Residential VoIP Service Discussion

There has been a lot of discussion regarding our VOIPo Express service which is now in Public BETA and available to ALL of you immediately. VOIPo Express offers toll-free numbers, virtual local numbers, and a fax service to send and receive faxes easily.

We’d like to now introduce you to our residential service. Just as we have for the VOIPo Express service, we’ll soon be opening our full residential service up for Public BETA.

There are two ways to use the Residential Service.

Option 1 – VOIPo Adapter

We’ll send you a phone adapter that allows you to use your regular telephones just as you normally would. The adapter is about the size of a deck of cards and very easy to install. It has an Ethernet port, a phone port, and a power port. You just plug the power cord in, connect it to your router and then plug your phone cord into it. It will connect to our servers, provision itself and within about 1 minute, you’ll have a dialtone on your telephone. You can then make and receive calls as you would on your normal phone. If you move, just take it with you. Your service and number won’t change (unless you want a new number). Just plug it into your new internet connection and talk. This is similar to Vonage in terms of the service type.

Option 2 – Softphone

A softphone is basically a computer program that you can optionally use to connect to our service. You’d then use it to make/receive calls using your computer and a headset/mic. This is particularly handy if you’re traveling and have it installed on your laptop. You can essentially bypass expensive hotel phone charges and use your home phone even though you’re not home.

Basic Features

Call Waiting
3 Way Calling
Caller ID with Name
Call Waiting ID
Anonymous Call Rejection
Caller ID Block (*67)
Call Return (*69)
Call Forwarding
Voicemail

Advanced Voicemail

With the VOIPo voicemail system, you can have your voicemail messages delivered directly to your e-mail (even multiple e-mail accounts) as a .WAV file. You can also setup notifications to go to certain e-mail addresses without attaching the file. With both options, you’ll get the date/time, the Caller ID info, and the length of the message. Of course you can always check your messages from your phone or by dialing in remotely as well.

We’ve also incorporated US SMS notifications as well. If you setup SMS voicemail notifications, you’ll get a short and sweet text message with just the essentials and no e-mail fluff…the date/time, number, caller ID info and length. The text notification is short enough to fit into one message without being cutoff with all major US carriers.

Contacts

vPanel also has a contact management system. Once you add a contact, you can add unlimited phone numbers for it to identify when the contact calls. You can also assign your contacts to groups like family, friends, work, etc. You can setup as many groups as you’d like. The contacts system is fully integrated with other features including Custom Caller ID, Call Routing, Click to Call, etc.

Custom Caller ID

When you add someone to your Contacts, you can optionally provide a nickname for them. If you do, we’ll override the default network Caller ID with the nickname. So as an example, if you have a contact with the nickname “Mom” and you get a call from that contact using the phone number you labeled as “Cell” for her, your Caller ID will show “Mom – Cell” for your Caller ID name. This is especially useful if you get calls from someone from a cell phone or something that doesn’t have a traditional Caller ID name.

Click to Call

When in your contacts, you can initiate a call to a contact’s number with one click. Just click their number…your VOIPo phone will ring. Once you answer, we’ll automatically connect your call.

Advanced Call Routing

Everyone is bombarded with calls these days and we wanted to give everyone a little bit of control. All incoming calls can be routed based on criteria you set. By default, all your incoming calls will get through to you. If you want to change that, here are some options.

What you can route….

Specific phone numbers
Use wildcards to create custom ranges or route entire area codes, etc
Contacts
Entire groups of contacts
Private/Blocked number calls
All callers that aren’t a contact

Where you can route your selection to…

Busy signal
Disconnected message
Forward to another number
Straight to voicemail

You can setup unlimited routing options and manage them all in real-time.

Outbound Call Routing

With outbound call routing, you have the ability to route your outbound calls in a similar way. As an example, you could route “128” to a phone number and create your own custom speed dial. If you don’t want your daughter using the phone to call her boyfriend…you could route those calls to a perpetual busy signal....or even your cell phone. If your local government or city has a public information line, you could route “511” to this. Basically, you can manipulate how outgoing calls from your phone are handled in any way you want.

7, 10, and 11 Digit Dialing

One of the annoying little things with VoIP has often been that you need to dial “ 1 + Area Code + Number “ for all calls including local calls. Since you normally don’t need to do that with a lot of regular phone services unless you live in a major metro area, people in your house may even get confused when they have to do it, etc. In order to keep the fact that you’re using VoIP as transparent as possible, we support dialing 7, 10, or 11 digits. When you dial 7 digits, we automatically add the area code of your primary phone number to the dialed number. This isn’t huge, but little things add up to make a better user experience.

Failover

Since we’re dealing with the internet, nothing can ever be 100% reliable. While we can try, there will be occasional network glitches both on our end and on your end. With our advanced failover system, you can optionally specify a backup number (like a cell phone) to forward your calls to if there’s ever a problem with the connection anywhere between our network and your phone adapter. This is also useful if your power goes out or you just lose internet connectivity for any reason.

E911

The FCC requires that we provide E911 service for all US-based customers. If you live in an area which is equipped to electronically receive address information, your address will be automatically transferred to YOUR E911 center when you dial 911. You can update your E911 address in real-time within vPanel in case you’re traveling, etc.

Do Not Disturb

If you enable DND, ALL your calls with be routed to voicemail or a busy signal (your choice) unless the caller is specifically on your “whitelist”. In addition to having a whitelist of numbers, you can whitelist groups and contacts as well.

SIP URIs

For those more advanced users, our entire system supports SIP addresses throughout. Your account will have a SIP address for direct SIP calling and you can also use SIP addresses anywhere you would specific a destination number in the system with call forwarding, etc.

Community Powered TeleMarketing Block

Telemarketers are getting more and more crafty these days. We noticed there were a lot of database type sites where people shared numbers of telemarketing calls they got. We decided to integrate a telemarketer block based on community based submissions. If you enable this feature, any calls flagged by you or other VOIPo users as telemarketing will automatically go to straight to your voicemail. This will be one of several community-based projects that are integrated.

International Call Block

No one likes surprises, so we’ve included the option to block international calls from being made using your phone with one click.

Choose Your Own Area Code

When you order VOIPo service, you can select a phone number from any available location even if you don’t live there. So if you live in NYC, but would rather have a Miami number, you can. Numbers are not necessarily tied to your physical location.

Number Portability

If you already have an existing phone number, you can transfer it to our service as long as we normally offer service in the ratecenter of the phone number. One limitation…we cannot port in cell phone numbers…landline, VoIP, and toll-free numbers are fine. Transfers typically take 3-6 weeks to complete (this is industry standard unfortunately).

Tentative Pricing

$22.95 – If Paid Monthly
$59 – If Paid Every 3 Months
$99 – If Paid Every 6 Months


Unlimited Calling to the US and Canada
Free Calling Features (All of the Above)
Free Phone Adapter

All plans have a $29.95 activation fee. Federal, state and local governments in the US along with the FCC require us to provide certain services, comply with certain regulatory policies, and collect taxes when they deem appropriate. A USF surcharge and an E911 Recovery Fee will be billed with service. We don’t like to do this either, but unfortunately VoIP is regulated by the government unlike web hosting.

Optional Addons

Virtual Numbers

You’re able to add additional phone numbers to your account from any cities/ratecenters that we offer service in. Just like domain parking, these numbers simply point to your main account. This is especially useful if you want to have a presence in another city.

Additional local numbers can be added for $4.95 Monthly or $24 Yearly.

A personal toll-free number that points to your account can be added for $4.95 Monthly or $24 Yearly. 100 Toll-Free minutes are included with each toll-free number each month. Additional minutes are billed at 2.9 cents.

Resellers

We know that all of you are very excited about our VoIP Reseller Program. You'll be able to resell this service to any of your customers. We anticipate launching the reseller program shortly after the full launch of all VOIPo service. Basically you'll have a $25/monthly reseller account which gets you access to our entire system including our infrastructure, our proprietary vPanel control panel system, etc. You'll then buy each account at a wholesale rate and bill your customers whatever and however you want.

Wholesale pricing will be released when we get ready to launch the reseller program.

Tim,
I have some questions:

Quote:

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Free Phone Adapter

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Could you elaborate? ie., do we need to return the ATA when we stop using the service?, etc...

Code:

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All plans have a $29.95 activation fee

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Does this mean that we would be charge for activation even if we elect to use our own ATAs/softphones?

Code:

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Virtual Numbers

You’re able to add additional phone numbers to your account from any cities/ratecenters that we offer service in. Just like domain parking, these numbers simply point to your main account. This is especially useful if you want to have a presence in another city.

Additional local numbers can be added for $4.95 Monthly or $24 Yearly.

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is there a known cap for incoming calls to these virtual numbers?

finally, multiple registration? ie., how does it work if I use both the ATA and a softphone on 1 account?

Thanks for your time
-v

Just wondering if you have any plans to have this available to Australian users?,
And if so in what time frame?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jordanlw

Just wondering if you have any plans to have this available to Australian users?,
And if so in what time frame?

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As long as you have a good enough connection to our servers here to maintain call quality, you could use this in Australia now...you'd just have a US number and it'd be like a US line.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by voxabox

Tim,
I have some questions:

Could you elaborate? ie., do we need to return the ATA when we stop using the service?, etc...

Code:

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All plans have a $29.95 activation fee

---

Does this mean that we would be charge for activation even if we elect to use our own ATAs/softphones?

Code:

---

Virtual Numbers

You’re able to add additional phone numbers to your account from any cities/ratecenters that we offer service in. Just like domain parking, these numbers simply point to your main account. This is especially useful if you want to have a presence in another city.

Additional local numbers can be added for $4.95 Monthly or $24 Yearly.

---

is there a known cap for incoming calls to these virtual numbers?

finally, multiple registration? ie., how does it work if I use both the ATA and a softphone on 1 account?

Thanks for your time
-v

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Yes, the ATA would need to be returned upon cancellation.

BYOD is not something we'll actively push, but I can waive the setup for you on it. The activation fee is basically for the equipment. If we sell the equipment to you, we'd have to deal with sales tax and there are a few other challenges with that.

In terms of multiple registrations, we're comparing a few options on that, but no definitive answer for you yet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VOIPoTim

As long as you have a good enough connection to our servers here to maintain call quality, you could use this in Australia now...you'd just have a US number and it'd be like a US line.

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Ok,
I was more asking about having AU numbers and calling AU numbers etc,
But I can still use a US number.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VOIPoTim

Optional Addons

Virtual Numbers

Resellers

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Did you forget to highlight that you also have superb inbound/outbound FAX offerings for the _residential_ plan?!

Or are you going to delete that feature? ;-)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jordanlw

Ok,
I was more asking about having AU numbers and calling AU numbers etc,
But I can still use a US number.

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Yeah, no real ETA on that yet...sorry. Australia is definitely on our radar though for the future.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gbh2o

Did you forget to highlight that you also have superb inbound/outbound FAX offerings for the _residential_ plan?!

Or are you going to delete that feature? ;-)

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I just forgot about it.

Now if everyone looks back, I said that fax over VoIP would be unreliable when people asked if we were going to match the VT detection on primary number. There are reasons for the things we do. We can't just delete something one we sell it, so need to be sure things will work first ;)

I will be wanting to stay with the Residential Plan with likely
one-DID with two-REGISTRATIONS.

I would likely drop the FAX and VIRTUAL number.

I would entertain a Pay-As-You-Go outbound FAX Service, I likely have little need,
but even a $1 a fax for no monthly fee would be a comfort to have available.
(Using the file upload feature naturally!)
You could even just make that a no-sign-up feature on your main web page :)

A Virtual number would be interesting if I could re-point it at a SIP URI.
Forwarding to SIP should not use extra minutes?

I would point Packet8 to the virtual,
and the virtual to sip:mynumber@fwd.pulver.com
and default back to the main VOIPo VMail.

I'll get back to everyone in a few days regarding multiple registrations. We're looking into a few things with this.

A pay per use fax service is interesting and a possibility for customers who have other services. Kind of tough to do standalone because of merchant fees though.

Some general chatter on DSLR about multiple registrations:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r202...l-SIP-channels

It is interesting that some don't think such a product could exist.

The 'need' for some to legitimately have multiple registrations can be valid. I have accounts that ring devices both at home, and at my second home. Only the first to answer gets the call, but it does not inhibit/interfere with any other use of that account. Calls to your own number are really 'internal' as if to an extension, never touching the PSTN.

The frequent traveler may want to leave the home ATA alone, and available for family use, but still have access while on the road. Some providers will allow a second ATA/registration for that purpose with a similar first answer to the above use. Other providers will even allow a second DID to be assigned for the alternate ATA on the same 'account'

The biggest danger of course is that many will try to abuse such accounts by giving an extra adapter to a party other than a legitimate family member, just to cheat the provider out of what should legitimately be a separate account. Clearly stated volume limits are required to prevent such abuse.

gbh2o,
thanks, you read my mind(;

Wrong post NM :D:)