Ed Stoffel

I’ve been using VoIP services since 2005 and have experience now with several different companies. VoIP has come a long way in that time, and I’m considering getting rid of my landline telephone service altogether.

In 2005, I signed up for Broadvoice, a VoIP service that was only 14 months old at the time. They’re unlimited service was priced at $19.95, charged monthly. They also offered a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) plan for only $5.99/mo. with a limited minutes allowance. At the time, my choice to use them was based on price, features offered, and availability of a local number. Since 2005, I have subscribed to Broadvoice three times - twice on their unlimited plan, and once on their BYOD plan. Each time, their service was comparable to cellular telephone service, with occasional loss of audio in one direction or another, total dropped calls, or loss of dial tone. It is unclear whether these early problems were caused by their system or packet loss on the internet. Their customer service is fine - most of the time they were great, but on my cancellation in 2007, they sounded displeased.

For a period of one year (2005-2006), I subscribed to Voicepulse’s unlimited plan at $24.99, billed monthly. Voicepulse was a better service with more features I liked including unavailable forwarding (essential during service outage) and customizable caller id to identify incoming calls the way I want to. The quality of Voicepulse service was similar to Broadvoice, which makes me suspect it has more to do with the internet than the individual companies. Voicepulse customer service was professional in tone as well as well as their level of technical expertise. 

In 2007, I signed up for a BYOD, no-monthly-fee service with VoipVoip. It’s an outgoing-only service which issues a 555 number (one that can not be called) and requires customers to setup an account to deposit funds in $10 increments. I only ever paid $10. It worked very well, and I had almost no quality issues. Their customer service was by email, but only needed for signup and cancellation (no technical problems to resolve).

Later in 2007, I purchased a MagicJack voip device, which plugs into a computer’s USB port and requires the computer to be up and running (not off or hybernating). MagicJack has its own peculiarities in setup to get it working just right. I bought the device and 5-years of service for around $80. For me, it’s a good second line.

In 2008, I tried ViaTalk. Their service was very good, and I particularly liked their 2-line service where the 2nd line is a clone of the first. They told me they have a 97% success rate at porting numbers, but they were unable to transfer mine saying they couldn’t confirm my address in their databases. I bought a newly built home 16 months ago.

Then in 2008, I switched back to Broadvoice. They now offer the Grandstream HT502 adapter which also worked very well with ViaTalk. Broadvoice has local numbers to me and they say they can port my existing Verizon number. My signup and number transfer request was all handled online, and my existing local number was ported in 3 business days. They are now my current provider.

Devices:

My first Voip device was a Sipura 1001 from Broadvoice, then a Sipura 2000 from Voicepulse, then a Linksys Sipura 2102-R. The Sipura 2102-R unit had the phone 1 port fail, but otherwise it worked with Broadvoice and VoipVoip. My latest devices (from ViaTalk and Broadvoice) were  Grandstream Handytone HT502s which I installed between my cablemodem and router. They worked great.

Broadband Providers:

I used Sprint DSL (now known as Embarq) and Adelphia Cable (now merged with Comcast). At 1500Mbps, DSL was probably too slow to provide adequate bandwidth for Voip and the entire household. At 3000Mbps, we did better. On cable internet, service was probably better, particularly in 2007-2008 when Comcast increased our speed even further.

Settings:

The DSL modem was blocking service after a short time (blocking Session Initiation Packets), and it was necessary to reconfigure it to bridge mode.

Setting routers to assign the Voip device to a DMZ port was never adequate. With the Voip device assigned to a fixed IP address, it was always necessary to also forward ports to the Voip device. The broadest port list included TCP on 80, and UDP on 69, 5060-5063 & 10000-20000. 

QOS (Quality of Service) is a router setting that allows the setting of traffic priority which means your Voip is less likely to loose packets due to local congestion.

SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) is a router setting that can cause local congestion and is best disabled for Voip usage.

Some Voip devices can be installed between a broadband modem and a router, allowing it unrestricted access and negating the need for the above settings.

Call Centers:

It seems to make a difference which call center your VoIP company assigns your account to, and it isn’t necessarily the one you’re closest to. It will be the one you experience the least amount of packet congestion with. I have experienced dramatic improvements by asking them to assign me to a different call center.

Local Number Portability:

When I requested Broadvoice turn my landline phone number into a VoIP number in 2006, the process took about 3 weeks. More and more companies are now able to port customer’s numbers, even in areas where they don’t offer local numbers. Cell phone numbers are usually not transferable to VoIP.

Online Reviews:

It is difficult to tell which companies are the best in terms of technical quality or customer service. I suspect that many online reviews are written by customers blaming companies for technical problems caused by local configuration and internet congestion. Criticism is fair when equipment fails or customer service is slow, rude and/or unresponsive. Voip review sites vary widely. For example, in a search today, I find Vonage rated #1 in a magazine review while they appear the worst in customer service on another review site. They do have a lot of customers, but they also advertise a great deal.

Conclusion:

I still like the quality of landline service the best, but as more and more business and home users adopt Voip, I’m paying for quality I won’t get when connected to the VoIP of others. As VoIP continues to improve, it just makes sense to make the switch.