Travel Technology - VoIP providers

Wow, this forum has a lot of members who sound really in the know about VoIP.
I'm considering switching from a conventional landline.

I've heard good things about a company called SunRocket. I saw a few mentions of them here, along with Vonage. I checked out a techie website and saw that SunRocket beat out Vonage on all around satisfaction and comes in cheaper per month.

http://www.dslreports.com/gbu


What do others think of these companies?

From the link you provided :confused: :

" Horrible customer service, bad help desk, poor management and business practices and service reliability"
: "They are the worst comapny I have ever had the dis-pleasure of dealing with"


I have Skype, SkypeIn & SkypeOut and like it. However, I still keep my landline ... but my change this.

There're SO MANY VoIP companies out there. IMO find the best deal you can and search reviews on the service. They're pretty much fungible though, swap one for another at will.

AT&T Callvantage.

If you want to replace your landline, they know a bit about being a phone company in the traditional sense, and have some relatively impressive offers on the business side. It's not as feature rich as Vonage, Sunrocket, or Packet8, but the company will probably be around in 5 years.

They are also pretty good about not rolling into a service area until E-911 (the real 911) can be provisioned onto the VoIP line. The downside is that if your terminal equipment goes down (think power outage or the like), they make you dial like #1 or something while listening to a message--in essence to confirm that the phone is where you said it was (so that E-911 will present correct information).

I hadn't heard about E911 so I'm glad you mentioned it ClueByFour.

I didn't know that some VoIP carriers had issues with 911 dialing. Making sure calls can get through to 911 is a pretty high priority for me. So I did some research on it. Seems to be a regulation around it. Some articles I pulled up showed a really high compliance rate (in the 90% range) for SunRocket, esp. as compared to Vonage.

AT&T Callvantage.

If you want to replace your landline, they know a bit about being a phone company in the traditional sense, and have some relatively impressive offers on the business side. It's not as feature rich as Vonage, Sunrocket, or Packet8, but the company will probably be around in 5 years.

They are also pretty good about not rolling into a service area until E-911 (the real 911) can be provisioned onto the VoIP line. The downside is that if your terminal equipment goes down (think power outage or the like), they make you dial like #1 or something while listening to a message--in essence to confirm that the phone is where you said it was (so that E-911 will present correct information).

Completely forgot about E911, THANK you. That narrows the list considerably.

Completely replacing your home phone line with VOIP is probably not a good idea. The service is still flaky, the technology very unstable, etc.

As a second line, though, I like the comment that they're more or less fungible...IF you go standards based (SIP). Right now I use Voipstunt (free calls to Turkey, of all places, where my daughter's in school, as well as UK--wife's family, and Japan--good friends), Gizmoproject, Iconnecthere.com, and a couple of others. Try 'em all, see what works best for you.

Completely replacing your home phone line with VOIP is probably not a good idea. The service is still flaky, the technology very unstable, etc.But isn't that where the cell phone comes in? The last time I had a home phone (a.k.a land line) was almost 6 years ago, and cell/VOIP has filled in without a hiccup.

99% of the time the cell works great as a backup... during a real emergency , wireless service falls over faster than a house of cards in a hurricane. I found this out the hard way. Texting does still work but voice?? Fuggeddaboudit.

Completely replacing your home phone line with VOIP is probably not a good idea. The service is still flaky, the technology very unstable, etc.

That's probably an overstatement. It's the reliance upon the local ISP (an unregulated local loop) where 99% of the problems are. 0.05% of the remaining problems are of a "local power" variety.

VoIP offerings from actual LECs (AT&T/SBC and the like) are fundamentally solid on the backend. The Vonages and Sunrockets of the world are looking to make a cheap buck.

This is a new service > http://www.jajah.at/

no headset, no download, no installation
use your normal phone (landline & mobile)
call anyone, anywhere (landline & mobile)

I'm US based, though I travel frequently (around the US and abroad - RSA, UK, SIN, HKG mostly). I have universally found Skype (direct Skype to Skype) better than Vonage. Vonage calls frequently drop, it is impossible to be on a Vonage call and use any other computer attached to the same internet connection. Skype out works all over - never a problem. Dropping Vonage in favor of Skype and Skype out (give out my worldwide cell for incoming calls, don't need Skype In). No landline in the US, I'll deal.

Less to carry between Vonage (box and phone) and Skye (headset only).

Well, I guess I'm confused. I need broadband to have VOIP phone, and I have DSL, not cable, which means...I need regular phone service.

It is correct, isn't it, that I can't get DSL from anyone without regular phone service?

(Why DSL instead of cable? Well, it's because I don't have cable TV.)

In most areas you need to have a regualr phone line for dsl, you can change it to a cheaper plan, we have Vonage and a measured rate ($10/month, plus taxes) Verizon line. We also have no problems using the Vonage line and being on the internet. I have noticed no quality issues on the phone or the internet.

Thanks for the suggestions about providers. Skype sounds like the way for me.

Suggestions about what kind of headset(s) work best would be appreciated.

my question is, and I guess I expect to get flamed here but, why even do it today if one isn't going to drop the phone line and simply use it at home?

most carriers offer a flat rate domestic LD plan 15$ a month, sometimes 20$. Some offer even less at 10$. That is ALL you can eat.

Then, to cover the international componant, just add a quick dial calling card product like onesuite.com for international long distance. I pay like .02 to Europe, UK, China, HKG, all the VOIP providors are higher than that.

Granted, I DO use vonage but for just some services. pretty much just so I can take the box with me to Europe in the summer or Cabo in the winter and others can reach me just as easily as they normally would.

my question is, and I guess I expect to get flamed here but, why even do it today if one isn't going to drop the phone line and simply use it at home?
Here a couple of reasons:

(1) I'm really cheap and fractions of a penny can really add up, and with Voipstunt, most of my calls are FREEEE (except for amortizing the cost of an ATA, but that's another issue).

(2) I'm a techno-nerd and fussing this stuff is really fun.

(3) But the real reason is that when I travel abroad, the savings are very significant. In the worst case I got hit with $11 per minute calls from China to the US several years ago using an AT&T card. Today I use Voipstunt for free.

[Truth: I do what you suggested, haven't bought an ATA, use cheap phone cards (which are far better audio quality) and have only bought call-in and call-out numbers because my daughter is in Turkey and this works really well for us and for her. What I use: Gizmo because it also works on her Mac, and Voipstunt because it is free to most of the countries I call.]

Thanks for the suggestions about providers. Skype sounds like the way for me.

Suggestions about what kind of headset(s) work best would be appreciated.

I have this "phone": http://www.vonsupply.com/VONDOO-V2100-USB-Phone.html

It's very small, smaller than it looks on the picture.

Can anyone name a VoIP provider that will hae an offer such as free international call from US to XXX (XXX=country of choice). Someone mentioned free calls to Turkey. How does it work? A plan of that type is exactly what I need to make frequent calls to family abroad. I don't even care so much about recieving call, just making them, but it would be nice. I appreciate the advice.

I use Voipstunt (http://www.voipstunt.com), and they are more or less identical to Voipbuster and a couple of others. Go to their site and you'll see the (current) list of free call countries, which seems to change pretty regularly.

These are for calls FROM your computer (or ATA) TO real phones in the various countries. As with all of these providers, PC to PC is always free, and calls to cell phones, even in the free call countries, are expensive.

Right now the free call countries include UK (my wife's family), Turkey (my daughter is there), and Japan (friends), and U.S. (great for calling back to home). Works great for me.

UPSIDE: Free calls.

DOWNSIDE: You have to deposit 10 euros to get this.

I also use Iconnecthere.com (lots of local numbers in various countries, so you can use it as a phone card), which seems to have the best sound quality; Gizmoproject (includes IM and has Mac and Linux versions); and a couple of others.

Check out a bunch. They all seem quite similar, sound quality varies from very good to poor, and many will disappear in short order.

I was just looking at VoIP stunt. Do you get an incoming number with that or is it only good for outgoing calls?

I am looking for a new VoIP provider, my current provider is freakin awful.

Thanks for the tip, SSM-SLT. I checked them out. The dilemma I'm finding is the country I need to call. Slovakia. I know they're the forgotten child of the Velvet Revolition, but what's so obscure about that place that they are left off the list, hmm? No free calls to where I want to call, but according to VoIPstunt I can sure as heck call Mongolia for free. Again, come on - Slovakia just hosted the freakin' Bush-Putin summit! But as long as I can call Mongolia...

Frustrating.

Thanks for the tip, SSM-SLT. I checked them out. The dilemma I'm finding is the country I need to call. Slovakia. I know they're the forgotten child of the Velvet Revolition, but what's so obscure about that place that they are left off the list, hmm? No free calls to where I want to call, but according to VoIPstunt I can sure as heck call Mongolia for free. Again, come on - Slovakia just hosted the freakin' Bush-Putin summit! But as long as I can call Mongolia...

Frustrating.

This may be more of a regulatory/logistical issue than anything else. If the VoIP providers can't get inexpensive/free termination in country you're sadly out of luck. Last I heard, Slovakia wasn't exactly on the progressive side of taxation so they likely slap some onerous telecoms taxes on which would jack up the per minute fees even on a wholesale basis.

Date posted : 27/02/06

You may also check on talkloop cards. They don't charge any fees at all, no connection fee, no monthly/biweekly fee, no service fee etc. The voice quality is pretty good. Also they give free credits for new sign ups and referrals. International web call back facility is also available.


Menee

This may be more of a regulatory/logistical issue than anything else. If the VoIP providers can't get inexpensive/free termination in country you're sadly out of luck. Last I heard, Slovakia wasn't exactly on the progressive side of taxation so they likely slap some onerous telecoms taxes on which would jack up the per minute fees even on a wholesale basis.
Unfortunately I have to agree with you here. Their govt. creates more problems for itself that way than anyone would like to admit. They lost several major deals in the past couple of years for just this reason. For the want of of few extra tax dollars they cost the nation 10's of thousands of jobs in lost foreign investment. That's another topic, though. For now I'll go on paying $1.25/min to call there.

I've enjoyed Sunrocket at my office the past month. Ran into a few issues with faxes, but they resolved once I moved the Sunrocket "Gizmo" before our router. Good customer service so far... only complaint is changing the outboud caller id to the home business, rather than my personal name.

...For now I'll go on paying $1.25/min to call there.
That's quite expensive! I took the liberty and checked out the Pincity calling card rates for calling Slovak Republic. It's 6.4cents/min with local access numbers and 8cents with 800 access. Do you like their rates? I probaly still have some 15% or 20% discount promo codes somewhere. Not sure if they are still valid though. I used to use Pincity calling TPE and was happy about it. I let my account expired with 1 cent balance on it, due to the change of my calling needs months back.

Pincity's terms is quite reasonable. Your credits/minutes won't expire as long as you keep recharging your account every 6 months ($10, $20...etc). If you plan on signing up with Pincity.com after checking it out, I guess I can still refer you so both of us will get bonus. just PM me :)

I was just looking at VoIP stunt. Do you get an incoming number with that or is it only good for outgoing calls?
Yes. I have a number in Manchester, England. Makes it easier for my wife's family to call.

However, don't expect really high quality on these call-in or call-out voip providers. They often use lower quality encoding schemes, and the interface to the PSTN systems is often poor.

I have gotten pretty heavy into VoIP in the last year...
At home I had two traditional POTS lines: one for our personal use and one for my home office.

My uncle has a very wired house complete with a traditional PBX - as VoIP was not really around when he built in the late 90's. He's not a techy guy at all, but he's got a great phone system. I love that each room has a office style phone that can call room to room or intercom, etc. While I was there I was surfing slashdot and saw Asterisk@home mentioned for the first time...I was determined to set up my own PBX.

I've been running Asterisk@home for a year now and have gone through a few versions... I can say two things with confidence:

A) VoIP is amazing and assuming the gov't and ISPs don't screw us over it will be the downfall of the telcos as we know them
B) VoIP is not ready for most people

To lay a foundation here: Asterisk@home (http://asteriskathome.sourceforge.net/) is a full featured PBX and is quite powerful. Its bascially like being my own phone company. Services like vonage and callvantage are more similar to traditional POTS service except you use broadband for the transmission. Asterisk@home is capabale of working with POTS lines, SIP and IAX trunks.

Currently I have a pretty complex set-up that I am trying to narrow down.
Lines into my Asterisk box:
2 POTS lines (home and office)
2 broadvoice SIP accounts (again one for home and one for office) - i use the BYOD lite accounts that are unlimited incoming and 100 free minutes outgoing then a very inexpensive rate (like $.02/min...not sure).
1 French DID (incoming online) number from Voxbone - $15 set up then $8/month unlimited
1 Irish sip line from Blueface - pay as you go
1 Nufone IAX line - pre-pay...think I have a $10/charge and it burns at a rate of $.02 / min...Nufone allows the setcallerid() string so I really just use this for pranking my friends and family

I'm in the process of porting my POTS home number to Broadvoice's $19.99 unlimited account. If that goes well, I'll do something about my office number. Currently my company pays my office line but it has to be billed directly to them not a credit card...cannot find a VoIP provider who will do that yet.

I have my POTS lines set to call-forward-on busy to my Broadvoice numbers, which both allow unlimited incoming instances (IE as many incoming calls at a time as I want)...(only one outgoing FYI).

The beauty of this set-up is its utter flexabiility. ALL of my longdistance now goes out over voip automatically. I can route international numbers through local (to the country) accounts, I can set it to say "Donal Trump" when I call a friend's cell...I can call my house from anywhere in the world and get a dial tone like I was in Virginia and make calls to anywhere else in the world based on my routing rules. Its quite amazing.

Hardware: in my house I went overboard... i was already wired with AT LEAST 3 cat 5e drops in every room (my office has 8 as do some other areas) so I bought 3 cisco phones on e-bay, 2 wifi sip phones (ebay and voipsupply.com) and one linksys phone from amazon.... The hardwired phones work great...the wifi phones are still a work in progress to say the least. None of them currently supports 802.11G (only B) and most only support WEP if anything. Since I wasn't willing to lower my RADIUS WPA2 security on my accesspoints, I created a 2nd subnet for wifi phones (and guest laptops) that is cordened off from my main LAN but allows me to run basically an open access point. They work pretty well, but do drop out from time to time. We are remodeling and putting in a new master bath...i couldn't resist, so I have a phone in there too... since Asterisk is running on linux it can do a lot, so I have scripts set up so that I can control the sound (coming from iTunes via an airport express) via the phone. I have a sound zone for the master bath, so I can dial *55 then I get a voice menu and I can press 1 to play, 2 to pause, etc... Do I do any of this while on the can? No thats just weird...but I COULD!

Like has been mentioned previously, there is NO GOOD REASON to run VoIP at the same time as a POTS line. Which is why I'm getting rid of my POTS home number.

Also like has been mentioned, a cell is a good backup. All cell phones have to be able to call 911 even if you have NO SERVICE. So We keep an old cell (wtih no service contract) plugged in next to the bed. If the power went out, it would have a charge and could call 911. I'm not as worried about natural disasters... last hurricane we had in Va in 2003 knocked out the physical lines but not the cell towers.

As for e911, broadvoice does not currently support 911 (I think) so I have 911 routed to go out over the POTS line then if the POTS is down or busy, it dials the standard emergency number (remember before 911?)...you can still dial a regular number to get connected to the 911 service. Granted they may not know you physical location which could be bad.

My advice (after all that mess)... for most consumers Vonnage is a great value and works 90% of the time. Its that 10% that you'll find yourself cursing Alexander Graham Bell. I have recomended Vonnage to many friends who are quite happy with the price. I also like Broadvoice's plans for ATA devices (AKA like Vonnage)... they are a great service for the price. You can add 1-800, UK and other state numbers.... control it all online.

For the geeks out there, e-bay a 1ghz box, download Asterisk@home and e-bay a ATA (analogue telephone converter - its what Vonnage sends you, the linksys PAP2 for example). You can also e-bay an POTS card like the old x100p or newer TDM cards. Then peice a few services together, and I bet you end up paying less than $15 for phone service a month. You can get nubmers for every person in the house...control the times your kids can and cannot use the phone...control what numbers they can call or call them...total big brother stuff!

My proformance with Broadvoice is acceptable, but I get some 'jitter' and I have a 30mbs/10mbs fiber connection.

I think the real worry is the ISPs taxing VoIP traffic since they aren't making money off phone services anymore....but thats another rant.

-N

That's quite expensive! I took the liberty and checked out the Pincity calling card rates for calling Slovak Republic. It's 6.4cents/min with local access numbers and 8cents with 800 access. Do you like their rates? I probaly still have some 15% or 20% discount promo codes somewhere. Not sure if they are still valid though. I used to use Pincity calling TPE and was happy about it. I let my account expired with 1 cent balance on it, due to the change of my calling needs months back.

Pincity's terms is quite reasonable. Your credits/minutes won't expire as long as you keep recharging your account every 6 months ($10, $20...etc). If you plan on signing up with Pincity.com after checking it out, I guess I can still refer you so both of us will get bonus. just PM me :)
I was kinda kidding about that rate I"m paying, kinda not. Currently my only phone is my cell phone and I do pay $1.25/min for calls. I know I can get a better rate (MUCH better rate) elsewhere, but I have until now either been unable to get new service or unwilling to. My calls until recently have been infrequent enough that I just paid the absurd amount of money required to make a few calls. Thanks for the tip, but I think I'm gonna go with Skype, as the person I call is familiar with this system and we would (when the other party cooperates) be able to talk for free. We'll see how it goes... Again. thanks for the offer. I appreciate it.

SunRocket VOIP is $99/year -- including all equipment and taxes -- if you order before 2pm NYC time *TODAY*. I just discovered this (and ordered) :D :D :D

SunRocket VOIP is $99/year -- including all equipment and taxes -- if you order before 2pm NYC time *TODAY*. I just discovered this (and ordered) :D :D :D
Me too! Thanks for the heads up!

SunRocket VOIP is $99/year -- including all equipment and taxes -- if you order before 2pm NYC time *TODAY*. I just discovered this (and ordered) :D :D :D


Good luck with them. I just cancelled them because they were useless.

OTOH; for $99 you can't really go wrong... If I had just paid $199 for the same thing I would have been mighty upset...

can you elaborate scottc?

I figure, with a 30 complete MBG and a cancel at anytime option, with all monies net of usage returned, unless they go 7 or 11, it's not too bad.

Good luck with them. I just cancelled them because they were useless.

OTOH; for $99 you can't really go wrong... If I had just paid $199 for the same thing I would have been mighty upset...
Didn't you cancel them because they couldn't port your number from your previous VOIP provider within the 30 day satisfaction guaranteed period? And wasn't that problem caused primarily by said previous provider?

I figure, with a 30 complete MBG and a cancel at anytime option, with all monies net of usage returned, unless they go 7 or 11, it's not too bad.That's what I figured too. I was tempted at last week's 15 months for $199 but at $99 all in for 12 months I figured there was really nothing to lose. They'll only do a single phone line per account, though.

Didn't you cancel them because they couldn't port your number from your previous VOIP provider within the 30 day satisfaction guaranteed period? And wasn't that problem caused primarily by said previous provider?

They couldn't port me, their customer service was worse than Vonage (which is pretty impressive) and in the brief period I tried them they were down several times. All in all a pretty bad experience. Not being able to port me wasn't due to Vonage but due to their lack of knowledge of porting procedures. All in all it took them almost a month to even try the port.

But as I said; at $99 you can't really go wrong.

I use Lingo. for $10 a month I have a phone number in Rio de Janerio, so my girlfriend there can call me for no charge. I belive they just made Europe free, but I was not paying that much attention. Domestic is $19.99 a month, unlimited. Techincally good, service stinks..

But as I said; at $99 you can't really go wrong.

Yes, it really is a shame that you had a bad experience with them ScottC. I keep hearing that people have had their numbers successfully ported to SunRocket. . .

Got my SunRocket Gizmo today, after placing my order under Monday through the $99 Memorial Day promotion. A pleasant surprise; I expected a longer delay given the holiday and the number of new customers taking advantage of the promotion.

I plugged it into a LAN port on my router. It didn't work.

I plugged it directly into the cable modem. It didn't work.

I called SunRocket, and got through to front-line tech support in a less than a minute. After much plugging, unplugging, unpowering, repowering etc. of cable modem, router and Gizmo . . . it didn't work.

Passed up the ladder to 2nd tier support. That was the only significant hold time, about 5 minutes. Spoke with Heather . . . she was extremely dogged in configuring the Gizmo, and eventually got the VOIP LED to light up, although the Run light continued to flash red (means that it failed to download configuration/software). But . . . it worked!

Unfortunately, I discovered that I couldn't get to my router from hosts elsewhere on the internet anymore (I port-forward to a Linux host inside my firewall for ssh), so I had to disable mac address cloning, reconnect my router directly to the cable modem, and hang the Gizmo off a LAN port. And it still worked! Not only that, the flashing red light went away :)

Haven't tried to port my old number yet, though. It's with Verizon, so we'll see how that goes.

To sum up . . . not the best in ease of setup and use, but not the worst tech support experience I've had either. Sound quality is good, and the feature set for the price can't be beat. Too bad the $99 promotion is over; maybe they'll have a 4th of July sale :D

UPDATE: Discovered this morning when I went to set up my voice mail that the phone number I was assigned (not ported) isn't active for inward dialing yet. A call to SunRocket (again, no significant time on hold) yielded the information that it can take 5 to 7 days for the number assignment to "take."

So we'll see what happens on Monday . . .

Thanks for the update PorkRind, sounds like you've really lucked out with SunRocket, between the promo, getting the Gizmo right away and having a good experience with CS.

That sounds like what I've been hearing about SunRocket from my colleague.

gotta say, it worked as indicated.

plugged it in, to the ROUTER first since I didn't reaally want it BETWEEN my modem and router, and it worked fine out of the box.

everything seems to work fine, sound quality if great, voicemail works, phone rings when people call,

i can call out, people sound fine, etc.

so, for 99$ bucks delivered and taxed, i'll take it.

It's Wednesday, and I still can't receive calls via the number I was assigned by SunRocket. I'm starting to get a bit disillusioned. A subsequent call to tech support elicited the comment that the activation period for numbers that need to be ported from Choice One (why it's a Choice One number when SunRocket assigned it to me is a mystery) is 7 days from the date the Gizmo is plugged in and not the date I signed up.

So . . . if it's not in service for inbound calling by the end of the day Friday, I think I'll be sending it back. If it takes this long to port a number to which they purportedly have direct access, imagine how long it will take to port one from a landline provider . . .

Just an update. my number succesfully transfered from Vonage to Sun Rocket.
It shows finished on May 31st and I think it took about a month.

Still need to clear up things with Vonage. That account is still active.

Called SunRocket this morning to (politely) b!tch that my SunRocket-provided phone number still hadn't been "ported," a week after activation. The CSR was friendly and apologetic, escalated the incident to 2nd-tier support and committed to calling me back this afternoon with an update.

He also dropped 25 SunRocket Reward points into my account, which apparently can be redeemed through Amazon, iTunes and other vendors. As of this moment, though, I'm still without incoming phone service on my SunRocket line.

PorkRind, sounds like the SunRocket CSR really made an effort to help you out, that is always nice isn't it.

So what are these SunRocket rewards points? Credit to use to buy things online- that is pretty cool.

My Gizmo worked fine right away when I plugged it into my router (didn't want all my traffic going through it) and plugged the phone connector into my key system. I still don't have incoming service yet, however. I guess I need to call them...

EDITED TO ADD:
Do I have to punch a hole in my firewall to receive calls or does the gizmo take care of keeping an outbound connection open? The CSR I spoke to was completely clueless when I mentioned any of this.

Oh - does anyone know where I can get a 100-240v 50/60hz power adapter for my SunRocket Gizmo?

My Gizmo worked fine right away when I plugged it into my router (didn't want all my traffic going through it) and plugged the phone connector into my key system. I still don't have incoming service yet, however. I guess I need to call them...

EDITED TO ADD:
Do I have to punch a hole in my firewall to receive calls or does the gizmo take care of keeping an outbound connection open? The CSR I spoke to was completely clueless when I mentioned any of this.

Oh - does anyone know where I can get a 100-240v 50/60hz power adapter for my SunRocket Gizmo?


I have it behind 2 layers of firewall. it maintains its own connection.
If you are able to make calls, you should be able to receive them.

Hmm.. the Gizmo does not do 100-240? i'll look for something. Checkout radioshack meanwhile.

may be this might help: http://www.buy.com/prod/Steren_910_010_Dual_Voltage_Foreign_Converter_Kit/q/loc/111/90124962.html


You have to pay attention to the conversion method.
The high watt setting wont work for your adaptor. Make sure
the 50watt setting says you can use for small appliances.

Well, after only 37 days since ordering my SunRocket service via the $99 Memorial Day special, I have inbound calling.

I should probably be upset that it took this long, but SunRocket did some things that left me little room for complaint:


Gave me 25 SR Reward Points after 1st 2 weeks without inbound service
Extended my no-questions-asked Evaluation and return Period to 30 days after inbound calling was activated
Credited me for all service during which inbound calling was unavailable


The first 3-4 CSRs I spoke with during this time insisted that, although the numbers they displayed for activation in my calling area were actually allocated to Choice One, it would take no more than 7-10 days to get them ported. Remarkably, it took 4 times that long.

The CSR I spoke with late last week claimed that my problem was not unique; many numbers that needed to be ported from Choice One were taking inordinately long times.

We'll see how well they follow through with the extensions to the evaluation period and credits . . . but for now, the service is working as expected, call quality is quite good, and all included services appear to be functional.

Is VOIP Still not any good with Satellite?

I tried VOIP over satellite one time and it was awful - any word on any new technolgies to work over satellite? Also since I live in such a remote area - has anyone heard about the Internet over power lines and does anyone think this will happen.

thanks,

Is VOIP Still not any good with Satellite?

I tried VOIP over satellite one time and it was awful - any word on any new technolgies to work over satellite? Also since I live in such a remote area - has anyone heard about the Internet over power lines and does anyone think this will happen.

thanks,


problem with the satellite is the latency. it takes atleast 250 milliseconds from
one ground station to another and with the packet overhead, it should be
as high as 500miliseconds. this is significant compared to
land based copper or fibre cables.

this makes it difficult for an interactive voice conversation. You'll have
choppy sound at best.

problem with the satellite is the latency. it takes atleast 250 milliseconds from
one ground station to another and with the packet overhead, it should be
as high as 500miliseconds. this is significant compared to
land based copper or fibre cables.

this makes it difficult for an interactive voice conversation. You'll have
choppy sound at best.

Yes, you are so right.. choppy sound would of even been good I didn't even get that with satellite! I guess I have no option but to wait until DSL or Cable arrives in my area of the sticks. One of the draw backs of living in the untammed part of gods country.. :)

I'm in the process of porting my POTS home number to Broadvoice's $19.99 unlimited account. If that goes well, I'll do something about my office number. Currently my company pays my office line but it has to be billed directly to them not a credit card...cannot find a VoIP provider who will do that yet.

I have my POTS lines set to call-forward-on busy to my Broadvoice numbers, which both allow unlimited incoming instances (IE as many incoming calls at a time as I want)...(only one outgoing FYI).

I would recommend other VOIP providers over BroadVoice. I'll leave it at that on a public forum though; feel free to PM me.

Yes, you are so right.. choppy sound would of even been good I didn't even get that with satellite! I guess I have no option but to wait until DSL or Cable arrives in my area of the sticks. One of the draw backs of living in the untammed part of gods country.. :)

now is it a true two way satellite connection? or one of those where you
have a combination of telephone line and satellite?

in any case, latency could keep you from using VoIP.

can you use voice on any of the soft phone or
instant messengers?