What VOIP provider should I use? and what is reliablity like?

Forums › VoIP › What VOIP provider should I use? and what is reliablity like?

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billgates

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#146315 10-Jul-2008 19:13

grant_k:
hasole: I've been using 2talk for a few months and found it to be really good feeding as a trunk to my asterisk box.

There rates are really hard to beat as well. 25c to a nz mobile..

Yes, 25c to NZ Mobiles is great -- BUT -- they do charge for Local Calls once you exceed 500 minutes per month.

And monthly sub. is $15 per month vs. $11.25 for VFX (or Free if you are an Xnet customer).

VFX on the other hand has unlimited free Local Calling.

2talk is extremely good value though, especially if you call mobiles a lot. VFX will be better for other people who make a lot of local calls.

You just use your PSTN line for local calling and use 2talk prepaid for the rest which would come out cheaper than Xnet and dont have to pay $11.25 to them if you are not their broadband customer + 2talk has free call forwarding to a number anywhere in the world for free. Someone rings my 2talk number and I could be in Australia, USA or wherever and I will not get charged a cent and person calling me pays NZ-NZ cell phone rate, if they have free minutes they use that up first. Free call forwarding roaming is only good if you have a local SIM card of the country you are in otherwise VFNZ charges $1/minute for inoming calls on roaming!

Do whatever you want to do man.

hasole

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#146320 10-Jul-2008 19:22

eeeeeek!!! voda roaming rates!

billgates

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#146323 10-Jul-2008 19:32

hasole: eeeeeek!!! voda roaming rates!

use to be $5/min about 4months ago...

Do whatever you want to do man.

logicalit

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#148731 17-Jul-2008 07:38

Just thought I'd add my 2c to this thread...

I've just setup asterisk with an IAX trunk to 2talk...

It's on their free plan at this stage, and their IAX service is a beta service as well, but their support folks were very helpful in getting the initial glitches out of the way.

Although I can't comment on reliability yet I can certainly compliment them on their service levels, and having IAX available is a huge advantage for me as I have a double layer of NAT/firewalling on my network, and SIP is a pain to manage in that type of situation.

Sound quality seems to be good at this stage, although I'm only testing with USB headsets and soft phones at this stage, I'll be ordering an ATA adaptor or two in a couple of days to see if I can generate some echo...

Cheers, Chris H.

sbiddle

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#148734 17-Jul-2008 07:51

logicalit:
Sound quality seems to be good at this stage, although I'm only testing with USB headsets and soft phones at this stage, I'll be ordering an ATA adaptor or two in a couple of days to see if I can generate some echo...

I'm sure you'll have no trouble generating some some echo and spending your days banging your head against the desk trying to fix it! :-)

logicalit

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#149228 18-Jul-2008 17:42

sbiddle:
I'm sure you'll have no trouble generating some some echo and spending your days banging your head against the desk trying to fix it! :-)

Never fear, I've already got echo problems with one PC using an analogue headset, so I'm quite familiar with with the the echo echo problpermosblems alreaadlyready.

:-) :-)

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grant_k

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#149237 18-Jul-2008 18:19

billgates: You just use your PSTN line for local calling and use 2talk prepaid for the rest which would come out cheaper than Xnet...

Yes, but then you still have to pay $45 per month for a landline, and who really wants to be saddled with that any more?

It's been great to get rid of the POTS signals off our landline after so many years. We used to get the occasional disconnect when the phone rang. Since switching to Naked DSL this no longer happens. And no, it wasn't the filter because it still happened after I removed it. Something to do with the line or ISAM I guess, but no longer an issue without the ringing volts being present.

manhinli

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#149239 18-Jul-2008 18:28

Has anyone also thought of Home Phone Plus?

It uses the Vodafone network to make calls - I haven't tried it, so I'm not sure about reliability and call quality, though other people say it's average to good. Starting from $25 for unlimited local calls.

It might be a good stop gap between a real landline and a VoIP service, but otherwise VoIP services are great (and cheaper for everything else)

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grant_k

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#149243 18-Jul-2008 18:43

manhinli: Has anyone also thought of Home Phone Plus?

The main drawback with this (and other) Vodafone services is the price they charge for calling mobiles.

If Vodafone is your Home Phone provider, be it via the Red Network, a resold Telecom line or the Home Phone Plus box, you are going to be paying 38c per minute to call mobiles. That is just WAY too expensive now compared to the 25c or 30c charged by VoIP providers.

Our toll spend is almost exclusively Land-to-Mobile calls now, we make very few National Toll Calls. I would imagine many others have similar calling patterns. Therefore, the way to cut your toll spend is to get that cost down, and 25c or 30c vs. 38c is a big saving when you use lots of Land-to-Mobile minutes every month.

richms

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#149269 18-Jul-2008 19:56

Agreed, the 25c on 2talk is the best deal ever, and you can foward your landline to your mobile to get incoming calls for 25c, and use the callback feature on the mobile to dial out at 25c for the mobile leg of the call plus the other leg of it, and the people will see your landline caller ID, so its great all round.

Wish slingshot would move the italk users to the same platform since the call recording is a great thing to have.

Richard rich.ms

logicalit

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#149547 19-Jul-2008 22:53

grant_k:
It's been great to get rid of the POTS signals off our landline after so many years. We used to get the occasional disconnect when the phone rang. Since switching to Naked DSL this no longer happens.

This interests me...

Out of curiosity, and for the edification of other readers, would you mind some questions?
- What VOIP providers are you using? one only, or a mix?
- What gear are you using in the house?
- What ISP are you with?
- Has it been everything you ever hoped for, or did you go into a whole world of pain during the changeover?
- How reliable has it been?

Cheers, Chris H.

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