conjunction with services that support forwarding to SIP, or from any sip-broker compatible service dial *10869 followed by a JMP number. This includes calling from any phone number in the world using the SIP Broker access numbers.

Cheogram Android 2.15.3-2 was released this month, with bug fixes and new features including:

• Animated custom emoji
• Rich replies, including small image preview and jump-to-parent
• Hide reply quote if it’s just the exact previous message
• Allow storing all media in cache on a per-chat basis
• Optional rich text mode
• Option to auto-download any size on unmetered networks
• Use custom tabs for opening links
• Menu to delete files from media browser
• Bold timestamp on attention messages
• Start a message with @mods to ping active moderators in a channel
• Fix password change
• Fix unbanning users in channel

Come out and see us at FOSSY 2024! JMP will have a booth and several of us will be giving talks as well.

To learn what’s happening with JMP between newsletters, here are some ways you can find out:

• The chatroom remains the heart of the community. You can also join from your web browser or from Matrix.
• The blog, where you may be reading this. Can also be followed in a client like Movim.
• The Lemmy Community
• The Subreddit
• On ATprotocol
• On Twitter

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful rest of your week!

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the latest edition of your pseudo-monthly JMP update!

In case it’s been a while since you checked out JMP, here’s a refresher: JMP lets you send and receive text and picture messages (and calls) through a real phone number right from your computer, tablet, phone, or anything else that has a Jabber client.  Among other things, JMP has these features: Your phone number on every device; Multiple phone numbers, one app; Free as in Freedom; Share one number with multiple people.

SMS Censorship, New Routes

We have written before about the increasing levels of censorship across the SMS network. When we published that article, we had no idea just how bad things were about to get. Our main SMS route decided at the beginning of April to begin censoring all messages both ways containing many common profanities. There was quite some back and forth about this, but in the end this carrier has declared that the SMS network is not meant for person-to-person communication and they don’t believe in allowing any profanity to cross their network.

This obviously caused us to dramatically step up the priority of integration with other SMS routes, work which is now nearing completion. We expect very soon to be offering long-term customers with new options which will not only dramatically reduce the censorship issue, but also in some cases remove the max-10 group text limit, dramatically improve acceptance by online services, and more.

RCS

We often receive requests asking when JMP will add support for RCS, to complement our existing SMS and MMS offerings. We are happy to announce that we have RCS access in internal testing now. The currently-possible access is better suited to business use than personal use, though a mix of both is certainly possible. We are assured that better access is coming later in the year, and will keep you all posted on how that progresses. For now if you are interested in testing this, especially if you are a business user, please do let us know and we’ll let you know when we are ready to start some testing.

One thing to note is that “RCS” means different things to different people. The main RCS features we currently have access to are typing notifications, displayed/read notifications, and higher-quality media transmission.

Cheogram Android

Cheogram Android 2.15.3-1 was released this month, with bug fixes and new features including:

• Major visual refresh, including optional Material You
• Better audio routing for calls
• More customizable custom colour theme
• Conversation read-status sync with other supporting apps
• Don’t compress animated images
• Do not default to the network country when there is no SIM (for phone number format)
• Delayed-send messages
• Message loading performance improvements

New GeoApp Experiment

We love OpenStreetMap, but some of us have found existing geocoder/search options lacking when it comes to searching by business name, street address, etc. As an experimental way to temporarily bridge that gap, we have produced a prototype Android app (source code) that searches Google Maps and allows you to open search results in any mapping app you have installed. If people like this, we may also extend it with a server-side component that hides all PII, including IP addresses, from Google, for a small monthly fee. For now, the prototype is free to test and will install as “Maps+” in your launcher until we come up with a better name (suggestions welcome!).

To learn what’s happening with JMP between newsletters, here are some ways you can find out:

• The chatroom remains the heart of the community.  You can also join from your web browser or from Matrix.
• The blog, where you may be reading this. Can also be followed in a client like Movim.
• The Lemmy Community
• The Subreddit
• On ATprotocol
• On Twitter

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful rest of your week!

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the latest edition of your pseudo-monthly JMP update!

In case it’s been a while since you checked out JMP, here’s a refresher: JMP lets you send and receive text and picture messages (and calls) through a real phone number right from your computer, tablet, phone, or anything else that has a Jabber client.  Among other things, JMP has these features: Your phone number on every device; Multiple phone numbers, one app; Free as in Freedom; Share one number with multiple people.

eSIM Adapter

This month we’re pleased to announce the existence of the JMP eSIM Adapter. This is a device that acts exactly like a SIM card and will work in any device that accepts a SIM card (phone, tablet, hotspot, Rocket Stick), but the credentials it offers come from eSIMs provided by the user. With the adapter, you can use eSIMs from any provider in any device, regardless of whether the device or OS support eSIM. It also means you can move all your eSIMs between devices easily and conveniently. It’s the best of both worlds: the convenience of downloading eSIMs along with the flexibility of moving them between devices and using them on any device.

So how are eSIMs downloaded and written to the device in order to use them? The easiest and most convenient way will be the official Android app, which will of course be freedomware and available in F-droid soon. The app is developed by PeterCxy of OpenEUICC fame. If you have an OS that bundles OpenEUICC, it will also work for writing eSIMs to the adapter. The app is not required to use the adapter, and swapping the adapter into another device will work fine. What if you want to switch eSIMs without putting the card back into an Android device? No problem; as long as your other device supports the standard SIM Toolkit menus, you will be able to switch eSIMs on the fly.

What if you don’t have an Android device at all? No problem, there are a few other options for writing eSIMs to the adapter. You can get a PC/SC reader device (about $20 on Amazon for example) and then use a tool such as lpac to download and write eSIMs to the adapter from your PC. Some other cell modems may also be supported by lpac directly. Finally, there is work in progress on an optional tool that will be able to use a server (optionally self-hosted) to facilitate downloading eSIMs with just the SIM Toolkit menus.

There is a very limited supply of these devices available for testing now, so if you’re interested, or just have questions, swing by the chatroom (below) and let us know. We expect full retail roll-out to happen in Q2.

Cheogram Android

Cheogram Android saw a major new release this month, 2.13.4-1 includes a visual refresh, many fixes, and some features including:

• Allow locally muting channel participants
• Allow setting subject on messages and threads
• Display list of recent threads in channel details
• Support full channel configuration form for owners
• Register with channel when joining, deregister when leaving (where supported)
• Expert setting to choose voice message codec

Is My Contact List Uploaded?

Cheogram Android has always included optional features for integrating with your local Android contacts (if you give permission). If you add a Jabber ID to an Android contact, their name and image are displayed in the app. Additionally, if you use a PSTN gateway (such as cheogram.com, which JMP acts as a plugin for) all your contacts with phone numbers are displayed in the app, making it easy to message or call them via the gateway. This is all done locally and no information is uploaded anywhere as part of this feature.

Unfortunately, Google does not believe us. From speaking with developers of similar apps, it seems Google no longer believe anyone who has access to the device contacts is not uploading them somewhere. So, starting with this release, Cheogram Android from the Play Store says when asking for contact permission that contacts are uploaded. Not because they are, but because Google requires that we say so. The app’s privacy policy also says contacts are uploaded; again, only because Google requires that it say this without regard for whether it is true.

Can any of your contacts be exposed to your server? Of course. If you choose to send a message or make a call, part of the message or call’s metadata will transit your server, so the server could become aware of that one contact. Similarly, if you view the contact’s details, the server may be asked whether it knows anything about this contact. And finally, if you tap the “Add Contact” button in the app to save this contact to your server-side list, that one contact is saved server-side. Unfortunately, spelling out all these different cases did not appease Google, who insisted we must say that we “upload the contact list to the server” in exactly those words. So, those words now appear.

Thanks for Reading

The team is growing! This month we welcome SavagePeanut to the team to help out with development.

To learn what’s happening with JMP between newsletters, here are some ways you can find out:

• The chatroom remains the heart of the community. You can also join from your web browser or from Matrix.
• The blog, where you may be reading this. Can also be followed in a client like Movim.
• The Lemmy Community
• The Subreddit
• On ATprotocol
• On Twitter

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful rest of your week!

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the latest edition of your pseudo-monthly JMP update!

In case it’s been a while since you checked out JMP, here’s a refresher: JMP lets you send and receive text and picture messages (and calls) through a real phone number right from your computer, tablet, phone, or anything else that has a Jabber client. Among other things, JMP has these features: Your phone number on every device; Multiple phone numbers, one app; Free as in Freedom; Share one number with multiple people.

Today JMP is 7 years old! We launched on this day in 2017 and a lot has changed since then. In addition to what we talked about in past years (see https://blog.jmp.chat/b/february-newsletter-2022 and https://blog.jmp.chat/b/february-newsletter-2023 for example), in the last year we’ve brought JMP out of beta, launched a data plan, and have continued to grow our huge community of people (channel participants, JMP customers, and many more) excited about communication freedom. So, in light of some vibes from yesterday’s “celebration” in some countries, we’d like to take this opportunity to say: Thank you to everyone involved in JMP, however that may be! You are part of something big and getting bigger! Communication freedom knows no bounds, technically, socially, or geographically. And you make that happen!

Along with this huge community growing, we’ve been growing JMP’s staff as well — we’re now up to 5 employees working hard to build and maintain the foundations of communication freedom every day. We look forward to continuing this growth, in a strong and sustainable way, for years to come.

Lastly, while dates have not been announced yet, we’re excited to say we’ll be back at FOSSY in Portland, Oregon, this year! FOSSY is expected to happen in July and, if last year is any indication, it will be a blast. We’d love to see some of you there!

Thanks again to everyone for helping us get to where we are today. We’re super grateful for all your support!

As always, we’re very open to feedback and would love to hear from you if you have any comments, questions, or otherwise. Feel free to reply (if you got this by email), comment, or find us on any of the following:

• The chatroom remains the heart of the community. You can also join from your web browser or from Matrix.
• The blog, where you may be reading this. Can also be followed in a client like Movim.
• The Lemmy Community
• The Subreddit
• On ATprotocol
• On Twitter

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful rest of your week!

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the latest edition of your pseudo-monthly JMP update!

In case it’s been a while since you checked out JMP, here’s a refresher: JMP lets you send and receive text and picture messages (and calls) through a real phone number right from your computer, tablet, phone, or anything else that has a Jabber client. Among other things, JMP has these features: Your phone number on every device; Multiple phone numbers, one app; Free as in Freedom; Share one number with multiple people.

The biggest announcement this month is that the JMP Data Plan is, for customers anyway, no longer behind a waiting list! For those not yet familiar with the plan, this is USA+Canada only (for now) and also data only (no phone number, since if you want one of those you can use JMP!) It works like other pre-paid data plans you might be used to, except greatly simplified. Data never expires (there is a nominal annual fee to keep a plan active) and by default auto-refills whenever it gets low (up to a user-configurable limit every month). Data is purchased in blocks of 5GB and works on most major carriers in the USA and Canada.

Any JMP customer can go now to their account settings and use a command to buy one or more data plans, delivered using either a Physical SIM in postal mail, or eSIM download. People who want a data plan but don’t want a JMP number will need to wait a little longer, and can still add themselves to the waiting list for now, as we work out the billing system changes needed to support this seamlessly.

Speaking of eSIMs, we have heard from a lot of you since we first launched the data plan in the testing phase about gaps in the current eSIM ecosystem. Many people are still using devices that do not support eSIM, or operating systems that do not support downloading an eSIM with freedomware. Others just have trouble getting an eSIM moved from an old device to a new device, or prefer the flexibility to move their plans between multiple devices on a regular basis. All of this is why we have, since the beginning, offered the option to get our data plan shipped on a physical SIM card. However, we are currently investigating some options to do more, and bring the flexibility of a physical SIM (and software freedom and broad device compatibility) to eSIMs from any provider. It’s early days yet, but if this interests you, come by the chatroom and talk to us about what you’d love to see in the future.

To learn what’s happening with JMP between newsletters, here are some ways you can find out:

• The chatroom remains the heart of the community. You can also join from your web browser or from Matrix.
• The blog, where you may be reading this. Can also be followed in a client like Movim.
• The Lemmy Community
• The Subreddit
• On ATprotocol
• On Twitter

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful rest of your week!

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the latest edition of your pseudo-monthly JMP update!

In case it’s been a while since you checked out JMP, here’s a refresher: JMP lets you send and receive text and picture messages (and calls) through a real phone number right from your computer, tablet, phone, or anything else that has a Jabber client. Among other things, JMP has these features: Your phone number on every device; Multiple phone numbers, one app; Free as in Freedom; Share one number with multiple people.

Automatic refill for users of the data plan was rolled out to everyone this fall. This has been going well and we fully expect to enable new SIM and eSIM orders for all JMP customers (with no waitlist) in January, after the holidays.

Speaking of holidays, MBOA staff, including JMP support staff, will be taking an end of year break just like we always do. Expect support response times to be longer than usual from December 18 until January 2.

This fall also saw the silent launch of new inventory features for JMP. Historically, JMP has never held inventory of phone numbers, buying them directly from our carrier partners when a customer places an order. Unfortunately, this leaves us at the mercy of which regions our partners choose to keep in stock, and this year saw several occasions where there was no stock at all for all of Canada. So we now have a limited amount of local inventory to improve coverage of important regions, and may eventually be adding a function for “premium numbers” for very rare area codes or similar which cost more to stock.

We have also been working in partnership with Snikket on a cross-platform SDK which we hope will make it easier for developers to build applications that integrate with the Jabber network without needing to be protocol or standards experts. Watch the chatroom and the Snikket blog for more information and demos.

There have also been several releases of the Cheogram Android app (latest is 2.13.0-1) with new features including:

• Improved call connection stability
• Verify DNSSEC and DANE and show status in UI
• Show command UI on channels when there are commands to show
• Show thread selector when starting a mention
• Circle around thread selector
• Several Android 14 specific fixes, including for dialler integration
• Opening WebXDC from home screen even from a very old message

To learn what’s happening with JMP between newsletters, here are some ways you can find out:

• The chatroom remains the heart of the community. You can also join from your web browser or from Matrix.
• The blog, where you may be reading this. It can also be followed in a client like Movim.
• The Lemmy Community
• The Subreddit
• On ATprotocol
• On Twitter

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful rest of your week!

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the latest edition of your pseudo-monthly JMP update!

In case it’s been a while since you checked out JMP, here’s a refresher: JMP lets you send and receive text and picture messages (and calls) through a real phone number right from your computer, tablet, phone, or anything else that has a Jabber client.  Among other things, JMP has these features: Your phone number on every device; Multiple phone numbers, one app; Free as in Freedom; Share one number with multiple people.

Since our launch at the beginning of the summer, we’ve kept busy.  We saw some of you at the first FOSSY, which took place in July.  For those of you who missed it, the videos are out now.

Automatic refill for users of the data plan is in testing now.  That should be fully automated a bit later this month and will pave the way for the end of the waiting list, at least for existing JMP customers.

This summer also saw the addition of two new team members: welcome to Gnafu the Great who will be helping out with support, and Amolith, who will be helping out on the technical side.

There have also been several releases of the Cheogram Android app (latest is 2.12.8-2) with new features including:

• Support for animated avatars
• Show “hats” in the list of channel participants
• An option to show related channels from the channel details area
• Emoji and sticker autocomplete by typing ‘:’ (allows sending custom emoji)
• Tweaks to thread UI, including no more auto-follow by default in channels
• Optionally allow notifications for replies to your messages in channels
• Allow selecting text and quoting the selection
• Allow requesting voice when you are muted in a channel
• Send link previews
• Support for SVG images, avatars, etc.
• Long press send button for media options
• WebXDC importFiles and sendToChat support, allowing, for example, import and export of calendars from the calendar app
• Fix Command UI in tablet mode
• Manage permissions for channel participants with a dialog instead of a submenu
• Ask if you want to moderate all recent messages by a user when banning them from a channel
• Show a long streak of moderated messages as just one indicator

To learn what’s happening with JMP between newsletters, here are some ways you can find out:

• The chatroom remains the heart of the community.  You can also join from your web browser or from Matrix.
• The blog, where you may be reading this. It can also be followed in a client like Movim.
• The Lemmy Community
• The Subreddit
• On Twitter

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful rest of your week!

JMP has been in beta for over six years, and today we are finally launching! With feedback and testing from thousands of users, our team has made improvements to billing, phone network compatibility, and also helped develop the Cheogram Android app which provides a smooth onboarding process, good Android integration, and phone-like UX for users of that platform. There is still a long road ahead of us, but with so much behind us we’re comfortable saying JMP is ready for launch, and that we know we can continue to work with our customers and our community for even better things in the future.  Check out our launch on Product Hunt today as well!

JMP’s pricing has always been “while in beta” so the first question this raises for many is: what will the price be now? The new monthly price for a customer’s first JMP phone number is now $4.99 USD / month ($6.59 CAD), but we are running a sale so that all customers will continue to pay beta pricing of $2.99 USD / month ($3.59 CAD) until the end of August. We are extending until that time the option for anyone who wishes to prepay for up to 3 years and lock-in beta pricing. Contact support if you are interested in the prepay option. After August, all accounts who have not pre-paid will be put on the new plan with the new pricing. Those who do pre-pay won’t see their price increase until the end of the period they pre-paid for.  The new plan will also include a multi-line discount, so second, third, etc JMP phone numbers will be $2.45 USD / month ($3.45 CAD) when they are set to all bill from the same balance.  The new plan will also finally have zero-rated toll free calling.  All other costs (per-minute costs, etc) remain the same, see the pricing page for details.

The account settings bot now has an option “Create a new phone number linked to this balance” so that you can get new numbers using your existing account credit and linked for billing to the same balance without support intervention.

Thanks so much to all of you who have helped us get this far.  There is lots more exciting stuff coming this year, and we are so thankful to have such a supportive community along the way with us.  Don’t forget we’ll be at FOSSY in July, and be sure to check out our launch on Product Hunt today as well.