Sep 02

New Voip Service

By linc Home Life, Voip No Comments »


The lucky winner of the draw was Inphonex. After a whole lot of searching the web and EULA browsing, I decided to go with Inphonex. What I found was that most of the residential VOIP companies carry the same sort of undesirable EULA that Broadvoice does. On top of that, there appears to be a plethora of hidden fees and vendor locked in equipment as well. The sweet spot for price point is around $25 a month for unlimited US/Canada calling per month, and that’s what you get with Inphonex as well, but what really sold me on them was their stance on BYOD or Bring Your Own Device. They are completely cool with the Asterisk/Trixbox/OpenPBX crowd to the point that they offer working configs on their website. They also do the same for a good selection of VOIP equipment like phones (I have a Grandstream BudgeTone 100) and ATA’s.

These guys are serious about their security. They asked me for a bunch of information and even called me before giving me an account. I was a little put off about how long the process took, but then again, I signed up over a holiday weekend, and in these days of Identity Theft, I did appreciate that they checked me out so well.

As I previously mentioned, they have many config tutorials available on their website, so setup of my phone was a snap. A couple quick config changes and I was able to start using my phone right away without so much as having to send them mac addresses or what have you like I did with Broadvoice.

The quality of the viop service is VERY clear. Much more so using the same equipment than Broadvoice was. The real test will be in the coming days as I call my parents and inlaws, who were always complaining about Broadvoice that they would call our home and consistently get only fast busys.

I can’t say much else about the service just yet because I haven’t had much chance to use it, but stay tuned here for updates!

Aug 26

New Voip Provider? HELP!

By linc Customer Service, Home Life, TLLTS, Voip 3 Comments »

I have to admit that I have been using Broadvoice for quite a while now. We even use it for the TechShow as well. They have served pretty well with only a few growing pains and problems early on. All would have been happy ever after if I hadn’t read a horrible Broadvoice review on the web recently. It prompted me to go back and read the Broadvoice Terms of Service (TOS).

That particular TOS is probably one of the worst I have ever read, doing such things as giving them permission to back bill your credit card thousands of dollars for anything they perceive may be a violation of their TOS, without notice, without arbitration, etc. Now I haven’t had any problems with them, but I was horrified at what I read (and I do not remember any of this stuff when I signed up – go figure). I followed their cancellation procedure and will be rid of such nonsense at the end of the month.

This leaves me in a bit of a pickle. I do need home phone service. It seems logical that I should continue down the road with my technological affinity and stay with VOIP, but with whom? That is where you all come in. I am looking for a good quality provider, with a relatively (<$25) inexpensive monthly plan for unlimited US calling (or maybe an obscene number of minutes). Please let me know if you have any recommendations. Currently the ones I am looking at are Axvoice and PhonePower, however, I am sure there are a ton that I am missing. In fact, I may even consider Vonage, simply because the hardware is readily available and the price point meets. Any horror stories? Recommendations? Send ‘em along!

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