Thats excellent news to hear.. I'm happy they missed the chance to charge your creditcard and to get you as a client.

djino
"AGAIN, AVOID THIS COMPANY AT ALL COST!!!"
Didn't you just suggest this company as an option in the thread requesting info on potential VoIP service providers in Toronto? That seems mildly inconsistent. :confused:

Steve

Try looking at the date of the post. Almost a year ago.

And like I said in a few post above, I was fine with CIA as long as I didn't have to call with them, the service was great, but as soon as a problem arised, you'll have headaches for weeks to come.

djino
"Thanks bud, try again"

Oops! My bad. Sorry. :)

I had finally makes my SPA2102 works behind my Dlink DI524 router. then I tried to make a test call. everything works fine, but after other party picks up the phone and say hi, it lose the voice or sound. I hear nothing, but other party can hear me. i don't know what did i do wrong on the setting.

substitude via address: yes
no stun
NAT mapping: Yes
NAT keep alive: Yes
Ext ip: 72.xxx.xxx.xxx (my real ip to the world)
and had forward UDP port 53,69,5060,5061,20000-20011, 16384-16482,60000-60256 from Dlink to SPA

can anyone help me with it
I can call but hear no voice from other side. other side can hear me....

Thanks kk52736 for your configurations so I have succeeded in putting my PAP2-NA behind a D-Link DI-604 router that I had been trying in the last few days. This helps to eliminate the frequent network drop in my computer due to the hourly resync/reset of the rental SPA2102 provisioned by CIA. So far I have no problem making and receiving calls.

This company really sucks. I subscribed to it's Phone package including free High speed internet for 39.95$. The phone is no longer working (I don't know why). I kept it's cable internet connection (in fact Videotron's) thought since it still be a good deal for an up to 7Mbits/s connection. Of course I have similar experience as those who filled the pages of comments. I intend to cancel the service. Any advice?

Prior to cancelling, cancel your credit card that they debit charges from and ask your bank for a new card number. You may see that they will start charging your card for bogus charges for equipment that you were either renting or had purchased.

They charged my credit card 5 times after cancellation which amounted to nearly $500. (yes, I got the charges adjusted...but what a headache that was)

djino
"STAY AWAY FROM CIA"

Whoops! Just moved from Ontario to Edmonton recently and now waiting for CIA phone package to arrive. Guess time will only tell. I do know that I haven't been able to get through to customer support to cancel the LD plan I had back home.

After having been in the retail sector for over 25 years, including e-commerce, the one thing we always have to be aware of is that the credit card companies will only honour two forms of verified credit card purchase in case of a cardholder's dispute.

The cardholder's original signature must appear on either a point-of-sale print-out slip, or on one of the slips from the old style embossing machines. I have on three separate occasions had charges reversed for this very reason. My only alternative then was civil action, and who in their right mind would try and sue someone in another country for $200.

All you have to do is call your CC company and ask they send copies of the original invoices. They will make a formal request to CIA who will likely forward printouts of your online invoices (sans signature of course)

If you have not signed either form mentioned above, dispute the purchase. CIA's merchant account will be backcharged those specific amounts, which in turn will be credited back to your account.

Now you won't have to call them, they will call you.

After a lot of thinking and researching I decided to sing up with CIA/3Web Home Phone Premium package.

Both modems arrived 8 working days after I sign up. Internet was active 5 working days after I sign up but I couldn't use it since modems didn't arrive yet. Installation was easy and after one hour I had my phone and Internet working fine. I'm in Toronto / Etobicoke and I have download speed 2600 and upload 650. I can say that system is working fine sound clarity is very good and there is no clicks, echo, etc... I only noticed that when I'm watching TV over internet while on call, other party hear my voice chopped sometimes. It looks that Linksys is not working good with priorities. I have just few "small" issues until now.

1.)
When I signed up I received email confirming that my dry loop monthly cost will be $4.25. After few days I received email with info that dry loop cost will be $9.95. Since I already singed up and accepted first mentioned price I didn't like this, but I can't cancel service now. Also, I think that this is not CIA's fault since money for dry loop is going 100% to Bell or Rogers.

2.)
Since I installed modems, voice modem is disconnecting exactly every 60 minutes from network and then connect again after 2 seconds. This is not big deal if you are using Internet, except annoying balloon info in Windows that your network just had been disconnected and connected again, but I suppose that my phone call will drop when that happens. It even look like this disconnect issue happens exactly 5 minute to every fool hours. Is there anyone who had similar issue?

So, for now I can say that I'm satisfied with system. I will keep you informed in this thread if there is some issue.

Thank you in advance,
G

All I can say is Big Mistake.

djino
"I guess we all have to live and learn"

Since you are paying $40 a month, you will have to learn to be very patient with this company. I think being systematic with their customer support is important.

Call them late, at around 10:30pm just before 11:00pm in the evening. Make sure you have speaker phone and you are close to the phone.

I'm still trying to find a good email I can contact them through. I found this one from an issue I had before: hdagent1206@3web.com. I guess it's a specific agent. That might be the best way as of now, I believe their system is having some email problems.

What is the best way to resolve a billing issue, call them or email them somewhere?

Thanks.

For anyone interested I am a CIA customer for the last 3 years, the first two was just high speed internet. No major problems just the usual problems trying to get customer service. The problems began when I got the phone service. I won't get into it but I will say I received no results until I emailed the Better Business Bureau. The same day I received a reply from CIA and issues were fixed within a few days with a credit to my account.

Hope this helps. By the way are all internet phones this bad or is it just 3web?

I can't speak for all voip... but I've been with 3 (Primus, Yak, and CIA). Best service was with Yak (I left them for the cheaper option that included highspeed with CIA).

CIA was horrible.

djino
"NEVER AGAIN!"

I have a success story.....FINALLY

I had been having problems with my SPA2102 (aka:VT) unit since I received it from 3web.:mad: I was only capable of having my setup like this. Any other setup that I could conceive would result in no dial tone.
cable modem->VT->router

This drove me crazy because I use uTorrent and the lack of QOS support by 3web meant that anytime I upload or sent large email attachments the voip phone would get jitter and dropped packets ending in a very upset girlfriend. My temporary fix was to manually turn off any outbound traffic before using the phone, it was really a PITA when I was getting a call. :eek:

I now have my setup as so
cable modem->router->VT

My 3com router is QOS capable, so I have QOS enabled by MAC of the spa2102. I also forward the ports 5060-5080 and 20000-20011 to the VT's IP. Other fixes were needed to the VT itself. Now I don't have a clue what these settings do. All I know is that it works. Who cares HOW!
Note: I needed admin rights to change the following
Stunserver.org has a homepage here http://www.stunserver.org/

Voice Tab -> SIP Tab Line 1 Tab
Handle VIA recieved YES NAT Mapping Enable YES
Substitute VIA Addr YES NAT Keepalive Enable YES
STUN Enable YES SIP Proxy-Require: $PROXY
STUN Server stunserver.org

I do know that about every hour the VT updates itself with a config from 3web. So I changed the following to prevent losing my changes.
Voice Tab -> Provisioning Tab
Profile Rule: Change to something other than the default.

So now I am happy, the VT will register to the CIA/3web server from behind the router,and I get uninterrupted traffic on my LAN.

NO DROPPED CALLS YET!!!!!:cool:


Clayton .. I hope this helps somebody

Might not be clear what options I changed so try again.....(my edit button disappeared)

Voice Tab -> SIP .................Voice Tab -> Line 1 Tab
Handle VIA recieved YES .......NAT Mapping Enable YES
Substitute VIA Addr YES .......NAT Keepalive Enable YES
STUN Enable YES .................SIP Proxy-Require: $PROXY
STUN Server stunserver.org

I have two friends that use CIA...and while they had several intermittent problems last year, they stuck it out and have been problem free for the past 6 months. They felt that most of the technical issues had been resolved...so I decided to give it a try.

1. Picked up a motorola modem and vt1005 voice terminal used.
2. Ordered the service, gave CIA my MAC addresses online.
3. Internet was up on schedule. The VT1005 wouldn't connect to CIA server.
4. I called tech support on a saturday...waited 20 mins...they told me they couldn't solve the problem (which was clearly on their end) until monday.
5. They called me on monday...the VT1005 was already online on my end and the problem was fixed (they were calling to verify). honestly, I was impressed (mind you, I have had VERY negative experience with tech support and Rogers...I was used to it).

I have had ZERO problems for 1 month+ now. The internet (cable internet) is much faster than Rogers express (average bandwidth benchmarks are +50% compared to what I had with rogers). The phone works flawlessly so far.

Other notes: Although I live in Ottawa (right in the city), we can't get DSL. So for high speed (wired) internet its either rogers or cia via cable. I have been a rogers customer for YEARS.

I would just like to point out that in that time I have had many technical support issues with Rogers internet. How would I rate rogers technical support? One word: AWFUL. Our single experience with CIA was FAR and AWAY better than any call I made to rogers tech support (except for the 20 minute wait).

The bottom line? If its strictly a question of quality of technical support then for me its a no brainer. If I am going to get Larry, Moe, and Curly on the other end of the phone either way for tech support then I might as well go with the company that is saving me $40+/month and doesn't throttle my bandwidth on a regular basis. Frankly, anyone who says that Rogers is more reliable for tech support compared to CIA must be living in another reality.

Now, if only there was competition around here for *cable* TV. Then I could rid myself of Robbers once and for all. (and yes I have been looking carefully at the satellite and even OTA options lately...even though I prefer cable PVR, etc).

I let you over time if I experience any problems.

Mike

1) Signed up for high speed cable oct. 2006 with 3web
2) After 3 months signed up for phone & hs cable "cia"
3) I live in Mississauga Ontario.

I was so happy with the hs cable and it's reliability that I signed up for the phone and hs cable. I have had only about 6 internet outages the whole time that lasted 5-30 mins. didn't have to do anything to get things going again except once I powered down all the equip. and it came back when power was restored, until yesterday, when I had an outage that lasted approx. 24 hrs, didn't have to anything, called cust.service couldn't get through but there was a message acknowledging the problem and that they were working on it. So here is my view on this company. There customer service is horable, but so is rogers, their service in my area is as good as competition. I have personally tested bell's dsl, rogers and cogeco with speed test on many occasions no noticable diff. if any thing cia is better. Although I have noticed an improvement in customer service recently, slight improvement. The phone service has been very good, couple of times I did get a bad line, no big deal. My equip. is the mortorola sb5101 and vt1005 originally rented for one month and then purchased once I tested the service. So if you are technically inclined, own a cell phone for occasional outages and are willing to sit and wait for outages to be corrected then Cia for the price is probably for you. Otherwise stick with bell there service is near perfection for phone and is alright for internet.

That is my take on the situation, and at 39.95 per month I really can't expect much more. So it is for this reason that I am happy with their service and know many people who are considering switching to them after explaining my experiance after just under a year.

Later

$39.95 per month, my dad pays $92.00 for Bell and we tested the internet connections using a speed test and both downloads and uploads was faster on my CIA. Plus I get a better LD plan and more phone services.

I agree customer service is not the best, but not many of the big companies are much better. Took a while to setup because there were problems with my phone lines that a Bell tech had to come fix. Now that it is up, calls work fine even when I'm using the net for downloads or gaming.

My suggestion buy yourself a Linksys WRTP54G-NA wireless router with the built in Voip modem with the updated firmware. CIA will work behind a router. Follow these steps:

Here is the step by step:

1. Go to http://myaccount.cia.com/ and login (CIA will give you the username/password), go to Register / Update My Voice Terminal . Put the MAC address of your router there, should be something like 0123456789012;

2. Wait 5 minutes;

3. Open Internet Explorer, paste this link: http://voip.cia.com/provision.php?MAC=0123456789012
(REPLACE the number at the end WITH your actual mac address);
You'll see it return the XML file with information. You want to look for the sections that say User_ID (usually your assigned phone number), Password(something@cia.com) and Proxy address (mine was cia.mtrl2.com or something like that). You have to scroll down a bit to find this information.

4. Put the user id/password/proxy server that you found in the XML file in step 3 into your router. Most people who use routers should know how to access their routers, so in there you can enter the stuff I said for the phone section. For the internet you just put in your username and password at the internet section of your router, this username and password does not come from the XML, it was sent to you by CIA and you see it when you install the CD that came with the setup package. Make sure your internet section on the router is set to automatically obtain an IP address from the ISP.

5. Re-configure the CIA software CD and mark DSL with router and then you won't need to use the software anymore cause your router will automatically connect your comp to the net.

These step worked for me and my CIA premium package works flawlessly on both the wired and wireless ports of my router. I use these steps for the DSL package, but it could work for cable aswell I'd imagine.

Hey Everyone,

I am a new 3web/cia customer, I just moved to Ottawa. my brother has been with them for around5 years + and highly recommended them.

So, here is the deal, as many other internet uses have noticed, the voice terminal (VT) resets itself every hour on the hour. I use many programs that require a constant connection (mostly online gaming), so as you can imagine, this is driving me insane.

I was wondering if anyone could help me make the following change that seems to be the only solution to this problem;

Modem --> VT --> Router
to
Modem --> Router --> VT

Ive been trying to do this for a day now and am having no success at all. I have a linksys BEFW11S4 router and I have the linksys SPA2102 VT.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated, I know a bunch of you know where I am coming from hahah. :)

Cheers!

I am now able to access the VT though my router which is it a little progress but i am unable to make/recieve calls, no dial tone.