Distronode in October: What We Shipped and What Comes Next

Here are the main changes at Distronode in October, in one place, with a link to the full story where there is one. At the end is a look at what we are working on next.

The company

Registered with the CRTC. On October 15, the CRTC placed Distronode Corporation on its list of resellers of telecommunications services. Read the announcement.

Listed on Microsoft Marketplace. Since October 6, a business that buys software through Microsoft can find District AI on Microsoft Marketplace and ask us about it there.

Your account and your calls, closer to home

The numbers we issue are answered in your region. Since October 1, that includes the US numbers we issue: every number we issue a Canadian, European or Asia-Pacific workspace is answered on our own servers in that workspace's region. How it works.

Sign-in, your team and your account moved too. On October 10, the account services behind each workspace moved into its region: Montréal for Canada, Frankfurt for Europe and Singapore for Asia-Pacific. That covers signing in, your members and their roles, number routing and our subscription records. What moved, and what did not.

Calls are encrypted on their way to us. Since October 27, calls are encrypted between our telephone carriers and our voice servers in every region. Call setup runs over TLS, the audio runs over SRTP, and our carrier connections refuse a call that is not encrypted. Past the carrier, the telephone network itself is not encrypted. The Sovereign portal has the detail.

Still no call recordings. We keep a transcript and a summary of each call, never the audio. This month we removed the code that could have stored a recording, so there is no recording to switch on, leak or hand over.

What District AI does on the line

District Studio. Everything that shapes how District AI answers now lives in one section of your dashboard: who it is and what it says first, its voice, how it handles calls, what it knows and the tools it is connected to. Meet District Studio.

A greeting you approve for a returning caller. From a contact's record, you can approve the exact line that caller hears next time. You choose how long it stays valid, and by default it is used once. You can also have District AI greet every known caller by first name: "Welcome back, Morgan!"

A bilingual welcome. A bilingual receptionist on a compatible voice engine greets each caller in the language they used with it before, or in French for a Quebec area code.

Messages reach you without any setup. Every workspace now sends the owner an email, and a notification in the District AI app, when District AI takes a message.

Your dashboard

A cleaner dashboard. Home opens on a "Needs you now" row, a record's details open in a side panel, profile and security have a page of their own, and the wording is plainer in English and in French.

The District AI apps

Canadian French on every app. Version 3.0 brought the District AI apps for iPhone and iPad, Android, Mac, Windows and Linux to the same features, and each one now displays Canadian French on a device set to French. The 3.0 story.

In the stores. District AI for Windows arrived on the Microsoft Store on October 12, and the Mac app is on the Mac App Store. With the App Store for iPhone and iPad and Google Play, the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and Windows apps are all in their stores. The Linux app is on GitHub as a .deb and a Flatpak.

District AI on Apple Watch. Versions 3.1 and 3.2 for iOS bring District AI to your wrist:

• your recent calls and your inbox, with quick replies;
• a call's live transcript while District AI takes it, and a way to guide it: say you will call back today, have it ask what the call is about, or dictate your own instruction;
• a summary with the outcome and action items when the call ends;
• turning your availability for calls on or off, with a complication that shows it on your watch face;
• urgent calls and messages from contacts you marked VIP, which can arrive as Time Sensitive so they reach you during a Focus.

The watch app works with District AI on your iPhone, so keep your iPhone nearby.

Decline, and District AI takes a message. On iPhone, Android, Windows and Linux, once everyone a call rang has declined it, District AI takes a message right away instead of letting the caller wait out the ring.

Crash reports, off until you allow them. The Windows and Linux apps now ask once whether to send crash reports, with "Don't send" as the default. A report never holds your computer's name or your user name.

All five apps are open source under Apache 2.0, and the District AI service they connect to is not: signing in needs a District AI account. Their code is on Open Source.

What comes next

These are in progress and not available yet.

Train your receptionist by voice. Tell District HQ "make the greeting warmer", hear how it sounds, and publish it when you like it.

Connect Claude to your workspace. Ask Claude about your calls, messages and contacts, with the access you choose to grant.

Email from your region. We are getting ready to send your workspace's email from its own region.

Our BITS licence. Our application for a Basic International Telecommunications Services licence is on the CRTC's public record, and we expect to hear from the CRTC in November.

Until they ship, see District AI answer live or compare the plans.