Any one else here use talkit.ca (formerly Cantalk9000). $60 Bucks for the year gets you unlimited talk time and canadien long distance. They port your old number and give you voicemail and call display and call waiting. Ive been using for a year now with no problems - (well there were some initial setup problems, but I got through them) The grand stream device they send you really doesnt like routers and insists that it be first infront of every thing - from what i hear they have sent out new devices to any new customers that now require a router to work properly, guess they were just having to many set up problems (as well as poor costomer support) with the original devices. Took me almost 2 weeks to get mine going after it was shipped to me. It was well worth it in the end.
I left primus and their $20 per month bill plus long distance and tax's for my new $5 per mnth bill and unlimited long distance and its great. (actually 60 bucks up front for the year + tax)
Sorry for spending time to share my experience with you and try to help others to overcome potential obstacles with VOIP.
Sorry for trying to learn this forum stuff (I admit it, I'm a total "NOOB") and for my "rookie" status.
Sorry for not having subscribed to this thread to follow other posts and respond more quickly.
For what it's worth, I have no affiliation with Talkit.ca and stumbled upon this company while looking for VOIP options. The reason I chose Talkit.ca was for the phone number porting option and that I found a cheap deal on WagJag. Had I known that this was an off-shore company at the time I may have decided on a different service provider, though I'm certain we're all guilty of households full of off-shore product and services (I do try to buy Canadian, US... where possible). It has been a few months since switching to Talk.ca and it's still working okay for us, though we had to resolve some problems with their voicemail service (not an option to turn it off, so we had it set to answer on the maximum 10 rings). I would encourage anyone "technically-oriented" to look into VOIP services as there are some real savings to be made, and will suggest other service providers such as VOIP.ms or even Vonage for those not as technical.
I hope my future posts are more postively received. I will be contributing in the OTA forums as I have just recently purchased a Channel Master 4228HD (I tried to find one made on this continent but sadly I admit this is made in China) and am pulling in some good signals in Aurora, ON. I encourage others to check out the OTA forums as lots of people (Veterans and rookies alike) have some great ideas to contribute.
Just wanted to give my experience with Talkit. I ported my number over in November 2011 and this took about 10 days or so. The temporary number worked after spending 1/2 hour with support in Dominican Republic - the Grandstream device was shipped without the updated settings so had to change some settings using the web access but the support person walked me through this.
Yeserday I had the first ever outage with TalkIt but managed to figure it out myself. Somehow the Grandstream device had switched itself over to static IP address which was completely different to the ranges assigned by my router. Easy fix using the *** - 01 - 9 option, then a reboot and voila. The only reason I did this myself was that tech support is only available on week days and not at the weekend - a big downside if you are not tech savvy. In Talkit's defence they did send an email the same day of the outage with very clear instuctions to fix the problem by logging into your account and clicking on a "fix now" button, but I had already fixed this before I received the email.
Other than this evrything working fine for the last 4-5 months with excellent call quality and no drop outs or disconnections. So happy I terminated Bell who now keep sending me letters in the mails saying basically "we miss you, we are always here, love to see you back" etc. Fat chance of that happening.
In the end of September I signed up on Talkit.ca. I received the device in under two weeks and my home phone number was ported over shortly after.
I was unable to make any outgoing phone calls, only receive calls. I contacted customer support two or three times at which time I was sent a new device and had to pay to have the non-working device sent back. This process again took about two weeks.
Again the new device did not allow me to make phone calls. After calling talkit tech support every weekday night for two weeks (no support on weekends), I was told I needed to purchase a static IP address from my service provider (Xplorenet).
I felt the extra cost of purchasing a static IP address would not be worth the money for this phone so I tried to cancel my account. I was informed that I could not cancel since my 30 money back gaurentee period had expired. My arguement was that I should not have begun my trial period since I still do not have a working device yet. I would have never ordered the product if I had been told I need a static IP and I would have canceled my account the first time I talked to tech support if they would have told me. Instead they tell me this 2 monthes later. Sorry you'll have to wait out the remaining 10 months to cancel.
ive heard exlporernet has many issues with voip providers due to the low upload that explorenet offers is below the minimum requirements of many voip sistems
Xplornet (I think that's how they spell it?) is satellite and I think the bigger issue is high ping times. In some situations I guess traditional landline might be a better option.
A fast and dependable internet connection is definitely necessary for any VOIP service. I'm using an ADSL internet connection with 18 MB down and 0.8 MB up, with 19 ms ping. Fairly decent speeds, though I still have to configure QoS on my router to ensure dependable two-way phone service (see my earlier post for details). I just renewed my TalkIT service for the third year running and it's still working great.
And what is it you do (internet wise) on your home network that 18/1 pipes do not allow good VoIP without QoS?
What router? What firmware? How many lines sumultaniously? G.711 is just 64Kbps. G.729 is half as much...
I'm using a Netgear WNR3500L with Toastman's Tomato firmware. Before implementing the quality of service settings, the phone quality wasn't very good and would only allow "one-way" communication. If anyone has a suggestion on how to otherwise configure it to work I'd gladly welcome it, though everything I've read on VOIP suggests you have to use QoS.
QoS prioritizes VoIP traffic inside your house!
Meaning, if you are running a torrent (watch Netflix, play online game, etc.) that is consuming all the bandwidth
and decide to place a VoIP call, the other traffic will be slowed down and priority will be given to your call.
It does nothing outside your premises!
VoIP providers would like you to believe it is your network at fault while in reality it is theirs 99% of the time.
I guess your case is the 1% remaining...
You're absolutely right when it comes to the blame game from the VOIP service providers, as I had to figure this out for myself and received no help from the provider. What I have experienced is this:
QoS on - phone works very well.
QoS off - phone does not work very well.
Good point about slowing down other network traffic during a phone call, though the low bandwidth of the VOIP doesn't seem to affect this too badly.
It's still a great way to save money, but for those not technically-minded or not wanting to deal with some hassle, it's probably best to go with the old reliable POTS phone line.
Have been using Talkit since November 2011 with maybe only 3 outages which were basically fixed with a reboot. Do not use any QoS on the router. ISP is Start.ca over my Cogeco cable connection. Would always recommend Talkit and Start.
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