Finished 11th year with VoipO

[christcorp]

God, how time flies. I got my email today to Renew my VoipO account. I am one of the original Alpha/Beta Testers. I have a "Founder's Account". So I renewed like always. And while I was in my account paying the invoice, I looked at all my previous invoice.

First invoice was July of 2008. That 11 completed years with VoipO. Not counting the Year+ working with Tim and his excellent Team to get VoipO off the ground.

I am mainly writing this for anyone new and thinking about VOIP and VoipO.

After all the testing with different ATA's, features, codes, etc. and VoipO went live, I settled in using the PAP2 ATA that I had. (I tried ALL of the types VoipO wanted tested). To this day, I STILL have the SAME PAP2 adapter hooked up. The only thing I've changed, is I did ADD an additional phone to the system. An IP phone. So, I have 8 phones connected to the PAP2 adapter. (Only 2 have the Bells turned on; because too many bells pulls too much current and the adapter can't handle that). And 2 of my phones are old style and draw a lot of current. A 1910 Country Junction phone with a candle stick Mic and Recevier. I also have a circa 1950's Chrome Payphone that came out of the original Fisherman's Wharf Restaurant in San Francisco. Friend found it during renovation and got if for me. It too draws some current. But those 2 phones ringing is enough to hear any place in the house.

I also picked up a couple rotary to Pulse converters from a company in Australia. Works great. Can dial the rotary phone on a voip system. I have those on the 1920 country junction, 1950's payphone, and a 1960's original new old stock princess phone I got for my wife for christmas. (Yes, she wanted it).

And the IP phone I obviously have connected to my data network.

Haven't had any problems at all in the 11+ years with VoipO. Like most LIVE streaming systems for voice and video, it IS NOT just a spectator's sport. With a little user involvement, you can make it work great. Giving your ATA or IP phone static IP's help. With today's HIGHER SPEED internet, bandwidth isn't a big issue any longer. In the beginning, many of us only had 1.5mb dsl or similar. We had to know how to use QOS and such. Today, I have 450mb down and 20mb up cable internet, so QOS is not longer an issue. But today, many people are using hardware and software VPN's, Firewalls, etc. you need to know how to work behind such things.

But overall, VoipO has been perfect. It's nice having a hardline phone at home. Yes, it relies on the internet. And yes, most people have cell phones. But because of 21+ years in the Air Force and always moving, now that I'm no longer in the Air Force, I've settled down far away from family. As such, we call for 30-60+ minutes at a pop. And a hardline phone is much more comfortable than a cell phone on the ear.

Excellent job Tim and all your staff. Anyone interested in Voip, definitely needs to give VoipO a try. They are awesome. Great product, great service, great customer support, and great price. I think there's still a couple of folks who have been with VoipO as long as I have. If so, I'm positive their testimony about VoipO will be similar to mine.

Thanks Again. Mike

[GreenLantern]

Man, I hate to rain on the sunshine post, but my experience has been very different.

My first invoice was July 2010, so I'm at 9 years with Voipo.

I have a reseller account, with over a thousand numbers/accounts spread across the US. Being a Voipo reseller used to be a pretty cool deal.

Unfortunately, 54% of my clients (and counting) have ported away from Voipo in the last few years, due to being fed up with the frequent outages and issues.

The first few years were great. But I've lost count of the outages over the last 4 or 5 years.

These are not "user" or "internet" outages either. I'm talking about Voipo servers going down, routes failing, hours of busy signals, existing devices can't even register to Voipo network, etc. Some specific outages have lasted for days.

There are 3 reseller data centers to choose from, but all 3 go down due to single points of failure on Voipo's network.

When I open a ticket, it often takes hours for a response, which is often something like "have you rebooted your device?" And if I open a ticket after 2pm, I probably won't hear back until the next day.

Hopefully they'll get it together, get serious about support, redundancy, stability, and uptime.

[burris]

I suppose it's different for everybody.

My experience is the same as christcorp...been there since the beginning and except for a few problems over the years, service has been excellent(ask my wife).
After fooling around with different ATA's over the years, I settled on an OBi 202. Good machine and unless I fool with it just keeps working.
I have a cordless phone system with both lines activated. More handsets than 2 old people could ever need.

The service issue Green Lantern has, I don't understand.
Over the years when I create a service ticket, even as recent as last Sunday night, due to my changing features in win10, I received an immediate response....even before I could send another ticket saying I found the problem I caused.

In today's world, how many companies do you know whose Owner comes on line to answer questions or help with a problem?
Remember the world is a virtual computer and computers are evil.

I wish Tim and his company the very best in the coming years.

[christcorp]

Yea; sorry to hear Lantern is having issues. The ONLY times I've had issues, is when my internet was acting up. Was happening for about 2 weeks. I discovered it was a router on my end. Wasn't my ISP or VoipO. My network runs 3 separate routers, so it was basically my fault. Other than that, no problems.

Sounds like lantern might be having local gateway issues; or indeed maybe a server issue. I know VoipO has more than one server location. You could ask and see about configuring your system to one of the other server locations; at least for a test.

And while not trying to argue or start anything; I'm curious as to how long Lantern has been having problems. 9 years seems like a long time to "Put Up" with service if 54% of your clients are leaving. Seems like you'd have moved on to a new provider.

But as Burris said; each customer's experience is going to be a little different. I guess I'm just blessed. Then again, it seems to be the same for me with all technology. I had DirectvNOW Streaming tv service. People complained on the forums and facebook all the time about their up and down service. Mine NEVER went down. Changed to Hulu + Live tv 7 months ago because DirectvNow changed their programming. Again; people all over forums and facebook complaining about Hulu being down, bad service, bad support, etc. Mine..... NEVER BEEN DOWN. Always works. My internet has had 4 glitches over a 15 year period. Yet, I read people complaining about spectrum all the time. I guess I'm just really lucky. Then again, I'm a network geek. Most common users aren't. Streaming ANYTHING is definitely not a spectator's sport. Some day it, and the internet, may be truly a plug and play world. But for now, it's still partially a "Plug and Pray" technology. Phone, Video, TV, etc.

[GreenLantern]

No, these aren't problems on our side... not router issues, nat issues, rtp issues, etc. Our clients sometimes have those, but deal with them on our own.

These are voipo outages.

If you are a casual user, you might not ever know the outages happened, because you may not make calls during the outage period.

But if, like me, you have hundreds of clients making thousands of calls per day, you know right away when there's a voipo server down.

I also have server monitoring setup, so when a server fails, I get notified within a few minutes. I have detailed records of every single outage for the last several years.

I usually know before voipo does, because they do not seem to have any monitoring setup.

Great service for casual/residential users. But not so great for businesses, or any users who rely greatly on phone service.