Name your VOIP Providers?

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Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Garak
I always remember that an old fashioned telephone will work in a power outage.

Only if you have one of those old rotary phones. These days, most people have cordless headsets which require power, so unless you have them plugged into a UPS, they won't work either. And if you're going to be using a UPS, then you can plug in your modem, router, and a VOIP box into it as well and they'll work during a power outage.


Some push buttons work as well . Have one right beside me, Works just fine with the voltage on the line .
 
Originally Posted By: racer12306
Originally Posted By: BubbaFL
Google Voice + an Obi 100 http://amzn.to/XTAyyN connected to a five-station DECT cordless phone.

$0.00 monthly, unlimited free inbound and outbound calling, free voicemail to email with transcription, spam filtering easy junk call blocking, and (pc-based) text messaging.


I would love to do this, but my wife isn't a fan.


Just curious, what wouuldn't she like about it?

In my experience, this setup has been totally seamless. Handsets work just like they would on a traditional line, and the spam blocking has stopped over 1000 junk calls from hitting my phone over the past three years.
 
Originally Posted By: Garak
I always remember that an old fashioned telephone will work in a power outage. Anything else is questionable, particularly in the boonies.


As long ask the CO has power. And you're calling someone with power, or with POTS service and a phone like yours.
 
I use republic wireless motox 9.99/month plan. unlimited cell/minutes, unlimited wifi data. I only jumped to my first smartphone when my job removed my company paid ATT POTS.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Only if you have one of those old rotary phones.

I'm not stuck that far in the dark ages, but there are a couple rotaries hanging around the house, disconnected - I may be eccentric, but I'm not insane. I do have a couple very basic phones, touch tone with no external power required whatsoever, plus a cordless, which obviously requires power for its base station. A UPS is certainly an option, and a good one in the city. We usually don't get terribly lengthy outages here.

BubbaFL: Of course, yes, if the telephone company has power and I'm calling someone who isn't down, either. However, if the power issues are so widespread that emergency services have no power and no power backup, they're probably not going to be a lot of help in an emergency anyhow, even if I could reach them.
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Originally Posted By: BubbaFL
Originally Posted By: racer12306
Originally Posted By: BubbaFL
Google Voice + an Obi 100 http://amzn.to/XTAyyN connected to a five-station DECT cordless phone.

$0.00 monthly, unlimited free inbound and outbound calling, free voicemail to email with transcription, spam filtering easy junk call blocking, and (pc-based) text messaging.


I would love to do this, but my wife isn't a fan.


Just curious, what wouuldn't she like about it?

In my experience, this setup has been totally seamless. Handsets work just like they would on a traditional line, and the spam blocking has stopped over 1000 junk calls from hitting my phone over the past three years.


It's mainly a security thing. If the internet goes down, no phone. I've never had internet as reliable as my current FiOS connection. If I had Comcast still I wouldn't even think about it
laugh.gif
But she says no, so I don't push it. The cell phone is only $10 a month right now.

While the same can be said for the cell network or the POTS network, it's rare for either of those to go down.
 
I am a 100% telemcommuter and folks really complain in conference calls when you come on with [censored] line. Cell phones and VOIP is quite annoying. Land lines rule in quality.

I will state though my company's paid offering of Google Hangouts works decently calling phone #'s directly. VOIP into conference calls results in all sorts of weird feedback and echo's.
 
I have a sister living with me and her daughter (with a cell phone) is always calling her Mom's cell phone (not knowing where she is at that exact moment). When daughter reaches her Mom here at home with me...invariably the NEXT WORDS I HEAR ARE..."CALL ME ON THE LAND LINE"... because the cell to cell call quality is so poor or it drops like a lead balloon.

Land lines >> rule in quality. Hopefully the LL continues at least another 10 years...by that time it probably won't matter to me anymore:)

GrtArtiste
 
I dropped our pots, (plain old telephone service), land line in early 2008 when I signed up for AT&T Callvantage voip at around $22.00 per month vs the $55.00 per month I was paying for the pots land line.

They did away with Callvantage the following year when they introduced Uverse Uvoice at a much higher rate, on a par with their pots line cost. That's when I went to Phonepower. I've been paying around $10.00 per month since then by paying for a year in advance and getting the second year free plus taxes and fees.

Among the features I use the most is the ability to have my voice mail sent to me in an email as a .wav file. I've also sent a number of faxes without issue. For incoming faxes they have a "Faxcatcher" feature that catches the fax and sends it to me as an attachment in an email similar to the voice mail feature.

I also like being able to blacklist or forward, (to a disconnected number), nuisance calls. Some of these sales pitch callers do NOT give up. When I get one I can just go online to my account and forward that caller to a disconnected number and the next time they call they get the recording that "This number has been disconnected or is no longer in service"! Works great!

There are so many useful/handy features with voip lines, not just Phonepower, that come at such a reduced cost that I just can't imagine going back to a pots line.

There have been a few glitches along the way but nothing substantial enough to make me change and overall I've been quite happy with it.
 
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Anveo, all kinds of cool stuff you can do with their Call Flow Builder. I have it answer the number of the front gate, dial 9 to open gate, then text the wife and I.

HOA wouldn't give out codes to let people in without it going to a phone and having to dial 9. The text message is a good notifier for our own use and also to know if someone figured out my hack.
 
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My companies of choice are
future-nine.com
Voip.ms
Anveo
CallCentric

All above in use trunked to my Asterisk server or Free Switch.
Acting as backup and used to make cheap calls based on destination cost
 
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