Review of BroadVoiceAll reviews of |
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Broadvoice has all the calling features of Vonage plus quite a few more. The online Call Manager is one application I would be lost without after using it. One of the voicemail options is to let the caller hit "0" during the greeting and be transfered to a 3rd number (cell phone). Some features not functioning at this time but are promised to be available in the next 30 days (LNP, CID w/ name). I have not had the service long enough to judge if Broadvoice actually meets their rollout dates for services. I'm a very happy BV customer & as soon as LNP & CID w / name is available I will be moving my other Vonage account to Broadvoice. Followup comments:
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I ordered last Thursday, and got the hardware on the following Monday. I was up and running within a few minutes and both incoming and outgoing calls worked as promised; a 20 minute international call to Japan was flawless. Call quality has been excellent, after tweaking QoS on my router I can get a perfect conversation while maxing out my 256Kb/s cable upstream with bittorrent transfers. All of the free features are great! I love all of the email notification, options to upload greetings recorded on the computer, etc. Even the premium features are reasonably priced at $1.95 or $3.95 a month. I am completely satisfied with BroadVoice and thank them for producing such an excellent service. Followup comments:
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other than the initial equipment failure and their decision to now distribute spa-1000 boxes I am happy with the service. At first I was so psyched.. Unit arrived with NO instructions at ALL.. But being a bit of a technoid I plugged in the cables without any hitch.. Duh.. Ethernet here, DC Power here... Phone here... Bingo worked like a champ. All was good. I was happy. 2 days later.. SPA-2000 is dead as a doornail This was saturday night... replacement was FINALLY over nighted the following Wednesday after daily calls from me.... Not good. At this point I was very unhappy.. But... Replacement Unit arrives.. plugs in and works flawlessly... now connected to UPS and I don't TOUCH it... LOL.. I guess these Sipura boxes are rather "sensitive" So far so good. Service is great! Running behind a Linux based router.. ASL »www.astaro.com with QoS enabled so I have stutter free calls even when connection active. DSL 6Mbits down 600Kbits up. Followup comments:
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I ordered their Unlimited U.S.A package on Sunday night. I received a Sipura 1000 on Tuesday of the same week. I plugged it into my router (Linksys WRT54G) and I had a dialtone in 15 seconds. I love their Call Manager. It is great to be able to manage your incoming calls through a Web interface. It is far superior to Vonage's Click-2-Call application. I also like the 7-digit dialing. However after having Vonage for 3 months I can't unlearn 10-digit dialing.  For the past two days, I have testing the service quite a bit. Aside from some features not working (ones that I don't care much about) it has been working flawlessly. I have also noticed that on one phone, Vonage's caller-ID/call waiting never worked. I was assuming it was the phone, however I tried the same phone on Broadvoie and it works great. Voice quality is the same if not better than Vonage. Broadvoice also has a better feature set than Vonage. And for $10 less a month for unlimited use, Broadvoice is a no brainer. I will update my results in a month, but as of right now I will be using this as my primary line and am very satisified. Followup comments:
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I ordered my BV service on Friday April 30, it was processed and shipped Monday May 3rd and I received the ATA on Tuesday May 4th (yahoo FedEx). So really it was just a 2 day turnaround from order to install. Kudos to BV and FedEx! Installation was a breeze - complete plug and play (however I would like to give it a static IP which it doesn't appear you can change in the sippura console). Call quality is remarkable. Granted I have not had it that long, but for the bit I have used it - wow! No lag, no echo, and superior sound over POTS. I really like not needing to dial the 1 (in my area telco requires 10 digits anyway so I am used to that). There is a noticable lag when not dialling 1 before the number though. Their call manager, although and ugly interface, is nice. The main feature that I like is Outlook integration - allowing me to call people directly from my outlook contact list. This works quite well. Some features do not seem to work that well. Can't get speed dial 8/100 working, incoming caller id does not work (and the 1st day I could not get any incoming calls - that is now fixed but caller id is still not working). Outgoing caller id shows my number but BroadVoice, Inc. as the name - so many people I call don't answer the phone because they do not recognize the name. Sometimes when I try to get into my voicemail, it tells me my passcode is invalid - which it is not since I can access it other times with the same passcode. The website is complete crap - but they tell me that is being worked on as well. Support (I seem to talk to the same person every time I call - hmm) is awesome. He was extremely helpfull and has answered the phone immediately every time I have called. He assured me that they are working on the incoming caller id fix which should be fixed today and the outgoing is being worked on but they are dependent on the telco for that - so it could take some time. High startup costs (compared to others). I have the $9.95 unlimited in state / $.039 / minute long distance plan. The activation fee was $39.95 and the shipping was $14.99. Overall - the service has been good however, if the voicemail and caller id problems are not fixed before the 30 day/500 minute guarantee I will cancel and get my money back and try another service. UPDATE (5/7/2004) ---------------------------------------------------- They have the inbound caller id fixed. Sitll does not show a name but now I can at least see who is calling. I can't call some 800 numbers though. I plan on calling support on this issue tonight to see if it is a known issue and if they are working on it. I now have my POTS line forwarding calls to the BV number and the only phone in the house is going through BV - this should allow me to post an update in a few weeks about the quality of their service. My wife (no real technical) is using it full time now so I should get some real good testing of it now  UPDATE (5/19/2004) ---------------------------------------------------- Okay - after a few ignored emails to customer service and BV not giving the customers any updates as to when their advertised features will work - I am going to give Vonage a try. My wife reports that there has been a few dropped calls but the main thing that is irritating me is the lack of response. Vonage might not be better but I am hoping that since they let you adjust the call quality, I will experience less dropped calls. I will write a review on Vonage once I have some testing done. Followup comments:
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Pluged it in to my speed stread router, rca cable modem, with comcast. Worked right away even though no instructions in the box. Sounds better than telco Followup comments:
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This service is a great value for the money! So far I really like it! Followup comments:
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Install was easy, i first disconnected the pots from the outside to my in house wiring. Then i checked every phone in the house to make sure there was no tone. I then took everything out of the box, hooked the sipura to my netgear wirless router and plugged the line into my in house wiring. Within 5 seconds my line was setup and ready to call. When my mother came home at night she did not even know that i installed our voip system until i told her. She could not tell the difference in terms of quality of our voip vs pots. Actually i think the quality of broadvoice voip is better than pots because it uses a codec that consumes about 11KB a second each way. This is pretty close to cd quality. I purchased a set of vtech 2.4 ghz digital cordless phones and combined with the voip the calls are crystal clear! I have a Belkin 1000va (550 watt) UPS backup power supply supplying uninterrupted power to my cable modem, wireless router, and my sipura box. This should keep my phones working for a while in case of outages. I tried sending and receiving a fax and it works fine. I also tried establishing a dial up connection....didnt work =( All in all i am extremely satisfied that I'am saving my mother a minimum of $15 a month. And with that $15 a month she was able to get her first cell phone with 1 year prepaid service for only $100 for 666 minutes. Great deal! BYE BYE VERIZON ! Followup comments:
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BroadVoice
(11)
Melbourne,Brevard,FL
$10 per month
about 2 days
"Price, features, Call Manger."
"Not all advertised features available yet"
"Probably the best deal I've found in a year."
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