A (rather lengthy) VOIPo review

Background

First, let me begin by saying that I’m not your average VOIP user. My family shares one landline, one cellular phone, and we get our TV via an antenna on the roof. Our one luxury has been DSL from Bellsouth, now ATT. We’re all about saving money, as we’re a single income family, and look to cut corners financially wherever possible.
I’ve often toyed with the idea of using VOIP – my brother has been a Vonage customer for years, and has had nothing but good things to say about it. Since my basic phone line ran in the neighborhood of $26/ month, even the most expensive VOIP services would be the same, or cheaper, with included long distance and all the bells and whistles. The holdup, for a while, was that DSL was not offered without voice. Once that was rolled out in my area, I began to look into it seriously. Still, ATT charges an extra $5/ month for the privilege of a dry line, but still, the VOIP savings would (hopefully) make up the difference.

Taking the first step

So, I set the process in motion. I ordered a new dry DSL line installed on the second copper pair leading to my house, and then turned to choosing a VOIP provider. Since my brother highly recommended Vonage, that was the natural choice for me as well. In fact, I probably would’ve signed up with them (they offer service credits for referring a friend), if it wasn’t for their rate hike. I was all set to sign up for the $15.00 500 min./ month plan, until when I went back to the site to do the deed, it was then $18! So, I began to see what else is out there, which led me to dslreports.com. The highest rated service was for a company with the strange name of VOIPo. As I looked into it, it seemed almost too good to be true - $99 for a year of unlimited service, ATA provided free, 2 lines included, free virtual number, 30 day guarantee, and the list went on. I discovered VOIPo and signed up that same evening. (I had to break it to my brother that he won’t be getting a free month with Vonage!)

Excitement…then frustration

I could hardly wait for my phone adapter to arrive. Luckily, it came only 2-3 days later, and I immediately hooked it up to my network, and made my first VOIP call! How cool is that… I’m talking over the internet! (I’m easily impressed…) I set up a separate phone in the house to test the line, encouraging my wife to use it for long distance to see how it works. Unfortunately, I started having intermittent problems right away – here’s the list:
1. incoming calls not ringing through
2. calls sounding horribly garbled and static
3. no dialtone
4. hanging up phone after call, and phone rings with no-one there.
5. fast busy signals incoming and outgoing

I had lots of tickets open to correct these problems, and each fix seemed to last for a short while, then problems would crop up again. God bless them, the techs at VOIPo seemed to try everything; different servers, proxies, STUN, and I tried numerous different network configurations on my side. All changes seemed to work for a while, then, not. Then it dawned on me – could it be a bad ATA? After each fix, I would do a power cycle, which would fix the problem, for a few hours, or even a day. I mentioned this to them, and they gladly agreed to overnight me a new adapter to try. Meanwhile, I had applied to port our current landline to VOIPo, and I knew it would go through any day. It just so happened that our port happened on a Thursday, and the new adapter arrived the same day. I plugged it in, hopeful, and waited. No dialtone. Unplug. Wait. Plug back in. No dialtone. Fool with DMZ/ port forwarding settings on my modem. No dice. It was after hours for tech support, so I submitted a ticket, and went to bed, disgusted.

Success – at last!

The next day, I got home from work, and got on the phone with tech support, determined to get phone service restored to our home. Finally, after an hour of work, the tech discovered that the new Linksys ATA had a bad auto-provisioning script. Once corrected, it hooked right up, and I was in business. I have now been trouble free for about two weeks now, and let me tell you, it is a beautiful thing. I love Caller ID! I love getting my phone messages via email! I love not getting a busy signal when I call my wife and she’s talking to a friend! (I know what you’re thinking, call waiting has been around since the 80’s, right?) Like I said, it doesn’t take much to impress me.

Getting the most out of VOIP

OK, so you know that I’m a bit of a noob when it comes to this VOIP thing, but I’m also a tinker-er; I like to mess with things to see what happens. So, my first question was “how can I make the most of the two lines VOIPo offers?” It makes sense to have an extra phone lying around so that two different phone conversations can take place at once, since we have that capability. I have a feeling that this will become increasingly more important as my children (ages 7, 5, 2, and 9 months) get older and discover the joys of talking on the phone. So, I found an inexpensive two line phone on Ebay to play with. My question was, how will a two line phone react to VOIP service? When a call comes in, both lines ring simultaneously, so I wondered how a two line phone would deal with that. As it turns out, it’s perfect – when a call comes in, both lines light up, but (this phone at least) selects line 1 automatically, and all is good. It’s also very easy to get to line 2 if someone else is already on, (the line buttons light up when in use by an extension) or to conference two calls together! I know that this can be done with the flash button, but it ain’t so easy.

Another “trick” that I haven’t seen anyone mention is how to have a “quasi” dedicated fax line. I have my fax machine plugged in to line two, and set to answer at 5 rings. My “main” number is set to go to voicemail after 4 rings, but I disabled voicemail on the virtual number, so it keeps right on ringing. So, faxes can be sent to my virtual number, and picked up by the fax. Granted, this only works if no-one picks up the phone first, but I don’t get faxes very often anyway, so it works just fine for me.

I’m sure I’ll find new things to love about VOIPo, but for right now, I’m having a Renaissance with the telephone – it’s all new to me again!

Great Read! Thank you for taking the time to write it up!

For many here, our second home is DSLreports.com

I hope you sign-up there and put your review at:
http://www.dslreports.com/docontrib/ISP/3156

USA2K, I posted the exact same review over there this morning. I've enjoyed reading your posts there too!

Thanks, Dylan! As you can tell, I'm excited about VOIP. On another note, can you help me out with this forum? I'm not able to post replies to other people's posts, and I also don't have access to the private forums. I've sent messages to the moderator, with no response. TIA!