VOIP providers better if closer to your area? Recommendation on VOIP provider with BYOD device or not...

[p***@gmail.com]

I used Vonage for a few years with great results but then audio was
choppy and echo was unbearable. May be related to area I am in in
North Carolina. Went back to ATT landline. Now have a new RoadRunner
modem and Turbo plan and am getting much better download speeds
ranging from 1.5mb-7mb down and 476 up. QOS score varies from 65-99%,
and MOS score ranges from 3.4-4.2.

SO obviously area I am in is a bit erratic and in the end may not be
suitable for VOIP. When it rains outside it gets worse and I am not in
the boonies at all. Time Warner has one of its HQ's here. TW has
analyzed my line and it has gone to 3rd level support and they said it
is as good as it gets...

Tried Callcentric based in New York and with the Linksys PAP2T-NA ATA
adapter there was a bit of a hum the receiving party could hear. Also
when a person on the other end spoke (and they live 10 miles away and
have a landline on a large carrier, but not ATT), they sounded a bit
static-ky.

Question: Have any ideas if I should even try another VOIP provider?
Does the location or presence of a VOIP provider "central office" of
sorts being closer to me have any bearing on call quality????


I could go with Time Warner's VOIP plan and am not pinching pennies
but it is about $22 a month (including taxes) more than most VOIP
providers. Which translates to $48-$50/month (even on bundled plan).
This is $10 less than my ATT landline and not worth switching for $10
(give or take) a month.

Thanks so much
Patty

[Thomas T. Veldhouse]

Post by p***@gmail.com
Question: Have any ideas if I should even try another VOIP provider?
Does the location or presence of a VOIP provider "central office" of
sorts being closer to me have any bearing on call quality????

Frankly, if Vonage didn't work for you, then I think the problem is most
likely that you have your ATA behind a router and it is configured incorrectly
or your ISP is messing with SIP and RTP to give advantage to their own service
[which is most liekly not legal].

I use Viatalk and am VERY happy with them. I have a teenage daughter and in
the last 30 days, my line has seen:

Total minutes used in this date range: 3324 minutes

I have not had a single complaint from my Daughter this month and she
occassionally uses the three way calling feature. The only issue we have had
at all is the occassional call to or from a cell phone will leave the
cellphone end hearing their voice occassionally [and only mildly] echoed back
at them. I am sure that is an interaction between echo cancelling software in
the VoIP ATA and the cell/pcs tower; definitely not an issue 99% of the time
with cell phones [I call home all the time]. If you don't know what you are
doing, then just call them up, explain your setup and get the provisioned ATA
from them at a nice price of $199 / year with a second year free and a second
line free [I am sure you have to pay for that second line after two years
;-)]. I pay taxes every month of $3.45, but you can put in the comments when
you sign-up that you would like to prepay those as well and they will add that
to the charge [the advantage is that if they ever increase those rates, you
are covered].

[p***@gmail.com]

Post by Thomas T. Veldhouse

Post by p***@gmail.com
Question: Have any ideas if I should even try another VOIP provider?
Does the location or presence of a VOIP provider "central office" of
sorts being closer to me have any bearing on call quality????

Frankly, if Vonage didn't work for you, then I think the problem is most
likely that you have your ATA behind a router and it is configured incorrectly
or your ISP is messing with SIP and RTP to give advantage to their own service
[which is most likely not legal].
I use Viatalk and am VERY happy with them.  I have a teenage daughter and in
 Total minutes used in this date range: 3324 minutes
I have not had a single complaint from my Daughter this month and she
occasionally uses the three way calling feature.  The only issue we have had
at all is the occasional call to or from a cell phone will leave the
cell phone end hearing their voice occasionally [and only mildly] echoed back
at them.  I am sure that is an interaction between echo canceling software in
the VOIP ATA and the cell/pcs tower; definitely not an issue 99% of the time
with cell phones [I call home all the time].  If you don't know what you are
doing, then just call them up, explain your setup and get the provisioned ATA
from them at a nice price of $199 / year with a second year free and a second
line free [I am sure you have to pay for that second line after two years
;-)].  I pay taxes every month of $3.45, but you can put in the comments when
you sign-up that you would like to prepay those as well and they will add that
to the charge [the advantage is that if they ever increase those rates, you
are covered].
--
Thomas T. Veldhouse
  In the land of the dark the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful Dead.
             -- Egyptian Book of the Dead

May try that Thomas. Thank you.

I am pretty technical and all is set up fine. It may be that my
provider (Time Warner) is indeed giving preference to their own
service as you say. I notice that the ATA has to find another port
than 5060 or 5061 which is blocked by the provider, so the Linksys ATA
uses 6000. I found this out when I tried one of the speedtests online
and took the router out of the equation and also with NO firewall
software running in XP.

Will try Callcentric and my Pap2 at a friends house who also has
RoadRunner b4 I try Viatalk.

I have a lot of latency issues where I live for some reason (could be
overloaded switch I may be on) and some timeouts on ping's. Also QOS
(fragmented packets) and download speed widely varies from day to day.
Had them check it out 2x and they said it is fine and nothing they can
do. I am held captive since there is no other Cable provider.

Appreciate it
Patty