Suggestions for a Home VOIP Provider? 250
nate1138 asks: "My wife and I recently relocated so that I could take a promising position with a better company. Her job, being the fairly progressive folks that they are, graciously agreed to let her telecommute. Most of the services she needs we already have set up, such as the VPN, and VNC for remote control, etc. Now we only have one thing left to do. Get a phone line. Her office is a long distance call from our new location, and she needs to be able to call customers throughout the southeast as well. Since we need a number with a different area code from our home, it looks like voice over IP is the only solution. I want to know what you folks think about the various VOIP providers, like Packet8,
Vonage, and
Broadvoice. Or any other that I haven't thought of. Or another way to solve the same problem without shelling out a boatload o' cash. Features are the last priority, while reliability is tops."
I have Vonage and I love it (Score:5, Informative)
Reliability (Score:5, Informative)
Vonage (Score:5, Informative)
My experience is that tech support takes FOREVER to get someone on the line if you have trouble. When I say forever, I am talking about 45 minutes plus.
Other than that, it is great.
Linspire (Score:3, Informative)
My VoIP experience (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Unlimited Long Distance (Score:5, Informative)
NuFone is good for outgoing long distance calls. They charge in 15 second increments to many numbers (others are 30 or 60 seconds) and are pretty darned cheap compared to other providers.
I have great luck with Vonage for my local calling (North America, flat rate is like, $45 p/m and gets you all the dandy doodads). I also have Asterisk setup to receive faxes and Email them to me, so far no corrupted pages at all and the bandwidth usage is pretty reasonable.
I have this setup on my Asterisk box (Vonage attaches using an X100P card ($100 from Digium [digium.com] for the real-thing, clones have been spotted for cheap including $0.99 but YMMV), NuFone is native IAX).
Cordless phone is attached using a Grandstream [grandstream.com] Ata-286, so I can wonder around the house with a cordless headset whilst talking to who-ever using VoIP.
and don't forget to register your number on e164.org [e164.org], for native voip ;)
This is an incumbment free zone
ipp fone from pulver.com (Score:2, Informative)
Packet8 information... (Score:5, Informative)
The $20 a month gave me unlimited calls anywhere in quote-unquote North America (step back Mexico - you're not part of North America anymore, the phone companies have deleted you.) Of course you can use the phone anywhere in the world, but you can only call Canada and the US for free with the $20 plan. But even the long distance rates are very reasonable -- for me to phone Norway is only something like 2 cents a minute.
The problem with the phone isn't the service, or which VOIP provider to choose -- it's the internet connection it's running on. If you're internet connection has a few hiccups here and there, or if you're just physically far away, your QOS will be shot. I recommend posting a follow up question of "Which ISP is best for VOIP?" Latency is a big issue, of course. Even some of the ISP's route occasionally via satellite, and that's just great for VOIP connections (great for VOIP connections... what? ...connections... bzzzzzzzzzt... what? Hello? Son of a ...!)
My conclusion is: it's okay, and it's a cheap phone. There are some sacrifices. And Packet8 is loads cheaper than Vonage and includes free equipment, or at least used to. Plus you don't have to deal with the bastards at the phone company anymore, which makes any sacrifice worth it! Hurray! But for $20 a month and no long distance, go for it, just use the referral code to save being screwed on "installation." If you just want to try it for a while, try Free World Dialup until you're comfortable -- although that's a lot more complicated to set up versus a ready to run system like Packet8 or Vonage. Good luck.
Check broadbandreports.com for Vonage reviews (Score:5, Informative)
The only bad thing I've heard about Vonage is that it can take a long time if you want to transfer your current phone number to vonage. Check broadbandreports.com [broadbandreports.com] for more Vonage reviews
Re:Packet 8 (Score:1, Informative)
Same situation and I use Sprint (Score:2, Informative)
We have a Sprint cell phone with an AZ number. Because we are Sprint wireless customers, we were offered a $15 a month, all-you-can-eat long distance plan for our home phone. That allows me to call my company's office to talk with coworkers.
It works out pretty well.
DSLReports (Score:4, Informative)
Vonage Is Cool (Score:5, Informative)
We haven't regretted switching ONCE. We use the lowest call quality setting and can't even notice a difference. We have a cheapest plane they offer ($14.99 for 500 local/long distance minutes / *every* feature they offer including caller id, voicemail, etc).
Perhaps our favorite feature is the web interface for doing everything. I mean, really...have you ever tried to set up your POTS line for forwarding? The web interface makes it very, very simple and there's no need to reference a manual.
I would recommend Vonage in a heartbeat. Perhaps the poster's wife could just ditch her traditional land line, get Vonage, and use Vonage's "virtual phone number" feature to get a local number in her office's area code.
Re:Do you have cellular coverage in your area? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes.
Road Runner (Score:5, Informative)
had packet8 for a while (Score:2, Informative)
A router with QoS helped a lot. There was a noticable difference after a did prioritization with OpenBSD's pf.
Verizon "all you can eat" landline (Score:3, Informative)
Local calling
Unlimited Long Distance (US only)
Caller ID
Three-way Calling
Voice Mail
Call Forwarding
other misc stuff
I've had it for about five months and I can attest that my phone bill does not vary. No surprises.
I hope this is of some value to you and I wish you luck with your move and your new ventures.
Happy Trails!
Erick
Re:Or.... (Score:3, Informative)
As far as Vonage goes.. if you DO NOT I repeat DO NOT have POTS service you can backfeed the vonage analog signal into your home telephone network and get service to phones in any room.
VoIP Comparison (Score:5, Informative)
I recently signed up for Packet8's VoIP service, and have been very happy with it.
I would suggest that you read each provider's fine print, as some of them specifically telecommuters from their residential plans, and if they find out that you have been using a residential plan for telecommuting, will charge you the commercial rate for all previous months you've been subscribed.
Re:Or.... (Score:3, Informative)
I use Vonage at a colo where there's no cell service (underground, surrounded by metal, isn't good for reception), but I use my cell everywhere else.
I'm reachable 24/7, which means it goes near my bed at night, and on my hip or on my desk the rest of the time. The only time it gets shut off is when I'm on airplanes, and even then it's in my laptop bag at my feet.
The only place I may not carry it, and definately won't talk on it, is in the bathroom.
Pain in the ass? Not really. It's near by, like my wallet (and beer after work).1
Re:Do you have cellular coverage in your area? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:DSL? (Score:3, Informative)
In any case, you can definitely have DSL without POTS, at least from SBC/Pacbell.
Re:Check broadbandreports.com for Vonage reviews (Score:5, Informative)
There is one exchange, a rural phone company, that I call and sometime have problems getting through.
Vonage voice quality is good for me, if I put their modem directly on my isp modem. The trick seems to be that they give priority to their traffic over your computer traffic. You could probably get the same effect behind a firewall, if the firewall was sophisticated and you could arrange to prioritize packets. Try openbsd.
I certainally like all the bells and whistles. But I keep a POTS too.
Notice though that their recommended setup puts your firewall in as a dchp client. If you are lucky enough to have static ips, then this might make you think a bit. The parent poster just hung it off the router so the modem quality of service attributes do not come into play. This in my experience reduces call quality sometimes, depending on the computer traffic.
I found Vonage neat, but with limitations (Score:2, Informative)
Very cool concept, and I'm a big fan of the company. Great product offering, great customer service, and super convenient in many respects.
But, I discovered a few limitations, and eventually decided that I just didn't need the service anymore.
The latency was a big problem for me. The latency for calls when using Vonage on my cable Internet connection (Cox in So. Cal.) was typically almost 1 second. I estimate that because I could hear the slight echo when the signal finally made it to the other end of the call, and because my friends would ask me what was wrong with my phone. After a few frustrating business calls, I stopped using it for important phone calls and only used it for a few evening calls to friends that were willing to tolerate the latency that reminded me of an international call. The actual quality of the sound was fantastic--no gripes there, but when you are stepping over the sentences of the other person constantly and having to wait for one another to finish sentences, it became very frustrating. I literally used my cell phone with 50% signal strength for important calls, since it had very little latency compared to Vonage on my Internet connection.
I did not tried Vonage on my DSL service at my new residence (due to wiring issues mentioned below), so unfortunately I can't offer a comparison of cable vs. DSL in terms of the latency. (And yes, I followed all of their tech support recommendations and opened up the swath of ports that they recommend to incoming traffic.)
The second issue that I had is that the phone must effectively be located next to the Internet connection (cable/dsl modem/router, etc.). You either have to run an Ethernet cable if you want to locate the Vonage device and phone elsewhere, or you have to run a long phone cord if you want to locate the phone elsewhere. Maybe there is some means of routing the signal into the copper wiring in the house, but I wasn't going to bother. My cordless phone crapped out, so I just gave up. My new location offers the huge benefit of actually having solid cell signal, so I now rely exclusively on my cell, and had no need for Vonage.
But, I give them tremendous credit for a great product (for those that can get acceptable call latency/quality) with a ton of features for an amazingly economical price.
Re:DSL? (Score:2, Informative)
You can keep your DSL, but you must continue to "pay" for a phone line. You can drop the phone service down to the minimum package. Some states/carriers allow you to have a "911 only" line that costs $10-$20 per month.
There are two carriers that offer so-called "naked" DSL. Don't believe it. Qwest charges you the $10 for the phone line on top of their regular DSL price. Then, they sell it to you as "stand-alone" DSL. They turn off dial tone so you don't know you have phone service... but go ahead and dial 911. See what happens. Same with Verizon, and Verizon only gives you this "naked" DSL offer if you are dropping their local phone service to go wireless.
Either way, you'll be paying for the phone line. It makes more sense to do VoIP over a cable broadband connection, if you really want to drop the "copper" landline charge.
But, then you have to share bandwidth... and wouldn't it suck if the neighbor kid was downloading huge files while you're trying to talk on the phone.
Oh, one more thing... someone mentioned that cable companies are required to have 911 service. They are NOT required to have traditional 911 service. Cablevision 911 works more like Vonage 911 than like POTS 911. The emergency services operator doesn't have your pre-populated name and address info (also like e-911 from your cell). You have to tell them who and where you are - they can't find you otherwise. Kind of tough to give that info if you're 5. But, if you don't have kids, it's not that big of a deal.
My Vonage Experience, The Conclusion (Score:3, Informative)
I first wrote about my Vonage experiences here on [slashdot.org] and at the time I had basically put them on probation. I fear I've given away the ending of my story in the subject line, but read on anyway.
Since then, I found that I was experiencing really bad echo on certain incoming calls, even when those calls were forwarded from my Vonage phone to my cell phone. I was asked each time I tried to add more detail (by a new tech support person each time who never bothered to read through my issue history) whether my internet connection had enough bandwidth or my phone wiring had been tested... after the second time answer the same questions, I gave up. From then on, I would file additional customer care reports on the echo, from what phone numbers I was getting the most echo for incoming calls, how outgoing calls had no echo, etc. It became a major waste of time, and the fact that Vonage refused to acknowledge that they might have problems in their PSTN-to-VOIP bridges in certain exchanges, choosing instead to pass it off on my own house wiring or internet connection after both of those were eliminated as sources of trouble early on was quite telling.
When my local phone company (Qwest) offered to switch me back for free with 2 months of free service on top of that, I took them up on it. Yes, I went back to Qwest, which is a major indicator. I had the virtual number feature, with a second line in an out-of-state area code, so I asked on the phone of a customer care rep at Vonage if my virtual number could become my primary number once the switch took place, and he assured me verbally that that was no problem.
I'll let you, reader, guess what happened. Hint: if it isn't in writing it isn't true. Especially at Vonage.
I've cancelled my Vonage service. Aside from the nice voicemail features and the useful forwarding feature, and the reasonably-low price, I found the quality of service, the quality of their technical support personnel, the startup process, and the experience on the whole to be a major disappointment. I consider myself to be an early adopter (and I've been in the tech hardware and software business for a while myself), so I was willing to cut Vonage a lot of slack early on with the stumbles and the snafus, and they took all of that slack and then some.
BTW, I would suggest a service provider that doesn't lock you out of your own ATA device. Vonage prevents you from doing much of anything that they don't approve of, which is a major minus on top of their low-grade service.
mobitus works well - and they're canadian (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Or.... (Score:3, Informative)
You can also go outside and disconnect the POTS line if possible, just to make sure.
One word of caution.. don't hook up too many phones at once if you are doing this.... each phone you pick up (or that rings) (if the house is wired correctly) adds load to whatever is driving.. and if all that's driving is your little SIP box... you could fry it.
Re:I have Vonage and I love it (Score:2, Informative)
My phone bill was cut by about 2/3. My wife's family is in LA, and she calls several times a day. $100+ per month down to $37
Re:I have Vonage and I love it (Score:3, Informative)
First, the voice quality and connectivity drop off with any major IO traffic. If I'm downloading a large file, the voice sounds choppy. Useable but choppy. Consider what bandwidth usage the system will have while she is at work.
All my local calls are now long distance calls. Just a hassle remembering to dial long distance to talk to my neighbor.
There is a very slight delay in the system. It takes a while to get the rhythm of a conversation down using VOIP. Expect the other party to pause before replying. Try and make your sentences deliberate so the other party will expect a pause. You get use to it pretty quickly.
Sometimes my DTMF tones get attenuated through the system. I can dial to a anywhere without issue, but on some calls, if I need to "Press 1 for domestic travel", on occassion pressing 1 doesn't do a thing. I have to either wait for the operator or redial, and sometimes redial several times.
I also had to wait 30+ days to get my number transferred, but it was worth the wait.
Remember, no power, no phone, so have an emergency comm backup arrangement.
I found Vonage customer service to be as good as any ILEC. They turned me on to PingPlotter to monitor my Cable IP connectivity.
My bills went from $85/ month down to $30 per month. Sweet.
Re:My VoIP experience (Score:1, Informative)
Plugged into Vonage today (Score:3, Informative)
So far, I'm impressed with the features. Voicemail (you can set it so that new messages are emailed to you in
One feature I have enjoyed already is detailed billing. I like the features of cell phones where it will often show detail of the called numbers as well as sometimes even incoming calls. Since I have to sometimes file suit against telemarketers for violation of the TCPA, it is highly beneficial that I have a detailed listing of when calls were made.
You can place the hardware either inside or outside the firewall (if inside open ports 50605061, 53, 69, and 10000-20000 on UDP protocol). If you plug the device into a wall outlet in the house (making *sure* to disconnect the house from the street connection) you can use any other phone in the house as you normally would. Ad of course another last advantage is being able to take the device with you so that you can plug it in and use the phone whenever on a broadband connection. If you make a lot of calls to someone in another country, you could even try purchasing another device and sending it to them so they can take calls as if they were local (to you). I wonder how ling it will be before scammers, spammers, and other scum use this to appear local or in the states, yet be running things from Nigeria or other safe harbor.
Right now Best Buy has a pretty decent sale. I used a 10% off Memorial Day coupon to bring the price to 81 and then it comes with a mail-in rebate. If you use their rewards program ($10 a year) you get 50,000 bonus points for purchasing this item (which equates to 4 $5 Gift Cards). Circuit City has it for 79-50 MIR if you want to go that route.
Re:I found Vonage neat, but with limitations (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Packet8 information... (Score:2, Informative)
Packet8 has a bunch of the services that I don't use (callerID, call waiting...), because I don't get ANY telemarketing calls, that is the #1 advantage I see... plus it's only $20.55, that's it, it's tough to do much better.
Re:I have Vonage and I love it (Score:3, Informative)
Off topic, but when it comes to Cable/DSL providers, I've always read mixed results from every provider. I suspect it comes down to who, specifically, is running the local equipment...
I'm with Comcast currently and the service has yet to have an issue (about 6 months now). I had Sprint/Earthlink DSL back in Florida, Road Runner cable (Time Warner) also in FL, and Bell South DSL in Georgia. Road Runner gave the most problems, almost always due to "upgrades", but even then it wasn't frequent enough to complain (with a "residential" account).
Note, I do run my own local DNS cache as I found out (early on) that in most cases when service was down it was simply DNS not working (in many cases the physical connection is provided by one company (eg, Sprint) and DNS/email/etc by another (Earthlink in the Sprint case)).
The one thing that bothers me about VOIP is that (so far, in my experience) a cable connection requires power. My DSL always worked w/o power (modem, switch, router etc on UPS) where a cable connection simply didn't work without power. But, with my cell phone being cheaper all around, I am tempted to get rid of the POTS line. Cheap as the cell service is, I've not yet seen a need to go VOIP personally.
VPN phone (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Road Runner (Score:2, Informative)
I've had Vonage for quite a while now, and I find it to be superb -AND- it just dropped to $29.99 per month for unlimited calling. Not exactly hard to take price wise, and guiltless LD to everyone I know in the US and Canada is pretty sweet.
Vonage gets my vote all the way, but I've never tried any others. I never had to - Vonage has been flawless since day 1.
Re:Road Runner (Score:1, Informative)
alarm.
It takes a little tweaking to get ADT and Tivo working over Vongage, but it's doable.
Absolutely no complaints, in fact the best thing is you no longer wait for "cheap rates" on the weekends to call your relatives... the ones you like anyway.
Vonage also just dropped their price for the All You Can Eat package from $35.95/mo to $29.95/mo and *increased* the referral bonus at the same time.
Be sure to get referred by someone -- both referrer and referee are rewarded with a $45 credit to their respective accounts.
Finally, don't put their voice device outside your firewall or use it for QOS unless you just have to -- it creashes too easily to the port probes, pings of death, etc.
Instead use a WRT-54g with SVEASOFT's QOS enhancements, or any linux/*bsd box with QOS.
(OpenBSD's QOS is best but um *bsd is dead, so never mind.)
Another Local Cable/VoIP Company (Score:1, Informative)
The one major issue with VoIP I have is the latency. There's a 1.5 second delay between all conversations, and it's because my ping is commonly ~250ms. Now don't get me wrong, it's much better than ADSL's ~900ms latency when you're using up your whole upstream cap, but it's enough to make VoIP calls annoying. Most cable internet has bad latency (fuck if I know why) so I don't think VoIP is good for those trying to ditch the local carriers.
I've also had problems with Vonage (the people behind the scenes at advanced cable voice) where calls get "choppy" or otherwise very bad in quality. I assume this is proportional to the amount of bandwidth I am using and the amount needed by Vonage, but I didn't use it long enough to find out; I ended going back to Bellsouth. Long story short, implement a traffic shaper if you intend on using VoIP.