Hello everyone, just to give a little feedback 4 months ago I was with Bell DSL regular high speed internet and I wanted to give Vonage a go needless to say i bought the start up kit from FS hooked it all up and was a complete disaster I was on the phone with Vonage Tech for three days for at least an hour every time trying to figure out voice quality issues so a week later a cancelled Vonage with no problems. While at work I sat with our IT guy and told him about my problems with vonage (which he himself has) and he said that DSL to be at fault something about bells packets getting in before vonage's packets can.Anyway my wife is now freaked out about VoIP but now that I'm with Mountain cable for internet I hope this is the answer to my problems so far it's giving bell a whooping speed wise. My question to everyone here is I want to go with Primus this time due to which I think has better features, as I read through the forums I see complaints in both Vonage and Primus forums which has now confused me and who may have the better reliability/service. When you sign up with Primus do I call bell to cancel or does Primus? and is there time in-between to try it out while waiting for primus to do the switch (do I get a temp #) is there a contract with primus because i did not see that on there site. Would anyone say that Vonage and Primus be the same thing same technologies ect ect?. Any and all recommendations opinions will be appreciated. One more thing I have not read anything on 911 can anyone tell me if they are in the same boat as Vonage or worse?


TIA

i can answer some of your questions. i have cable and never had problems with vonage or primus through my cable high speed connection. primus is a similar technology to vonage, but without getting into real technicalities they are different when you get to the vonage or primus servers. Vonage uses something called SIP. I'm not sure what Primus is using, but it is different. To the end user this should be transparent. As far as 911 goes primus does offer it. they have e911 but only if you live where your telephone number originates. so if you have a Vancouver number but live in Calgary, you are not going to get e911, they will give you a 911 service that will call the Calgary local authorities. From what i understand they will not know your address so you will need to speak to the dispatcher when you call 911. this could pose a problem if you are unable to speak (choking, etc). They are working on making e911 more compatible with Voip. i think over the next couple of years it will be fully compatible. in the meantime you might want to have a cell phone kicking around for backup. if your number is transportable, primus will obtain the number from your local telephone company. do not call them to have the number disconnected. primus will do this. if you do it yourself you will lose your number. primus and vonage can only obtain numbers that are currently in your name. if you quit your local telco, that number will no longer be in your name. when you first get your box you will be assigned a temporary number until the number porting has completed. if they are unable to port your number for some weird reason, you can cancel your primus service with no charges. they will pay to have your d-link device sent back to them.

i would not recommend primus. ive been a customer for several months, and i find primus to be terrible. my phone service itself isnt that bad, but customer service problems, billing problems, extra features problems, etc make the savings not worth it. a lot of people seem to dislike their phone company, but you havent disliked a phone company until youve been with primus ;)

Unlike the previous reply, I've been with primus for over a year and have had no problem with them what so ever! I hear customer service isn't the best, but then very few companies today do. I have only needed to call CSR once and it was certainly better than dealing with Bell or Rogers.
Where else can you call anywhere in Canada and the US at anytime for $29 a month tax in. Plus my relatives in Nova Scotia can call me as a local call.

I have been with both Primus and Vonage and have to say that the customer service with both companies sucks. Vonage actually farms a lot of their customer service out to India, and the people I get on the phone don't seem to give a damn about problems that arise. I had a billing problem once with Primus. The only customer service problem I had with that was the long wait on the phone to get in touch with someone. So I hung up after 45 minutes of being on hold. Yes that is bad, but Vonage has long wait times too. Instead I sent an email to Primus 'ecare@primustel.ca' explaining the problem. I provided them with my account number. Within 2 days someone replied stating that they were going to credit my statement. They did, they removed the extra $$$ that was erroneously charged to my primus bill. i have not had any problems with them since. i travel with my primus adapter and can make free calls from any hotel that has high speed internet. i think primus is wonderful. I really love their remote phone feature - something that vonage does not offer. i also like the fact that primus publishes my name and number in the phone book. Another feature that vonage does not offer. primus also has call privacy and do not disturb. two more features that vonage does not have.

Just to clarify the 911 issue with Primus. As far as I know e911 means that the address you reside at corresponds with the local exchange of your Primus TBB number. In this case, a call to 911 is routed directly to the emergency dispatch--no different than if you called from a landline. e911 is available to most Primus customers with an eligible phone number (except in Alberta, as Telus has been less than generous with access to the subscriber database--but I believe the CRTC has just ruled that they must provide access, so this should change soon).

Basic 911 is for those customers whose phone number does not correspond to their local exchange. In this case, a call to 911 is routed to a local Public Service Access Point (PSAP) which confirms the location of the emergency, and then transfers the call to the appropriate dispatch centre. 911 service is still accessible, but involves a extra step.

Primus has confirmed that the address information they have on file will always be transmitted to the PSAP in the case of Basic 911, even though this is not mandated by the CRTC. So if you are unable to confirm your address with the PSAP, you are not screwed, since they will still have your address (assuming you have kept it up to date with Primus).

I hope this clarifies the 911 issue.

Steve

That is news to me. Thanks for clarifying that Steve. I feel more secure about Primus than ever now. When I had Vonage, I called 911 once to report something and the local police told me that they could not tell where I was calling from. They said my phone call come into a line that is generally used for cell phone 911 calls and said something must be wrong that my call went through that route. they had no idea of voip either. I think as more and more people become familiar with VoIP, this will change. Once a few emergencies start happening to people who have VoIP service, you will start to see improvements being made.

Thanks to all that have replied great info! and good reading!

googe i would not recommend primus. Ive been a customer for several months, and i find primus to be terrible. my phone service itself isn't that bad,

The way I see it if the phone service itself is not bad then you really don't need to contact customer service or for the once or twice that you do need it....

Vonage actually farms a lot of their customer service out to India,

Is that why the call to there CS sounded so crappy with such a delay and that would explain the accent of them when i talked to them. Believe me i was so scared because i figured they were using VoIP to and it sounded pretty bad.

Thanks everyone it sounds like it's worth a go fore sure! if anyone else has anything to add to this please do I will keep reading until i get it. Thanks again everyone

Thanks to all that have replied great info! and good reading!



The way I see it if the phone service itself is not bad then you really don't need to contact customer service or for the once or twice that you do need it....



youd be wrong. when features disappear off your account, when they fail to give you promised incentives (air miles, free phone), when they overcharge you, when you requested an alternate number at your time of activation and they cant manage to get it working even several months later, i could go on for a while here...

you WILL regret it :)

Primus TalkBroadband certainly isn't perfect but I've found it to be very good. There was a problem in activating a secondary number but a quick phone call fixed it right up. Unlike some of their competitors, Primus actually replies to emails in a reasonably timely fashion.

Reliability has been very good.

The only thing that annoys me (and this is slight) is a staticky sound that I get on my end sometimes. It is quite frequent on some calls (particularly on calls to or from callers with cordless phones) but is found on almost all calls. I think that the codec Primus is using is causing some very minor cordless phone static and exacerbating it. The static is not audible on calls to the same numbers made from my landline. Interestingly, TalkBroadband calls forwarded to a landline exhibit the same noise.

I'm on Vonage too, and I'm happy with it also but the configurability of Primus is much superior. I'd give an edge to Vonage for sound quality though.

i agree with that. the sound quality with vonage is slightly better than the quality with primus. sometimes with primus i get a bad circuit or a bad something and have to hang up and call back again. i have never had this happen with vonage, but i still find this a minor problem. some may not.

One thing I've noticed about Primus is that if you're running a torrent (even throttled), the jitter increases dramatically. This is with Bell HSU. If I turn off all of my torrents, the voice quality is good.

Keep that in mind if you plan to do alot of P2P at the same time.

What is a torrent? I have had the rare jitter on my conversations. It does not happen often.

BitTorrent is a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing protocol. Unlike most P2P applications it uses alot of upstream bandwith.

Well I do P2P so I guess I'll just have to let it run overnight when I would not be using the phone much or at all that's all. Can't wait to try it out.

That doesn't apply to me then. I don't use BitTorrent, but I still occasionally get jitter, even when my computer is turned off. It happens more often when calling someone with a 902 area code.

OK so one last question before i get the service in this coming week, What would happen if i go as far as having my number (from Bell) ported over to Primus an I find that I do not like the service and decide to try another provider which I hope does not happen. Will my phone number still be mine or will i lose my number to primus and have to get a new number with whomever i decide to go with. This is just another one of my wife's paranoia that's all.


Thanks

As long as you don't cancel any of your services prior to obtaining your new service, you should be OK if you were wanting to go back to Bell. You would just call Bell, pay the $90 or so dollars to hook you back up, and tell them that you want your number ported back from Primus. They will then look after cancelling your Primus account and obtaining your number.

So, I assume that would be the same for any thing i wanted to do or go to, ie: Rogers home phone,Vonage ect ect.. as long as I hang on to primus until the transfer is done.

it's actually only the standard $55 crtc regulated tariff if you need to come back to bell, not $90.



nem,who is making a correction