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Suggestions for a Home VOIP Provider?
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."
Depending on how much time she needs to spend on the phone, cellular might be your best bet. If you have coverage in your current area from someone who sells service in the area whose area code you're looking for, that would probably be the easiest way to get what you need. I'm sure you can still get phones which have good broadcasting power, and you can pick an appropriate antenna, so perhaps you can get coverage already. This will have the added advantage of coming with its own battery backup (unless you need to use an amplifier) and thus being even more reliable than a wired POTS->PSTN phone.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have been with Vonage for 6 months now and have had no problems. I have 4 lines through them with no problems at all, including fax. It also cut my phone bill by about 1/2 because all of the long distance calls I made are all now included.
a cell phone? I cancelled long-distance service for my landline because I had no use for it. Sure, if I use it it'll cost me an arm & a leg, but the only thing I use the landline for is to write a phone number down on receipts & whatnot as I've got a machine on it to collect messages. I have plenty of friends who don't even have a landline any more, preferring to select the best plan from the various cell vendors - especially now that you can keep the same number forever.
Since you say that reliability is your top priority I'd recommend a dedicated VOIP service provided by a cable company if available. They are required to offer the same level of service as a phone company, and also included life line support. While Vonage, Packet8, and the like are all excellent services, they are only as good and as reliable as your existing internet connection.
Vonage seems to work well so long as your connection is good. Being able to listen to your voicemail either on a phone or online is really neat.
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.
It seems like the best way to do it (and cheapest) would be to call from your computer over the internet to a computer in the city you wanted to call to, which would then hook up to the regular phone line via a modem. I was looking for something like this, but haven't found anything on freshmeat, etc. (Any links out there?)
It seems quite possible. You tell the computer what local number you want, it dials it, and then just acts as a gateway between you (on the internet) and the person you're talking to (on a normal phone line). Nothing too complicated. If you get the reliability up, this might be your best bet.
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 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 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, for native voip ;)
This is an incumbment free zone
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.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
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 for more Vonage reviews
DSLReports.com maintains a forum for VoIP providers as well as numerous reviews of Vonage, Packet8, and lots of others.
At our school, we don't earn a degree when we graduate—we earn pi/180 radians
I've been a Vonage customer for about 5 months now. My wife and I ditched our POTS because we realized it was costing us $34/month for absolutely no services (this was with Bellsouth). We decided to transfer our POTS number over to Vonage. Unfortunately, the old telco's like to rape customers by holding on to phone numbers for as long as possible (basically, the longer they hold your number, the longer you have to pay them). Bellsouth finally transferred my number to Vonage after about 90 days (bastards).
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.
I have a related question... Can you keep DSL and sign up for one of these providers? Will *insert local bell or SBC* let you have a line without service?
Are you sure your cable company doesn't have a local and LD phone package? http://www.twcdigitalphone.com/ The majority of my friends and neighbors have switched to road runner's VoIP... and we are all impressed. 911-service, call waiting, caller-id, works through your existing phone lines -- the service is packed with bells and whistles. Give it a shot if you have RR in your area. Davak
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.
A Canadian company called mobitus offers zero monthly fee, excellent software, and very competitve rates - it also has the advantage of being outside of the FCC's reach. I've used their system for quite a few months, and am quite happy with them. Plus, any support calls I've had to make (about 2 in 5 months) has been answered immediately. That's one things about those Canucks - friendly ;)