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Personally, I found the CallWithUs website refreshingly simple and wonderfully usable and functional! Tech support knows their business and provided insightful assistance when requested. On-line setup instructions and generous examples are great. I really appreciate the ability to choose the amount of 'risk' acceptable by using different levels of VoIP vendors supplying them with numbers. I have found that the numerical rating assigned by CWU may also reflect the expected quality and reliability of service from that 'level' of vendor. I have had no service problems since signing with them. There are no hidden government taxes or BS fees to boost their bottom line. What you see is what you pay. I find their rates quite reasonable. Their services just work reliably. 20080617 - Still getting everything I expect! Great reliability, service and quality with reasonable prices. I am amazed at just how flexible they have made the services offered. 20090109 - CWU just keeps getting better! 20090407 - The best Terms of Service and philosophy, without a doubt, for BYOD users. Robust feature support. Well-designed web site, with lots of good information and examples. Value and reliability together. 20091101 - CallWithUs just gets better with age. Better prices and features. Followup comments:
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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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It just works, and it's very affordable. No complaints here! Followup comments:
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CWU recently resumed selling DID's to US residents, and in addition you can easily (and freely) forward DID's from other sources such as Voip.MS if you wish. Note that 911 service is not provided, so you do need another arrangement for that! CWU is not for those who want a turnkey solution. Folks do need to be intimate with their ATA and router devices. For those who are, CWU can be an excellent part of a balanced Voip program. Followup comments:
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No problems, very straight forward and quick response on support tickets! Two thumbs up! Update: Oct 4/09 - After using them for calls to Canada, I've found many of the cheaper routes do not pass on caller id. I started using route 093, but the audio quality was very poor then... Lots of "Blip, bleep, bleep" in the conversation. Followup comments:
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The billing interface is certainly clunky, but functional and informative. I'm grateful that Callwithus allows users to set their own CID, this feature was a big selling point for me since I rely on Follow-Me on a regular basis. Between the great prices, great call quality and service I'm not quite sure what else I can say. If you want great outbound VoIP termination that just works...check out CallWithUs! Followup comments:
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I use it on my own pbx however as a backup trunk and to test any issues I am having with callcentric or inphonex. 28/07/2009 update. I have to be fair to callwithus on the call delays. I revisited my spa9000 trunks and and asterisks and realised it was my dial plan mostly that was causing the delays. When I removed the choice of trunks and force each route with its own steering code, the call went through right away with reasonable quality. Based on this discovery I will be putting Callwithus further up on my trunk list and pass some reasonable traffic. I will come back with an update after a few weeks of this. Followup comments:
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But, back to Callwithus. Call quality is probably as good as one can expect from a VOIP provider. Once in a while, an international call gets messed up somewhere, I can hear the other party, but they can't hear me. I just hang up and try again, a couple of times, until we can hear each other. Occasionally someone's having a bad hair day, and I just have to give up and whip out my backup calling card. This does not happen very often, approximately once in about a hundred calls, I'd estimate. 99 out of 100 times the call goes through, and there's never any issue with call quality, otherwise. I've had fairly good success rate with sending and receiving faxes. Faxing is generally iffy over VOIP. Usually I am able to send or receive a couple of pages without any issues. Longer faxes, 5+ pages, are more difficult. On a couple of occasions I could not fax to a specific fax machine, no matter what I tried. It may or may not be just my fax machine, and not related to VOIP. Callwithus offers support via email only. Over the last year there were about four or five times I needed to reach them, they always answered my email in a couple of hours, and were very responsive. Callwithus does not sell telephone adapters, you BYOD, Bring Your Own Device -- so you do have to have enough technical know-how to be able to configure your own settings. I set myself up without needing any help, I don't know how much help they would provide in setting up your telephone adapter, but it'll probably be a bit cumbersome, going back and forth by email. However you can try setting everything up without buying or paying anything, and test your device with SIP-only incoming calls, and an echo test, and buy credits only after you have a working connection. Followup comments:
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callwithus
Greenville,Pitt,NC
$2 per month
"Variety of services. Simple management. Good Prices and Availability of DIDs"
"No 'plans'? Naw, that doesn't count!"
"Great for BYOD and asterisk-type users."
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The young wife, however, may want to hear the full spectrum without the clicks, hums and other distractions that we can't even hear anymore. Businesses also seem to prefer 'clean' circuits!
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Lots of blip, blip, beep, beep