last chance to help mom before she cancels

[patoka]

I assigned a static IP, forwarded ports, have no backup programs running in the background. Her system has not worked with any consistency since I installed it almost 2 weeks ago. She can receive calls intermittently but has no dial tone if she trys to call out right after making or receiving a call.
She's 83 and needs oxygen, I need to know that a 911 call will work if she needs it, right now voipo is a safety concern for me.

She spent 6 minutes on hold waiting for tech support to answer one day last week and gave up.

[VOIPoTim]

Really in this kind of situation, the only option is to work with support.

VoIP service is not for everyone. Since there are so many variables (ISP, router model, connection anywhere along the way between customer and provider, etc) that could cause issues, it just doesn't work well for some customers. All VoIP networks are designed differently and some work better for specific people, but one network will never work well for all people. The goal is to design for 97% of users/setups.

Support can go through all the troublshooting remotely. 6 minutes doesn't sound too long, but if she won't wait, the best thing to do is e-mail support@voipo.com to schedule a call. If support goes through all the troubleshooting procedures and there are still issues, it might be a case where VOIPo service just won't work well for her. There's no way to know that unless support works with her though.

[MisterEd]

I assigned a static IP, forwarded ports, have no backup programs running in the background. Her system has not worked with any consistency since I installed it almost 2 weeks ago. She can receive calls intermittently but has no dial tone if she trys to call out right after making or receiving a call.
She's 83 and needs oxygen, I need to know that a 911 call will work if she needs it, right now voipo is a safety concern for me.

She spent 6 minutes on hold waiting for tech support to answer one day last week and gave up.

With no disrespect meant to you or any voip provider OR Voipo specifically if a 911 emergency is a possibility due to a chronic illness I wouldn't rely on ANY voip service especially for an elderly parent. What if she picks up the phone and there is dialtone? What if the call doesn't complete? What if the audio is unintelligible or out in either or both directions? Worse yet, what if her INTERNET goes down? Both my parents are in their 90's and my mother has had heart problems. They wanted to save some money by getting a voip provider but I talked them out of it real quick. WAY too many things could happen even if the service looked as if it were up and running. Penny wise pound foolish. There are just too many variables with voip.

[usa2k]

My 2 cents (But I do understand the frustration!)



A cell phone for urgent matters.
VoIP to take the load off minutes.
That is my formula. E911 was a requirement,
but PSTN lines had decades to get there.

[patoka]

>>What if her INTERNET goes down?

That's why I have a second line for her, it has the DSL.
In my case I've had 2 phone line outages in the last 3 years, 7 days the first time, 5 the second. I can't remember any ISP failures.

My biggest concern is the 100k bandwidth needed. I'm in Dallas setting up two way radio systems for the NBA all star game. We use voip to connect repeaters at each end of the convention center connected to pass radio traffic between the two, we get 8 voice channels in 40k.

The NBA uses Cisco voip phones at these events, they only use 10k per phone.
They have huge amounts of bandwidth at these events, I ran a speed test in Phoenix last year and saw almost 7 meg down. They run QOS to make sure the audio quality doesn't take a hit.

Tim - I will have my mom call tech support again and see what they can do for her. I have not seen a list of routers that you have approved / have good results with listed in your knowledge base. I am willing to by a new router if that's what it takes to keep your service.

[uhf]

For a long time I kept POTS for e911 and incoming, and used Voip for outgoing only. I used an ATA that had a POTS port and was able to route 911 to the POTS port. But Voipo doesn't support anything like that... A pay as you go provider might be a better choice.

[MisterEd]

>>What if her INTERNET goes down?

That's why I have a second line for her, it has the DSL.
In my case I've had 2 phone line outages in the last 3 years, 7 days the first time, 5 the second. I can't remember any ISP failures..

The 2nd line is exactly what is needed.

Interesting .... I've (between my parents home and my own life) have been with Verizon for 62 years an never had an outage. I've had power outages where my CORDLESS phones didn't work after my UPS died but a wired phone did. The last 3 years (2 with Vonage and a few months with Voipo) I've had more outages including dead devices (took Vonage 5 days to replace) no dial tone, fast busies. inaudible audio & no audio to never rely on any Voip provider in emergency situations. It's just the nature of retial voip. I've also worked FOR Vonage and WITH Net-2-Phone (the company I worked for private labeled & serviced/supported our subscribers on their service) to trust ANY voip provider even less when it comes to the safety of my elderly parents.

[digger16309]

I assigned a static IP, forwarded ports, have no backup programs running in the background.

Check to make sure you don't have any firewalls enabled that shouldn't be. Also, when you say you assigned a static IP, where did you assign it?

Something similar happened to me when I changed out a router. The ATA had a static IP and the router was DHCP. I reserved the same IP address in the router that was statically assigned on the ATA but that did not work. Assign the ATA to be DHCP as well. Maybe that is not your issue, but worth a look.

[patoka]

FYI, I changed her router from an Airlink 315w to a 325w and it seems to be working fine. The 315 did not have a DMZ setting like most other routers do, the 325 does. I have not done the port forwarding yet, I don't want to break what appears to be not broken.
I also increased her dsl service from 128-256k up to 384-512, should help.