I posted a big rave about VoIP a while back. It’s a great thing. But you may want to consider which service provider you use. If anyone has any suggestions regarding which provider I move to from TPG I’d be grateful. We’ve had an ‘outage’ for several days disabling the VoIP phone. I rang them and was referred to their website which informs me of the outage in these terms.
Southport VPC
Friday 9 February 2007, 4:52 PM
Customers using the Southport VPC Gateway (Virtual Phone Card) will not be able to make calls due to a hardware fault. TPG apologises for any inconvenience caused.
Outage Started: Thursday 11 January 2007, 4:46 PM AEDST
Outage Window: It is estimated to last 56 days (emphasis added!)
I told the guy on the other end of the phone that this was the developed world. He said that TPG apologised for the inconvenience and was doing what it could to shorten the outage. He told me to have a great day. I told him to have a great day too.
If you’re reading this, you may as well go and have great day as well. Won’t cost anyone anything.
I’m sure this wasn’t your intention, but your post made me feel quite happy in a schadenfreude sort of way. TPG is even worse than my own experience of Telstra’s fixed line performance. The last time I moved business premises in 1998 (shortly before retreating to the university) Telstra connected our business phone lines to the wrong building. It took them some 5 weeks to remedy the problem. They had not only somehow got the wrong address, but also failed to check that there were enough free existing “shared pairs” at the right address, despite being specifically requested to do so (because they had made the same mistake the time before that when we had moved premises). It ended up taking them 5 weeks to string an extra cable. However at least in the meantime they supplied us with a radio telephone!
Yes, but I’ve already ascertained that I can switch VoIP supplier in a few minutes – just wanting to hear Troppodillian’s experience before I do. I hear quite good things about Engin and Faktortel Both – certainly Engin give you an incoming number. TPG doesn’t run to that.
I have no experience with Voip but my hosting company offers it:
http://serversaustralia.com.au/voip.php
Nick – I have been out of contract with my ISP Netspace for about a year now – i’m on an old plan but grandfathered month to month if i pay. There has been no benefit for me to enter into a contract. Now we have ADSL2+ at my exchange and by my walking I estimate i’m only 1.4 ks away – so that should mean good – in theory.
However my ISP Netspace has been announcing since Sept 2006 that they will have ADSL2+ just before xmas – so I waited. Then in Nov they announced that due to Telstra not releasing ADSL2 in other places they had to reconsider and were only offering up to 1.5MB on ordinary adsl.
But that they would probably bring in ADSL2+ in Jan 2007. Now they tell me they will be “making an announcement in the next week or so”.
So I’m waiting cos I have my conection, my few emails with them (business domian name and emails & web page and web photo storage etc are hosted cheaply and reliably elsewhere in USA) The only other ADSL2 mob who operate at my exchange at present, besides Telstra and I would never use them, is TPG. They, or their Philipines call centre, advise me that ” it might take up to two weeks without a net connection to change over”
Netspace have had a good uptime rate in the years i have been with them, competitivly priced but their service is pretty bad judging from the one time I needed to use it. I had lost / forgotten all my login/ passwords for Netspace as I rarely log in and all my email amd web hosting is sepereate.
Phone call advised me there was a 45 minute wait for assistance. I emailed them the problem, to sales, help, supervisor etc. Aftr waiting 5 hours with no reply I decided to do the Enigma Code thing and systematicaly spend an hour with logins and password guesses. Got it in 30 mins. Two days later still have not got a reply to my help request.
I’ll wait two weeks to see if netspace offers adsl2+ competitively – I would want say, 24mbt for $49 a month, no upfront, supply my own modem, shaped after say 18 – 25 gig, no excess charged, proven uptime rates. I think all service is shite and I rarely need it soo it wont figure in my decision.
I’ll have a swing through the marvellous Whirlpool site before I make my decision.
oh netspace give me a VoIP option without any contract too. I have signed up for their VOIP, no fee, downloaded a bit of virual phoen software, small amoun of set up time, purchased $15 USB VOIP Phone at MSY (bless them) and can use whenever I like for 10c or 20c anywhere in oz i think. Still not as cheap as well chosen phone card for overseas. For regular family and friend overseas calls we use Skype – and its FREE to talk to Scotland or Ireland or Taiwan for an hour
I have GoTalk with a free telephone adapter as a bonus for signing up for 12 months. But the line quality is more variable than I would like and there seems to be a real issue with incoming calls – notably at Christmas, when no-one could us nor could we call them.
Even generally incoming calls, to our old number which we had ported, seem erratic.
Since the main caller is my mother-in-law, and we both use our mobiles, I don’t really care but I won’t be renewing the contract if service doesn’t get much better.
OTOH, the (Indian) help-desk is good, and available at pretty good hours inc weekends. And I pay about $20 a month, with not that many calls at 10c per minute in Australia and pretty cheap to Europe.
I thoroughly recommend nodephone from Internode. Internode invest in their own carrier grade technology. It is not as low priced as some of the others on the market but it really is a replacement for your phone in terms of reliability.
A mention of Internode – I HAVE to talk about their support line (I have ADSL, not VOIP). They must be the ONLY company in the country with a phone support system that lets you leave your phone number and a real human being phones you back when they get to you in the queue. :))))))
Of course Whirlpool is the place to check it all out, but my experience of Internode has been very positive. Am going to check out VOIP so I will be interested in the results.
I’ve had a good experience with skype – both free (computer to computer) and very cheap calls (as FXH says). One of my best mates lives in Scotland so this has been a boon. Good luck with it all!
skepticlawyer – my brother is in scotland and his company (usa oil supplies) uses SKYPE in the office, free to their own global offices and Skype OUT to others. What I didn’t point out clearly was that the Phone Cards you can buy at Chineses and Indian shops and milkbars are much much cheaper than Skype out or any VOIP rates except free.
We get a 15 hour card to Taiwan (landline to landline – to mobile is dearer rate) for $10. There are similar rates to most countries but not all cards are alike – shop around for best rates to wherever. And the cards allow you and the other end to not have to buy extra equipment or be chained to computer.
15 hours of talk to Taiwan with Telstra would cost me $873.00
Mate if you are needing a business VoIP connection go with a company called resonance networks,
They have guarantees about outage, check them out anyway.
I posted a big rave about VoIP a while back. It