VOIP

[charlie]

Hi all,

I finally got tired of paying $50-$80 per month to SBC and started
the process of trying VOIP with SunRocket. It takes several weeks
to port our old number so I will let you know how it worked out
later. Your old number continues to work until they actually
complete the transfer at which time they email you. So, hopefully
there will be no down time on the number.

It "looks" like a sweet deal on the surface ........ The cost is $199
for 1 year if you prepay. That comes to $16.58/month for the
math challenged. All the bells and whistles are available at no
extra cost and the fee covers unlimited local and long distance
minutes plus $3 /mo free for international calls. While waiting
for your old number to be ported, they give you a temporary
number. When the port is complete, the temporary number
becomes a secondary number at no extra cost. You can even
select the area code of the secondary phone to be in the same
area code as your mom, for example, so that calls to you from that
location look like local calls to the caller.

Let me know if you have had and experience with VOIP .... good
or bad.

Cheers,

Charlie

 

[SamHouston]

Does this service provide you with the 911 emergency service? I've heard tales of folks not being able to connect to 911 under similar services, and I know a couple of folks who switched back to SBC for that very reason.

 

[laurence]

Hi Charlie!

On the home front, I have phone service through my cable provider, at the cost of $10 per month for the connection plus 5 cents a minute for long distance 10 cents for international, so the bill usually comes to 15-17 bucks, and it's only that cheap because I bundled it with t.v. and internet.

At work, I helped set up the VOIP system for our 2500 users two years ago, so far, so good. Voice quality is excellent, and providers are working very hard to match traditional PBX style phone reliablity (the old 5 9s - 99.999% uptime). We've had one two hour outage.

Minimum service agreement past the one year? Rates garanteed for any length of time?

 

[charlie]

Hi Sam and Laurence,

Yes, 911 service is provided.  There is no contract, but if you prepay
for 1 year, I think you might have a hard time getting a rebate.

Here is a link that provides all the info on a number of providers.

www.ordervoip.com

Cheers,

Charlie

 

[SamHouston]

Thanks for the link, Charlie. I was especially happy to see that they have a whole section on 911 service and some of the problems that people have had/are having along those lines when they switich to VOIP. Very informative...and comforting to see that there is a good working solution now. I'll have to look into this more closely. Thanks again.

 

[maddythebeagle]

I have been looking at switching. Charlie, do you have a battery backup for your computer or a cell phone that you dont care that voip doenst work when the power is out?

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I've had vonage and callvantage.

In a nutshell, great features and the service works surprisingly well for a low cost.

Bad news: zero customer service. Maybe less than zero as you spend a lot of time to get nothing.

When I signed up with vonage, I had a quirk and sent them an email. Thats when they accepted email, at this time they dont and their call queues run to an hour or more at times. So I called. And got no resolution. So given that this is my phone line, not some game or obscure software app I use once a month and I cant afford days and weeks to solve problems, I went to callvantage.

Its worked with some quirks. It doesnt properly support an answering machine. If you turn on fax and modem support, you cant call the voicemail 800# (technical people...explain THAT one to me...), and lately since they rev'ed the firmware in the box it randomly reboots...unfortunately when its done rebooting it rings the phone one time...we've leapt from bed at 2 and 3am a couple of times for the "someone must be dead" call that we thought we were receiving...

I called them with the last problem, and they blamed my ISP. Theres nothing wrong with the ISP. I shot an email back to the first level tech letting him know that the problem is well known and could he check with his second level support on it and send me one of the telephone adapters that doesnt have this problem? He never responded.

We're going back to SBC. And paying extra. For fewer features. Because it'll work and if we have a problem, someone will probably fix it.

VOIP is fine if you want a cheap phone with a lot of features that might stop working or may have quirky problems, and you're willing to live with the problems until the company manages to self-resolve them, because your odds of getting them to attentively resolve them is very low. If the product works for you and you dont have any trouble, you're good. The biggest provider is Vonage and they seem to have the fewest reported problems per subscriber, but their feature set and call quality arent as good as a lot of the other providers.

The best words I've heard from people are about VoicePulse, but they dont offer numbers anywhere near my area. The worst (sorry charlie) are about sunrocket.

www.dslreports.com has a lot of user reviews and ratings of ISP's and VOIP providers.

Maddy - I use a good battery backup for the cable modem, TA and the phone. I get about 30 minutes when theres a power outage. The only time we've had a major area power outage, it kept working fine. However, AT&T reports that their callvantage TA's "dont work with a power strip" and must be plugged directly into a wall.

Again, technical people...explain THAT one...

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

SBC gave me a date of 3/9 (yesterday) for the install and number port to be done. This morning they called to say that it was delayed to next thursday because "the other company" didnt respond to their first request for the number port.

This was AT&T/SBC referring to AT&T/Callvantage as "the other company"...

18 days to get one division of one conglomerate to release a phone number from another division of the same conglomerate, where the phone number originally belonged to the first division.

Anyone else get the feeling that companies required to do this by law are dragging their feet? I guess they can try to bill you for the extra week or two of 'service'. Funny part is, they gave me a "free month" for threatening to leave, so they're just giving me more free service...

I decided to do a hybrid thing. We got just the SBC phone with no long distance service, as we dont usually call outside of california, and although they have terrible service ratings (as do most VOIP providers) like charlie we got in on a deal with sunrocket for 15 months @ the usual 12 month price of $199 for the 12 months. Free voip box, no charge for shipping, no activation fee, and if it doesnt work, we'll use the SBC hardline phone until someone figures out whats wrong on the SR end and fixes it. Our regular incoming calls go to the hardline.

That actually turned out to be cheaper than getting the SBC line with caller ID, a basic long distance plan and a few other odd and end features.

The VOIP service just isnt reliable enough for a regular home phone line yet, and having to deal with service problems with even one of the more reliable ones was a pain in the butt.

At $32 a month, callvantage was too expensive to do this with. Vonage wasnt far behind at $26, plus you have to pay for the box, shipping and an activation fee

Sunrocket did take 2 weeks to ship the 'box' out to me though...not exactly sprightly...

 

[Arif]

We use Lingo.com and it works great. We pay $20 per month for unlimited long distance and I have it hooked up in Panama with our Georgia number. No problems other than when our internet is down for a few minutes. We also have a local Panama number which costs us $15 per month.

 

[dougdo]

Has anyone tried to go Skype with a SkypeIn number? It's only 10 Euros for 3 months, 30 for a year. No 911 service yet though and no number portability and if you don't want to call through a computer you'd have to purchase a special Skype handset.

Someone is coming out with a Skype mobile soon though so anytime you're on a WiFi network you could make and receive Skype calls. That's pretty cool.

 

[charlie]

This is an update on my SunRocket experience.

I received the "gizmo" a very short time after
ordering the service. The installation went
smoothly and I was able to make calls in and
out with no problems on the temporary number
they provided. I requested that they begin the
port of my old number at the time I started the
service (2/25/06).

The call quality is excellent ..... even to and from
cell phones. The Uniden wireless phone is sweet
and has all the "goodies" you could want. I liked
the phone enough to buy 3 more from Amazon
(model dcx750). The base transmitter is a DCT756
and can handle a total of 4 receivers,

Today (3/16) they completed the porting of our
old number. That was exactly on the date they
advised me by email over 2 weeks ago.

I disconnected the SBC line from our house, plugged
in SunRocket and all of our house phones now work
OK. The only surprise was that I had to install a
short jumper in our phone interface box to complete
the circuit for the interior wiring.

Customer Support is not too swift ..... I had to wait
about 10 minutes to talk to a person and she had
to put me on hold for each and every question I asked.

Mainly I was surprised to find out that the phone
rings for both the new number and the old. It
appears that you can't have two different conversations on two different phones at the
same time. This was a surprise to me since the
"gizmo" has 2 phone ports and I was expecting
to be able to plug a 2nd phone or a fax machine
into line 2. This is no biggie for me as I don't have
a fax.

All in all it's been a good experience so far.

Cheers,

Charlie

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

We're all done here as well, as of about an hour ago. We now have an SBC land line with only caller-ID and no long distance provider with our old home phone number ported to it, and a sunrocket box with both the local 'primary' line, and a free second number thats 'inbound only' thats a local call for most of our extended family.

Should one be out of service, we've got the other. Free long distance and all the bells and whistles on the sunrocket box, hard line for 911 service and incoming calls.

Total cost including taxes and fees for both lines ~$35 a month for two lines with three numbers. Plus we're savings our various family members about 10-15 bucks a month in local long distance charges by having them call into the second sunrocket 'virtual number' that I have permanently forwarded to our home phone line.

The main sunrocket phone number goes straight to voicemail and thats the one we'll give out to the banks, insurance companies, credit card co's, on forms, registrations, and other stuff where you need to give a valid phone number but dont want to end up on someones telemarketing list.

The fun part of going with a small outfit like sunrocket in a somewhat 'rural' area is they have a lot of numbers available. Both my primary and virtual numbers are "xyz-1234".

And with the backup minimal land line, I dont have to worry about power, ISP or Sunrocket outages.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Brief Sunrocket review:

You get what you pay for.

Its cool having a secondary "local number" that my dad can call us on thats local to him, so he doesnt pay LD charges when he calls, and we dont have to remember to "hey, let me call you back because its free for us".

Its nice to use the primary sunrocket number as our "home phone number" that I give to all of the banks, credit card companies, insurance companies and so forth, and have that number go directly to voicemail. Telemarketer sinkhole with no hassle of filling out lots of "opt out" forms.

I initially had the secondary number that was local to my dad "forwarded" to our regular SBC line, but it turns out that Sunrocket has problems forwarding calls, they know about it, they arent making it terribly public for people signing up, and they may fix it some day. Occasionally my dad would get "you must first dial one to make a call" or his call would go off to space.

About 1 in 3 calls, it sounds like one or the other party is gargling marbles at the bottom of a trash can. Hang up and call again, its not so bad.

Compared to Callvantage, who had working forwarding and almost universally good call quality, Sunrocket is definitely bargain basement. Its about half the cost and its about half as good.

My local ISP is Comcast cable at 6Mb/s down and 768Kb/s up, and VOIP only needs about 90-100k each way for a clean call, so I dont think my ISP is any issue. Further, calls that we 'forwarded' to my SBC land line went from my dads SBC hard line to sunrockets forwarding system to my SBC hard line, completely bypassing my local ISP connection. Still frequently gargling marbles from the bottom of a trash can. Seems like they need more bandwidth or some better gear.

But for $199 for 15 months, zero up front costs (free router, shipping, no activation fee), 30 day 100% money back and prorated money back for the full 15 months...its pretty good for a pair of secondary phone lines.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Update: we're still experiencing occasional garbly calls. Sunrockets tech support is of no particular value. It works when it works and when it doesnt, you wait until it does.

Using the primary sunrocket number, directly forwarded to voicemail, has been a godsend. Now when anyone asks for a phone number, thats the one they get. After a month or so of gestation, giving it to all the banks, credit card companies and utilities has resulted in a near dead stop of telemarking calls and other hoo-hah to our regular home phone line.

That alone is almost worth the 10-15 bucks a month for the voip service. Cheaper and far more effective than any other telemarketing preventer or telephone company filtering service. And I still get the voicemails of legitimate callers.

 

[Toejam]

I cancelled my landline  (Qwest) and started using SunRocket VOIP last December.  In the first month or so, there were a couple of problems: 

1) When people called me, sometimes my phone didn't ring. Serious problem.
 
2) When people left a message on Voice Mail, the little red light on the handset did not flash to let me know there was a message waiting for me.  Serious problem, but not as serious as 1) above.

I called customer service, and they told me that the problems were probably a result of some complications having to do with the transfer of my old Qwest phone number to the SunRocket system during that time.   They had their technical people look into it, and the problems were resolved. 

Since then, I have been pretty happy with my SunRocket service.  The voice quality is pretty good; I have called friends in Texas and California, and they couldn't tell I was using VOIP.  On a very few occasions, friends have told me I sounded a little garbled.  And on a few occasions, the caller has sounded a little garbled, although it has always been when the caller was using a cell phone. I would say that 95% or more of the time, the voice sounds clear.

The only problem I have had recently has been the little red light on the handset, the one that flashes to let you know you have a message waiting on your voice mail:  It sometimes continues to flash even though I "deleted" the message.  This doesn't happen all the time, and it gets resolved when I delete the next voice mail I receive.   

On a couple of occasions, my phone call was disconnected when I talked for over an hour on the phone.  I simply called the person back and resumed my conversation.

I like SunRocket mainly for the following reasons:

1) Very inexpensive compared to other VOIP service
2) Free unlimited long-distance calls to U.S. and Canada
3) Free  Voice Mail
4) Free Caller ID (Now I can ignore telemarketers and sale pitches)
5) Voice quality good most of the time
6) Keeps a log of all incoming and outgoing calls, and you can retrieve and "hear" your voicemail messages off the computer.  (Probably all the VOIP services have this feature.)

I have no experience with any other VOIP system.

Because SunRocket will not work if there is a power outage/computer malfunction, I will always continue to use my cell phone as a backup for emergencies.   

Toejam

 

[Nords]

Here's a dumb question. Can this $26/month phone bill be reduced?

Spouse and I think that we have our phone service carved down to the bone. The only other change we could make at this point would be to cancel the touch-tone dialing, but for $1.45/month savings I'm not going through the hassle of switching back & forth between pulse & TT.

We don't even have long-distance service on our home phone; we use an AT&T calling card that costs about 2.5 cents per minute. We make few, if any, long-distance phone calls-- probably 5-10 per year. (All the people we care to talk to do it via e-mail.) We've had the card for about five years and 400 minutes lasts at least a year.

Our phone company (Hawaiian Telcom) just split off from Verizon and is also our DSL ISP. But there's no discount on either service for combining them at HT. Our local cable company is trying to start a digital phone service but that would require us to upgrade our current bare-bones $45/month analog cable to digital. So it looks like our phone bill can't be reduced by combining it with other "utility" services.

Is there any change worth the hassle of saving at least $5/month?

 

[REWahoo]

Here's a dumb question. Can this $26/month phone bill be reduced?

...Is there any change worth the hassle of saving at least $5/month?

This from a guy who has been complaining he can't "force" himself to spend anywhere close to his SWR. Surfing conditions must be lousy...

The short answer, Mr. Tightwad Frugality, is NO.

May be time to consider an intervention. :

 

[Nords]

This from a guy who has been complaining he can't "force" himself to spend anywhere close to his SWR.   Surfing conditions must be lousy...
The short answer, Mr. Tightwad Frugality, is NO.
May be time to consider an intervention. :

Guilty on all counts. I have high hopes for a swell starting Tuesday.

When I see these three-page threads on VOIP and cheap cell phone plans I wonder if we're missing out. Apparently we're not!

 

[larry]

Spouse and I think that we have our phone service carved down to the bone. The only other change we could make at this point would be to cancel the touch-tone dialing, but for $1.45/month savings I'm not going through the hassle of switching back & forth between pulse & TT.

Nords, I am not sure about your telecom's equipment but we had the same TT charge on our service until one of the local employees told me that all their equipment had been switched over to handle tone exclusively (and that was 9-10 years ago).

So anywhoo, we called SBC and had them drop the TT, the lady asked if we were sure and we said yes. No problems.

Kinda like those people who are still paying rent on their telephones.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

toejam (football...I cant help it)

What brand gizmo do you have? If you google "sunrocket gizmo" you'll see there are two varieties, an older one and a small square black 'innomedia' one. I hear the old one caused some of the problems you're having, resolved with the new model.

Good luck getting them to take back your old one and giving you a new one though...

 

[Toejam]

Hello CFB:

I didn't know they had a new Gizmo -just looked on the SunRocket website to see what it looks like.  I have the old model, and I called SunRocket a few minutes ago and asked if I could exchange it for the newer one.  You're right - I can't unless my old one is totally dysfunctional or has a serious problem, which it doesn't. 

Oh, btw, I didn't know what "toejam football" was.  Googled it, and now I know the answer - Warning - Gross!:   

What the hell is toejam, anyway? --Goofy Gholson, west suburbs, Chicago

Dear Goofy:

The grotty stuff that collects between your toes, of course. A "toejam football" is the disgusting ellipsoid that forms when you rub it with your finger. What Freudian significance it had for the Beatles (cf "Come Together") I'd just as soon not know.

--CECIL ADAMS

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/a/aerosmith/come+together_20004337.html

Bummer on the gizmo, those old ones definitely have some known issues they havent been able to work out.

Wait a month or two, then when you wont need your phone for a week or so, put the gizmo in the microwave. About 60 seconds on "high" oughta do it. It'll look absolutely fine, no damage, but it probably wont work anymore for some reason

We used to have a guy a few cubes over from me that used to like to conduct personal business on the speakerphone at full volume and yell back at the people on it.

For some reason his speakerphone kept becoming defective. After a while the building people wouldnt give him another one. He suspected some sort of conspiracy but he thought "the cleaning people" were doing something to it.

 

[Caroline]

Just fyi folks:

The latest fraud trend surrounding Phishing involves Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone systems that aid criminals in the capture of cardholder data.

The low cost of VoIP lines and relative ease with which they are obtained have led Phishers to quickly adopt this evolving technology.

How does this scam work?

Once a VoIP line has been established it allows communication to flow freely from any land or internet-based telephone line. The Phishers set up an automated phone center environment which can easily be obtained as an "off the shelf" voicemail system that integrates with any computer. The next step is to simply send out phishing emails directing the consumer to dial the VoIP telephone number instead of going to a website to update their personal information. Once the consumer dials into the fraudulent phone number they are directed to enter their personal information including card number, PIN, CVV2 code, etc. This latest social engineering technique penetrates an already established comfort zone with most consumers. Automated phone systems have been commonplace for the last ten years and consumers are accustomed to dealing with them. This is the Phishers latest attempt to circumvent the warnings about clicking on emails and entering personal information into a website.

Preparing the best defense

• Only use card PINs for ATM and POS transactions. By using them for online banking or phone banking, you are socially engineering your customers to be susceptible to phishing scams which will no doubt continue to morph over time.

• Do not respond to any email that directs you to update your personal information by dialing a telephone number. – Only use the customer service number on the back of your card.

• If you receive a phishing email that references a telephone number that you suspect to be related to a VoIP scam please report the number to your local federal law enforcement agency. Most agencies now have cyber threat units that are well-versed in investigating these claims.

 

[Rustic23]

We have been on Vonage for about a year. We had Cable for Internet and the system worked great. Clear calls and lots of features. If the phone is down, as it is now because we are moving and it is unpluged, the phone automaticaly forwards to my wifes cell. We pay $16 a month for 500 outbound (local or long dist)min and unlimited inbound. 911 calls go to where we have registered it. When we move the phone number will follow. This is good because it will give us a local Houston number living outside of Houston. Going to try VOIP over satelite, don't expect it to work well, but may work as a backup.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

If you're going to try it with Directway, it definitely wont work. The turnaround times on the satellite are WAY too big for voice. What you'll get is broken gargling voices with 1-3 second delays between when you start talking and the other person hears the funny noise.

Oh yeah, i forgot. One of the biggest problems with the old sunrocket gizmo is that it frequently decides to allocate half of your ISP bandwidth to implement "quality of service", which is swell when you're on the phone and not using the computer, but not so good when you're on the computer and not using the phone.

Disconnect your gizmo and see how fast your connection is by using a speed test like those at DSLREPORTS. Then put it back and see what the speed looks like.

Another good site for looking at whether voip will work on your ISP and for troubleshooting problems is www.testyourvoip.com Sunrocket tries to get you to use a site called "internet frog", which is so overloaded that the server cant service all of the requests and therefore it gives erroneous results that your ISP is too slow to respond. That works out well for sunrocket, as every customer problem always turns out to be a "bad ISP".

Good luck trying to explain this to the customer service rep and getting them to look at the results from other test sites that show that your ISP is fine.