OBI 202 GV CC Success, but...
Kman609:
Hello all, first post here. Man. I can't believe this all worked 20 minutes right out of the box. Knowing the OBI was going to arrive today, I set up my GV and Callcentric accounts yesterday and entered my whitelist numbers into CC's phonebook. I then set up call treatments to allow everyone in the phone book to ring through, but challenge all others to enter a random number to continue the call (I'm inundated by scammers). Hey Verizon: If you offered filtering like Callcentric does. I probably would not be dumping your landline.
Here's the results of my call tests in the different configurations:
GV incoming and outgoing work great--hardly any delay in conversations. Downside: no 911, and no call treatments, other than a whitelist.
Incoming GV > free CC New York number (I'm in SoCal) > OBI: moderate delay in conversations. Can probably live with it.
Incoming Verizon (digital voice landline) > CC > OBI: pretty bad delay--we can talk over each other. No Bueno.
Incoming straight to CC number > OBI: hardly any delay.
All of the above scenarios had acceptable voice quality.
So I guess my questions are:
Does having the free CC number being in New York, and my being in So Cal add to the delay, and would I be better off getting a local (though more expensive) number through Callcentric? In case it matters: Ookla speed test on my Ipad says ping time to Los Angeles is 11ms, while it's 80ms to New York.
Are there settings/tricks to reduce the delay during a call?
Some info on us:
911 service is important to us, and we only have one cellphone with reception in the house. We would like 911 accessible by our legacy phones--mostly Panasonic Dect 6 handsets.
We currently have Verizon FIOS with very reliable 50/50mbs internet speed and Digital Voice landline that I may be locked into for another year. The house is hardwired for 1gig Ethernet, and we have the latest 1gig router with n wifi. The OBI is currently connected to a 1gig switch that goes to the router. The only traffic on that switch during the call tests was from the OBI.
All the years of cussing out telemarketers/scammers (it was fun sport to waste their time) has put me on every call list imaginable and I get 10-20 crap calls per day, and even though I've been blocking them with a white list for a year now, they have not slowed down. At least with the white list, I never hear them call. Call filtering is important to me. I use a Digitone Call Blocker Plus, and it works beautifully--for the two-three months it runs before it fails, and I request a new one under warranty--which is about to expire. This (along with the $30/mo landline bill) is just not a long term solution.
I'd like to keep our number, since we've had it for 30 years now. We don't use it much as we mostly Skype the grownup kids. We may talk an hour or so a month on the landline, which may make us a candidate for a by-the-minute CC account with no call forwarding delay from GV. I know all about porting--the question is: do we port to GV or CC? I depends on whether we can figure out the delay thing.
There. So, any ideas about the delay?
Thanks,
SteveInWA:
Quote
Does having the free CC number being in New York, and my being in So Cal add to the delay, and would I be better off getting a local (though more expensive) number through Callcentric?
You'll probably get several different answers here in this forum.
In my own experience as a Seattle-area Callcentric customer, I can't tell a significant difference between any audio delay (latency) when receiving calls using either my two local AC 425 DIDs, or my AC 845 NY Telengy (free inbound) DID. In my opinion, neither option produces an objectionable delay (in other words, if I was intentionally doing an A/B comparison with various setups, in no case does the delay seem to exceed 250ms, above which, most people notice and/or complain).
As long as Callcentric is using high-quality IP providers and routes, which they seem to be doing, the speed of the cross-country fiber network is fast enough to not be an issue for me, at least. YMMV, and remember it's not as simple as you may think -- there's the distance from your OBi to the CC SIP server, the network topology, the choice of transit carriers, the CLEC central office location and its phone switches, etc. Why don't you send a support ticket to CC and ask them for their opinion, since it is their network.
RE: 911 service. As long as you are already a CC customer, just pay them the $1.50/month E911 fee, or subscribe to one of their calling plans that includes E911, and then configure your OBi to route 911 calls to your CC service provider port.
Kman609:
Thanks for your reply.
There was hardly any delay when we called straight into the CC number. The delays increased substantially when the test involved forwarding--either from GV or from Verizon. The delay was measured by my wife calling the various numbers from a cell phone in the same room as me. The delay using Verizon call forwarding to CC was in excess of 250 ms, while GV to CC was less--noticeable, but not a deal breaker like the Verizon test was. We repeated the tests by calling friends, and seeing how the conversations went. GV > CC was OK, while Verizon > CC had us talking over each other.
Since we only use the phone rarely (using Skype or the cell phone for the long calls), I'm wondering whether we're better off just using a paid by-the-minute CC account, and have one less point of failure. It's also an easier port.
As for 911: I have it set up in CC and OBI to work.
SteveInWA:
Quote from: Kman609 on September 20, 2014, 04:59:59 pm
Since we only use the phone rarely (using Skype or the cell phone for the long calls), I'm wondering whether we're better off just using a paid by-the-minute CC account, and have one less point of failure.
That's what I would do, if the latency issue bothers you.
Kman609:
Quote from: SteveInWA on September 20, 2014, 05:06:30 pm
That's what I would do, if the latency issue bothers you.
It's not so much that it bothers me, it drove my sister-in-law nuts! Now that was the Verizon call forward to CC, the GV > CC was tolerable.
Ok now this sucks. Glad I read the porting FAQs at CC. While I can port our number to Callcentric, it is useable for INBOUND calls only. Ported numbers cannot be used with any of their outbound products. What the hell? Am I reading this wrong?
Looks like if we're going to do this, we'll have to do the two-step port to GV, and use GV to forward to CC for inbound calls. Cheaper in the long run (Assuming GV stays free) but way more complex.
Are there any other providers that have CC's excellent filtering and allow your ported number to be used for both incoming and outgoing calls?
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