I signed up to www.lingo.com and dumped my wired phone line, saving (in theory) about $20/month in the process and picking up unlimited calling to North America and Europe, voicemail, caller ID, and the ability to ring another number or two simultaneously with the home phone.
After about one month Lingo was able to transfer over my old home phone number.
Here’s how it has worked…
- when they transferred my home phone number they did not make that my caller ID so if I call people from my Lingo phone they get some weird new number that I was assigned and don’t recognize the caller as me; emailing customer service regarding this issue resulted in, 1 day later, a response that I had to call tech support; after waiting in the 15-minute queue for tech support the guy said that he needed to escalate the issue
- incoming caller ID is displayed without an area code, i.e., just the 7-digit local phone number, and no name is displayed, only a phone number
- many 800/888/877 numbers are unreachable from the phone, including Lingo’s own tech support phone number; a recording says that the number is out of service but calling the same number from a wired or mobile phone results in success; this reduces the cost savings from Lingo if you have to wait on hold in various 800-number queues because you’ll need to buy an extra 100+ minutes of wireless air time every month
- some calls come through with very low voice volume and I have to crank up the volume on the phone
- no problems can be resolved via email or Web support; you really have to call their tech support phone number (from your cell phone) and wait in queue for 15+ minutes
Speaking of IP telephony… sitting in Japanese business hotels with my free high-speed Internet I wondered if I could have gotten a headset to plug into my laptop that would have enabled me to make phone calls back to friends in the US at a reasonable price. Anyone have any luck with a computer-based telephone service that bridges the calls into the traditional phone network at the end?
Vonage has such a service, I have not used it however. Since you have an existing VOIP setup it may be significantly more expense than you’re willing to bear – they bundle the laptop phone with your basic service.
Phil:
I am having great luck with Skype. I use a ThinkPad + Ety-Com from Etymotoic.com, plus a $3.99 adapter from Radio Shack, i.e. Audio Adapter…Ety-Com to iPod and ThinkPad 274-397. It works perfectly from WiFi at places like Starbucks/Borders/Kinko’s. They also have a service called Skype Out, which allows you to dial out to any number in the world. You buy a prepaid card in Euro’s, and I haven’t done that portion yet, but I have gotten a number of calls from folks in HK and other places. The quality is better than cell phone or land line, albeit with occassional hiccups.
Buzz
Wow, Lingo sounds pretty clueless. I’m not even sure how you’d screw up caller ID that bad, but the 800-number problems are almost certainly related–most 800 numbers don’t work if you don’t present a valid 10-digit phone number. If they’re screwing up inbound caller ID, then they’re probably screwing up outbound calling, too.
I haven’t heard anything particularly bad about Vonage’s service, but their monthly rates and their early-termination charge are kind of high. At this point in the game, it’s still kind of expensive for VoIP companies to have a national presence, because they generally need to deal with local regulators before they can get numbers in each state. The only way around this is to partner with someone like Level 3 who’s already done all of the hard work, but that isn’t cheap.
Although this isn’t really an option for most people, I’ve been playing with Asterisk (www.asterisk.org) at home–it’s an open-source VoIP PBX system that runs on Linux. Complexity-wise, it’s similar to running your own email server: it took me most of a weekend to get it working right. However, at this point I have full control over everything, including incoming (and outgoing) caller ID, voicemail (including email and SMS notification), blacklisting numbers, and so on. I can add phones at will without worrying about Vonage-style terms-of-service contracts. Plus, once I got past the initial costs (I had to buy a couple PCI cards), my monthly costs are *really* low–I’m paying $0.02/minute for incoming and outgoing calls with no monthly minimum.
Scott, what kind of line do you have incoming to plug into your Asterisk machine? ISDN? T1? I don’t know how you could get either of those lines for such a low rate? Do share?
Also, if you don’t mind prying, what did the Telephony cards set you back? I remember looking at them a while back and they weren’t ridiculously expensive. Ah well, you’ve sparked my interest, off to the Asterisk website I go.
I think you committed VoIP suicide when you chose Lingo. Read this series of posts on Lingo from Dave Farber’s Interesting People (you’ll have to search from Lingo in the August posts)
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200408/threads.html
I have Vonange, and I haven’t had any problems.
Lingo is run by a company called Primus – which is also my long-distance provider. For something as straightforward as long-distance, one would expect a hassle-free service. But you would be wrong if Primus is you provider – the company’s ineptness continues to surprise me. My calls happen fine, but the billing and customer service are a different thing altogether.
When I initially contacted them to know about plans, four customer agents told me four differnt “cheapest” plans. Some of the monthly charges were not revealed to me even when I asked very clearly – do you charge for X, Y or Z? The answer was a no at that time (probably because I had yet to sign up), but when I got my first bill, sure enough, all those charges were in there. These charges don’t add up to more than $5 every month, but what upsets me is that the call-center reps either lied to me or did not know the company’s policies well enough, both of which are a strong signal for me to discontinue the service, which I will, once I consume the $20 credit that appeared on my account even though that should have been given to the guy who referred me to Primus!
I’ve been using VoicePulse (http://www.voicepulse.com) at home for the past couple of months. So far so good. $14.99/month for the cheap package. Call quality has been fine and I like the additional features (call filtering, .wav file email message access) they offer.
AFAIK Vonage does not have any early termination penalties. You just return the equipment.
What about the new Verizon VOIP offering? Anybody have any experience with it? They appear to be offering a reasonable deal (at least for Verizon) at $34.95 monthly (less for six months bundled with their DSL).
I’ve been using VoicePulse Connect — their service for people needing their own VOIP to PSTN connection but otherwise running their own digital PBX (I run Asterisk on a Linux box). It’s cheap, performs well, and was a dream to set up.
Another option for cheap phone calls is http://www.onesuite.com. I’ve been using them for over 3 years with no problems ever. It’s basically the same as a calling card but they have nifty features like zipdial and pindial (no need to enter pin numbers and you can store phone numbers for easy 2 digit dialing) Their website is intuitive and I’ve never had to call phone support but they have it available if you need to recharge your account and have no web access. example charges : 2.5 cents/min to Australia, 1.9 cents/min to Canada… hard price to beat and no nerdy phone calls from behind the computer screen.
I’ll second the earlier suggestion of Vonage instead. I’ve used them as my primary voice connection (with the cell as backup) for a couple of years now, and have had no problems.
I can’t speak to the issue of migrating your old number…one of the major reasons I went to VoIP in the first place was to get _rid_ of the only number the ILEC would give me, which had formerly belonged to an excessively popular fax machine (leading me to get unknown faxes at all hours of the day and night…90% of my incoming calls were faxes meant for the former owner of that number). So it’s possible that they’d suck at this too…number portability is still new.
But as for the other problems you mention…well, Vonage doesn’t have them.
I am on packet8.net VoIP and I recently stayed at a hotel in Japan, where I just plugged it (and my computer) into my router and it worked fine. Later I moved to a hotel (again in Japan) that had DSL in the room and I couldn’t get the router to work, so it was either the VoIP or the computer. Basically it works anywhere you can get an IP address. I have had nothing but good service with these people and I recommend them highly.
Hello!
I used Skype but I havent personally tried to make a call on a local phone line. I have used to make pc-to-pc call and the quality was excellent. Paying just 10 euro you it claims you can make calls from a pc to any local phone number in the world.
the web page is http://www.skype.com
I know someone who’s in Israel for the year, and uses Vonage. Her boyfriend dials a local (boston) number to reach her. He says it works just fine.
I’ve been using Asterisk and a S100U USB device for exactly the same purpose (phone calls from hotels with internet connections). I’ve had very good results. The USB device allows you to connect an analog phone to your computer.
Don’t try to use a headset. It’s too much hassle (volume controls, mixers, mute buttons, etc) and the delays in PC soundcards make this a much less attractive options than the USB device.
Contact me if you want details on this setup.
Jan: We want details! Manila does make your email address available to anyone, not even me. So please give us as much as you can here in a comment.
At home (in Israel) we have a deal similar to what Jeff Winkler was talking about (two comments up), and I have also used Skype, which can work on almost any PC and has great quality + very cheap prices for calls to anywhere…
You should really give skype a try, for international and on the road calls (as long as you have Internet connection) from what I gather, if you live in the states, there isn’t that much difference in price between wired and VoIP, so I don’t see a reason why to switch.
All in all, I’ve been very happy with Vonage, which I initially reviewed back in May 2003 after having it for three months. Over a year later, and I’m glad I switched.
My accountant switched too, and he now travels around the US with the Vonage box. He’s happy with it too.
No reason it wouldn’t work great abroad if you’ve got a good broadband connection and not too much latency.
I also use asterisk at home on my linux box. I found a good service to use with asterisk called broadvoice. you can connect directly register asterisk to their service and they offer 19.95 / month unlimited calling in the usa and canada. if you don’t want their hardware the activation is only 9.95 (or around 34.95 with the hardware). so far i have had no problems with them and the quality is great. it’s the only unlimited plan i could find that can directly register with asterisk.
Skype Out, the paying service works well as far as I’ve used it. Mostly calls to mobile phones in the US, land lines in the US, land lines to Peru, both in Lima and then out to the Andes highlands…better quality than ever compared to calls i’ve made from land lines to Peru. Cost, Lima is cheap, not sure if it’s cheaper than some calling cards, but the connect rate and quality is better on Skype Out than using cards in the past. Some problems calling mobiles in highlands. Still trying. Will be great when I get back down there to call the US for just 2 cents a minute, and no connection fee.
ps, Skype’s Skype Out prices are listed here, in Euros http://www.skype.com/skypeout/help.pricelist.html
I use Skype
I use http://www.call2.com.
I can use it from any phone so I don’t even have to worry about having a headset etc, and the quality is always excellent. It costs a couple of cents more than SkypeOut but it is worth it when I know I’ll always have a reliable connection.
I use http://www.call2.com.
I can use it from any phone so I don’t even have to worry about having a headset etc, and the quality is always excellent. It costs a couple of cents more than SkypeOut but it is worth it when I know I’ll always have a reliable connection.
hahahahah