Excellent note. I took a look at Broadvox and filled out their little form. The result was
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification. Delivery to the following recipients failed. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Oh well. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Michael Graves Sent: Monday, January 26, 2004 7:36 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Asterisk-Users] My experience with one IAX termination provider and one SIP provider In the wake of the recent NuFone thread I'd like to offer up a brief summary of my limited experience with both Vonage and VoicePulse Connect. I live in Houston TX and for about a year had a Vonage line as my entre into VOIP. Back then, as now, I'd go to some length to avoid Southwestern Bell. I work for a UK based company and my operational territory is "The Americas" thus I use a lot of long distance, mostly to the US, Canada & the UK. The Vonage service was very reliable and I could usually not tell the difference between one of my POTS line and the ATA connected Vonage line. Their service was in my opinion exemplary. One problem with Vonage for me is the billing model. When I travel (a lot) paying a monthly fixed price makes no sense. Some months I use very few minutes, others 2000+. Also, I couldn't get a real second line without incurring another significant monthly fee. Still, they offered local DIDs and I used them happily for a year. In looking at * I was attracted by the prospect of control, features, moh, aa, etc. So I built an * server and bought a few SNOM phones. This displaced my 4 line/8 ext Panasonic office phone system. Connecting the Vonage provided ATA to an X100p didn't seem to make much sense. Needless D/A and A/D steps. Passing SIP through my router meant opening up multiple ports which I really didn't want to do. So I sought out a provider who offered IAX termination....and ended up with VoicePulse Connect (VPC). I've only been using VPC for about a month. The quality of calls over VPC is not quite as good as I had with Vonage. I suppose that could be in part a codec issue. At present I use GSM to connect to VPC to save some bandwidth. I'm open to suggestions as to how to tweak the connection. The service was easily setup. From the point of account creation to initial call was about 30 minutes, largely due to my having to edit the dialplan. No waiting for hardware to ship. The account was up and ruinning immediately even as I worked on it near midnight. The service has thus far been reliable. It supports multiple (up to 6) simultaneous outbound calls which I have used to conference several co-workers. The management imterface on their web site is not as feature rich as Vonage, but it gets it done for me. I like the pay as go, no monthly fee billing model. It's so convenient that even if I use another provider I will keep VPC as a fallback/alternate in my dialplan. One problem however is their lack if DIDs in my area, so I only use it for outbound calling. POTS lines for inbound. Later this month I will likely drop two of my incomming POTS lines as the * server takes on more of the load. That's a vote of confidence in VPC, but I'm still looking for options. If NuFone provides Houston DIDs then they're likely my next experiment. Broadvox Direct, while interesting, is a non-starter due to their flat rate billing model ala Vonage. I also hope to add a wifi sip phone to fill in the last void (cordless) left by the departure of the Panasonic system...if ever they become available. I am eager to hear about others experience with the various providers, even IP Centrex providers. This is just my recent experience. As usual YMMV. Michael Graves P.S. - what to do with my Vonage-crippled ATA? -- Michael Graves [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sr. Product Specialist www.pixelpower.com Pixel Power Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] "With us or against us isn't a policy worthy of a democratic superpower." -- Zbigniew Brzezinski, Former US National Security Advisor ** Tag(s) inserted by Bandit Tagger98 - http://www.gbar.dtu.dk/~c918704 _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users