Review of AT&T CallVantageAll reviews of |
|
|
»next review in page
------------------------------------ Our first VOIP provider was Earthlink TrueVoice and had problems with dropped calls, call waiting never working, etc. Spent countless hours with them and service still remained sub-par. After my year commitment, I switched to CV. Knowing that my internet connection was clean and consistent, I had hope that CV was going to be better. I can strongly state that my experience with CV has been wonderful. We've been CV users for over 6 months now and I often forget that it isn't a landline. Quality of the line is fantastic. Using their DLINK 1120M router, I've had zero problems with bandwidth issues. We use the internet a lot, both inbound and outbound, and have experienced no qos issues. I love the CV web portal, has some terrific options. The portal is very fast, responsive, and you can even change the incoming caller ID info on specific phone numbers! Sweet. Strongly recommend! We are using TimeWarner RoadRunner as our ISP (5M/384k). Followup comments:
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
Overall I am very satisified with callvantage. There could be more service features, but for the reliability and the ease of use, I am happy. I have no desire to experiment with another VOIP company after my miserable experience with VOIP.com. I highly recommend Callvantage to anyone who wants reliable VOIP without the hassle. NOTES: 1) I placed the ATA on an UPS to avoid any interruptions due to power, especially because the 911 message is annoying after a power outage. 2) Fax/Modem actually works. I have my Dish receiver wired to callout with the line and it has no problem. I keep my line on the Fax setting and it does not degrade the voice quality. 3) 10-digit dialing, but that does not bother me. I live in NYC and I prefer dialing 10 digits for everything because there are many area codes locally. UPDATE: I changed my configuration and placed the Dlink 5102S behind the WRT-54GL router with Tomato fw running QoS and I am not getting anymore chopping while playing Xbox Live. It took a while to tweak the QoS settings, but now it is overall a better setup. Followup comments:
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
Was originally a Vonage customer in 2005, then switched in 2006 to SunRocket, then to ViaTalk after SunRocket collapsed. SunRocket was the best voip service for the price, though ATT is a very close second. If you are an ATT customer (Uverse or Wireless) they give you a $5/mo discount off the list price of $24.99/mo for the unlimited plan. The only downside is that ATT charges more upfront setup fees than other voip providers, and they charge extra monthly fees for "add-on's" that the others give you for free (e.g. call filtering/blocking is $1.99/mo, though well worth it to blacklist telemarketers.) So far quality and reliability have been outstanding, especially compared to ViaTalk. In all fairness, I was using a BYOD on ViaTalk so perhaps my dissatisfaction with them was my own fault. But still, every day with ViaTalk we'd have a dropped call, a dialing problem, or a voice quality issue. Switched to CallVantage and it's been great ever since. 100% recommended. Followup comments:
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
Bad Points: during a power outage I have phone service as long as my UPS's last. Bottom Line: Excellent Price, and value Followup comments:
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
It took 19 days from the order to activating the service. I got my TA about 1 1/2 weeks later. I plugged it in and was up and running in about three minutes. I was able to make outbound calls only. Call quality was even better than EarthLink. On 8-24-2007 my number was ported at 12:00 A.M.. I like the DLink TA and the Stream Engine technology that is built in. Too bad that I already have the DLink DGL-4300 router. I really liked AT&T's email notifications that I got along the way. One of my complaints with EarthLink was the lack of notifications and where we were in the process. I had one billing issue and customer service gave me one month free for my troubles. I was only trying to get the AT&T Wireless credit of $5.00 off my CV service. There may be better options and better service out there but I am happy at last with my VOIP. Update: March 25, 2008 It has been seven months since I started my ATT Callvantage service. I must say that this service ROCK's the competition. The quality of the VOIP service is top notch. In the seven months I have never experienced any outages attributed to ATT. I have experienced a few outages but this was due to a overload on my router. I was downloading too much stuff. I would say that if you have the opportunity to get Callvantage I would recommend it in a heart beat. Only thing missing is seven digit dialing and maybe a few other addons. I am now use to having to dial the area code and am not really missing any of the extra fluff that the others are offering. Followup comments:
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
Place ordered on 01/01/07 from Business line, Activation Fee and S&H fee was free for our company. $25 + $3-5 fee = $28-30 a month. ATT offer Business or residential line. I received the Dlink DVG 1120M ATA adapter in few days later. Setup: Optimum Online Modem Linksys WRT54G Wireless Router (with Tomato Firmware) Dlink DVG 1120M ATA. Within a minute I was up with dial tone. I don’t know what code AT&T use but the call quality is good to excellent. I would say it must be using G711 Codec. Port Number: Due to the business line number was already with AT&T the porting was quickly done. Call Quality: Due to my business required lots of call and conference I have yet since any quality issue with my line. Call always has been excellent. Out of whole year only three times I may have really poor call quality. When I do have poor quality I have done test by ping the SIP address and trace the route to see if the latency where high or not. Some times poor quality can be by ISP routing and some time it can be related to VOIP servers. Reliability: I would say reliability of the service is 99% excellent. The connection is always there. I don’t have to reboot the ATA, Router or Linksys every day. However, I always recycle my stuff at every 30 days from my Modem to PC. The other 1% you can figure it out nothing is perfect in this world. Support Person: I didn’t had to call for any support so I can’t review on their support staff. There are many other VOIP companies. I would recommend AT&T CallVantage to anyone who would like to save money from the land line. This review is on my own experience with AT&T CallVantage almost 1 yr. It has been smooth ride since I got the service. Other VOIP I currently have account with: Lingo - I used mainly for residential Line. VoiceStick – I used mainly for I2bridge feature and cheap rate for international rate. Followup comments:
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
My number was ported a few days after I posted the review. So far I am very satisfied with CallVantage. We havn't had any outages and the voice quality has been very good. I like the way the website is layed out. The only option that I added on to my service that's not included with the standard package is call blocking. This is a very handy feature to block those annoying companies that just can't take the hint not to call you. Orginal Review I'm a SunRocket refugee that decided to switch over to AT&T CallVantage. So far it's been a great decision. When signing up I found that existing AT&T/Cingular customers get a $5 discount on the service making there unlimited plan $20/month + Fees. I called and got my service setup. The customer service rep was very helpful and walked me through the whole process. I left for vacation and when I got back I still had not received my ATA adapter so I called them. This customer service rep looked at my account and was unable to figure out why I had not received it so he ordered a new adapter and had it send next day service. I got it and hooked it up. After a few issues with my router I got it setup and working with out a hitch. The only outstanding issue is my number port from SunRocket. It keeps keeping pushed back, but this doesn't surprise me. The only aggravating thing I have found with CallVantage is if my ATA loses power or is rebooted then I have to log on to my AT&T account and verify my 911 info. Now that I have the ATA setup and running this shouldn't be much of an issue. The up side is that when you try to make a call before verifying the info you are giving a message that it needs to be done. Even with out verifying the 911 info inbound calling still works. Followup comments:
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
The web ordering was easy and the equipment arrived in about 5 days via federal express. The basic installation took less than 15 minutes to dial tone. The web site is very intuitive and options are easy to find and set up. The features you get for the money are numerous, helpful and convenient. The tech support seems to answer quickly, I placed a couple of test calls before ordering and was happy with the responsiveness. The tech support staff appears to be U.S. English based. The call quality is good. I do have my ATA behind my router as many suggest here. I have excellent upload speed via cable ISP which helps. I also purchased a Dlink QoS router , DIR 625 as part of the switchover to VOIP, and it matches well with the 5102S ATA that ATTCV provides. I have not set up any specific QoS priority yet, mainly because I initially did not totally understand how to do so, and because I haven't had the time to mess with the settings. I hope that doing so when I get around to it will make things even better. As I said earlier, the ATT CallVantage forum here has helped me a lot during startup. I plan to update this review regularly Updated on 2/25/08 I continue to be impressed with CallVanatge. I use the service primarily now, although I have not switched over my landline main number. I used the service for about 5 hours the other day on several long calls and the quality was very good. I did get some static and intermittent clicking on one call late in the day, but I am not totally sure it was not the other person’s connection. I still have not set up any specific prioritized QoS rules, but the built in shaping engine on my router may be prioritizing traffic generally by type already. I am going to wait a bit to see if custom prioritization rules are even necessary. Followup comments:
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
Update 10/16/2005- Clarification on contract price - $33 includes; $29.99 Base price for Callvantage Service plan Federal tax .91 State tax 1.65 Local tax .37 Total $32.92 Prechecking, my RR speed is 3 Mbps down, 420Kbps up, so plenty of bandwidth available both ways for VoIP. Ordered ATT CV Sept 2, installed Sept 8 on my existing time Warner Road Runner broadband. I did not port my POTS phone number, although it was available for porting. I need reliability, so went with ATT CV based on the feedback from a business in my town who has been using it with success. The Centillium TA set up nicely, but when I put my Netgear FVS318 on the LAN side of it, I started encountering DNS lookup errors and delays. manually entering the RR DNS at all devices and PCs did not help. Knowing that double NAT can cause problems occasionally, I didn't call ATT CV on this issue. I saw in ATT's web pages that Safe Forwarding was not supported with the Centillium. It worked, but documentation said it was not supported, so I called ATT CV support to resolve this issue because a backup in case of a service outage is important to me. Their customer service is in Kansas City MO per their tech. Wait time was a 2-3 minutes, largely due to getting through the lengthy greeting. Tech support was friendly, fairly knowledgeable, helpful and responsive. The level one tech hot-transferred me to level 2, staying on the line to be sure I had the correct person on the transfer. Level 2 sent out a D-LINK via FedEx along with prepaid UPS return label. It arrived in three days, over weekend. I installed it, the D-LINK seems more configurable than the centillium. Safe Forward works and it also resolved the DNS issue I had. I am now able to run my FVS318 behind the D-LINK so I have QoS control to segment the TA from my LAN and prevent dropouts due to bandwidth contention between the TA and LAN PCs. File transfers while on the phone do not seem to affect calls. I have experienced only one dropout, which was to a cellphone that was in a questionable signal area, so it was likely the cellphone that lost me. For those who may want to use their own system, I notice you can't disable VoiceMail. ATT CV has a feature that allows you to have audio files of voicemails sent to the user as emails. My test emailed voicemails were cut off at the end. Maybe a glitch. We'll see. Voice quality is good. Callers/callees don't notice any difference between it and my POTS line. 911 setup was already done by ATT by the time I checked on it. ATT had the correct name and address in the ATT system. I have alternative 911 - tested it and it went to the call center, but not as a 911 call and my name and number don't show up on their system, so I will have to give the 911 dispatcher our name, address, town when I call. Since my ATT CV number is not in my location's rate center, that's to be expected I guess. NOTE - People with POTS level 911 requirements need to know that alternative 911 typically routes to an administrative phone number at the call center, and not to the 911 dispatchers directly. The initial conversation may be with someone who is not a trained 911 call taker. As a backup I have our local dispatcher's phone number and speeddial in my VoIP telephone and in my cellphone, so I can call the locals directly (Nice thing about small towns, you can do that!). Your requirements may be different, so consider them carefully. FYI, I am using a Uniden TRU 8866 2-line system, it works just fine in handling my POTS and ATT CV connections. To retrieve voicemail externally, I have to dial a different number and use a PIN and enter my phone number and password. This is an inconvenience of having to remember yet another number and PIN. So far, after 40 days or so, I haven't had any outages as far as I can determine. After returning form a trip (the equipment was powered off) I had an instance of a callee indicating poor connection. Since I had not booted the equipment in order, I shut down and rebooted the Modem, TA, Router in order and had no problems after that. I will update this review as I evaluate the service. **************** UPDATE 31 AUG 2006: Had an issue a few months ago where I was experiencing call drops, one-way loss of audio etc. the ATT people worked with me to adjust buckets, troubleshoot, replaced the TA, but the problem still existed. A week or so later, I experienced internet loss. Time Warner sent out a tech who recabled from the distribution box ot the modem, and replaced the modem. after he left, I started losing connection every half hour or so, so called TW and got a new modem. Problems fixed. the internet and ATT have been rock solid to date. A pleasant surprise, I learned ATT CV's price has dropped $5 per month to $24.99 per month for my package of one line plus unlimited US/Canada long distance. Per the support rep, I had to go the the web site to change the plan to get the new price. Did so, showed up on the next bill. ***************** Update 3 MAR 2007 Service still good, callees can't tell I'm using VoIP service. Called 3 MAR 2007 to support on a FAX question and the truncated voicemail, I observed the call center is in Missouri, Phone connection excellent, service rep was knowledgeable, friendly and articulate and answered my question. RE: the truncated voicemail problem - The support rep verified the voicemail WAV files were complete and suggested I check media player settings, buffer may be too small. On inspection, Quicktime was opening the WAV file. I removed Quicktime completely, updated WINAMP and the voicemail problem was resolved. I can now retrieve full voicemails over the web. Putting the D-Link behind the Netgear router has worked well to eliminate those phone rings and 911 reconfirmation nags after momentary internet drops. I have a 1.5 KVA UPS to power modem, router, TA and phone. Lost power for about 3 1/2 hours recently, the system stayed up just fine, since my internet connection didn't drop during the outage. Bill is now Basic service charge 24.99 Universal connectivity charge 1.57 State tax 1.45 Local tax .32 total 28.33 UPDATE 11 DEC 2007 - Service and call quality still excellent, price the same. ATTCV changed the call log page, I can lo longer copy and paste into a spreadsheet, since it's trashed with icons. I suggested to tech support that they provide an export to CSV function, but that went in one ear and out the other. Followup comments:
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next page (previous review)
Being an employee, I leaned toward that solution but after finding out simply by virtue of being an at&t wireless customer I can get $5 off per month. So for $19.99 a month I get the unlimited plan. When I got the TA (telephone adapter) via FedEx I opened the package, plugged it in and within 3 minutes of my doorbell ringing I was placing a call! It seems the TA adapts to the internet connection it is using, so the first few hours worth of calls had some audio abnormalities but has since stabilized and is working beautifully. If the few limitations of VoIP service is acceptable for your use, it seems this is a good choice. Internet: AT&T DSL PRO (3/512) Dry Circuit $24.99/mo Wireless: AT&T Nation450 w/rollover $39.99/mo Phone: AT&T CallVantage Unlimited $19.99/mo Followup comments:
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
AT&T CallVantage
(14)
Clemmons,Forsyth,NC
$30 per month (12 month contract)
about 7 days
"Easy setup, Great Options, No problems"
"none"
"Beats the socks off any other VOIP."
·
·
·
Business customer