Review of callwithusMember review of |
We make quite a few long distance calls, and after evaluating some options to cut cost I decided to try out VOIP. At the time the best deal for the amount of calling we do was the $30/month local telco phone (no features) and $20/month for unlimited US/Canada calling (inc taxes). (Actually what bugged me most was that the local TelCo advertised $25.96 (inc taxes), and yet somehow through fees and so on that they don't tell you about until they actually bill you it was over $30). Looking around I figured that, after some setup cost and switching over to DSL with the telco for a Value Package so that the phone portion would be the equiv of $10/month, I could stop my long distance package and cut my long distance bill in half. So in August I switched to DSL and ordered an ATA (Linksys SPA2102) from ebay for $56 (inc shipping). Shipping was slow but I did receive it and it works great. Very happy with that equipment. ==================================== ==== Enter: CallWithUs ================== I setup an account with CallWithUs over a month ago (12 Sep 2009). I chose CWU initially because of a) the good reviews and option to choose trunks and b) they had DIDs available in my local calling area when I could find them no where else. I initially added $10 credit to test outgoing only before making the jump and purchasing the DID and to see if it would be sufficient for my needs. I was happy with the initial test, and after a few days, decided to go ahead and get that DID. The DID was $3 to setup and $4.50 a month for 3000 incoming minutes, 2 channels. It was setup and ready to use immediately, and worked like a charm. I did encounter some issues trying to call toll free numbers in Canada. Some of them would give me a "The number you are trying to call is not available from your calling area" type message. After some research and fiddling around I modified my dial plan to use SipPhone for toll free numbers. I also wanted to setup the DID to ring through to my local phone (and later cell phone) if the ATA is offline or my Internet is down. I couldn't get this to work initially so I emailed CallWithUs support. It was responded to very quickly with the solution: apparently the registration interval on the SPA defaulted to 3600 s (1 hour) which was too long and 3 minutes was suggested. I guess the CWU server was thinking that my ATA was still online within that hour and wasn't failing over. Now it works perfectly. I am very fond of the detailed call logs and account management web site. It may seem a little rough around the edges in appearance, but it does function, and is very full featured. I have not yet used the trunk selection features, as the call quality as almost always been very acceptable and most of the time excellent with the default (least expensive) routes/trunks. In fact, call quality to the US is almost always exceptional much better than land-line. I have found that call-quality to Canada is very good for the most part, but occasionally it is not as good (about on par with scratchy cell quality). That hasn't happened frequently enough for me to identify if it's a particular trunk, or enough to worry about using the trunk selection feature. It's nice to know it's available though. ==================================== ==== Summary ======================== I am extremely happy with my experience with CallWithUs. I like the control I have over my phone services, and the possibility I have of integrating with other users using IP dialing, sipbroker, etc. Their web site and phone access features have everything that I have needed so far, with the exception of toll free access to some Canadian numbers (I'm sure the toll free service works great for US numbers). Their billing is straight forward, and you pay for what you get and there are no hidden fees or extra charges. Total, my setup costs were about $60 for the ATA and DID. Ongoing CWU costs will vary but seem to be around $11-$15 dollars a month. What I had (monthly costs): - Local Phone, no features ($30) - Long distance US/Canada unlimited, ($20) Total: $50/month What I have now (monthly costs): - Local Phone (kept old number), no features ($10, because of DSL package) - Local DID (new number), $4.50 - Long Distance, usually 0.99cents/minute (estimating $6-$10/month, $6 last month) - Caller ID - Call waiting - Multiple lines (if SPA Line 1 is busy, Line 2 will still ring, or option to use Call Waiting) - DID fail over and priority ringing (can have one number ring multiple locations, similar to call hunting). - 911 service on my land line. Total: $25.00/month I like that: I should recover my setup costs within 3 months. ==================================== Followup comments:
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callwithus
Portugal Cove-St Philips,NL
$11 per month
"Great call quality and options, full featured account admin, free incoming SIP"
"Need to be able to learn some technical details re: VOIP, no 911 service"
"Great VoSP that gives customer (me) lots of control, and helps to reduce my phone bill"
