Any Phone Power (former BroadVoice) customers out there?

[videobruce]

Sorry this is kinda long, but needs to be;

My current situation now (since it has changed) is this Phone Power outfit is basically indifferent towards anyone with a OBi ATA claiming that they don't support them anymore inspite of the fact on Poly/OBi's website Phone Power is listed as one of the providers.
Any help they provide seems to be directed to you doing the work after tiring to figure hoe to do it. They will auto provision the device, but at the cost of disabling the other ports so you won't have the ability to add any other providers, Google Voice included.

I finally successfully setup more than one OBi202 ATA's to now find out the one connected lost the service with the message 'no response from the server' (or similar) out of the blue. I was doing some other troubleshooting with a unrelated Ethernet device by re-booting the Router and after a 2nd reboot, I lost the PP port (the SP1 light went dark.)
I believe the interruption in the Internet connection triggered it (unless this was just coincidence).

When I called PP, I briefly described the situation and was asked what the MAC address of the ATA was. What they showed in their system was the MAC of the other ATA (which is in storage as a backup). I gave then the current MAC, it was entered into their system.
I retried to establish registration by removing the existing dead SP1 entry and re-doing the setup via Poly/OBi's 'wizard' which has worked fine. It didn't the first or 2nd time.

I waiting some time and re-did the setup and it took, finally with the correct MAC. It shows 'Registered'.

My question is, is there a limit of devices using the same PP number?? I tried to ask them, but didn't get any real response except they don't support these Poly/OBi's anymore.
Has anyone 'lost' service from any Router type of issue, rebooting or flashing of firmware etc.? I've had this service for many years and it now looks as I need to find a replacement that can work w/o the hassle with these OBi's.

[Taoman]

My question is, is there a limit of devices using the same PP number?? I tried to ask them, but didn't get any real response except they don't support these Poly/OBi's anymore.
Has anyone 'lost' service from any Router type of issue, rebooting or flashing of firmware etc.? I've had this service for many years and it now looks as I need to find a replacement that can work w/o the hassle with these OBi's.

This is what I can remember from when I used PhonePower close to 10 years ago. Things may have drastically changed since then so take anything I say with a grain of salt.

It used to be that PhonePower was a "preferred" provider, not just a "compatible" provider. That's why PP has the ability to provision your OBi device for their service. You wouldn't know your own SIP credentials because you didn't need to know since PP provisioned everything. But they are no longer a Preferred provider they are just a compatible provider. If I remember right, after they provisioned my OBi I copied down all the changes from the default their provisioning made. I then got rid of their provisioning (don't remember how) and configured PP myself so I could also have GV and other providers configured on my OBi. That means you have to access your SIP credentials from their web site and configure your OBi for their service yourself. And it sounds like PP support has no desire to try and support OBi devices now. But I don't remember it as being difficult to do....unless you restarted your OBi or router. :\

PhonePower is somewhat unique in that they don't support extensions/subaccounts the way most ITSPs do. Instead, they allow 4 simultaneous registrations to the same account with the same phone number using the same SIP credentials. (At least that's the way it used to be). And yes, I had all kinds of problems trying to register again after restarting my OBi device or router. For some reason it takes awhile for PP to realize your registration is no longer valid. It seems like your MAC address has to time out on PP's POP server before you can register again with the same device. I don't understand it but I remember how frustrating it was.

But "$70/yr including taxes" is a decent price. Is that for unlimited inbound and outbound? But you have a limited feature set compared to providers like Callcentric and Voip.ms. But maybe you don't need any more features than PP provides.

[videobruce]

Thanks for the in-depth reply.    Yes, things changed, not for the better.

They keep on saying to me to use their SIP credentials, but when I tried it never worked. The somewhat confusing FAQ's around didn't really help. There are only 3 items; a phone number which of course I already know, their server address, which I already had from existing data from the OBi's menu and lastly their 12 digit/character password, which was the only missing information. They treat that password as if was a CIA/NSA top secret item with the process to even get the damn thing. 

" For some reason it takes awhile for PP to realize your registration is no longer valid. It seems like your MAC address has to time out on PP's POP server before you can register again with the same device. "
That and the fact, the system allowed me to setup 3 ATS's, wait a day or two to see if it 'held', then with the final unit it took around 3 days to get bumped off probably due to the mismatched MAC address.
I wasted days on this from the false hopes what I was doing was working.

I couldn't get an answer from the last CSR (which I remember talking to before unfortunately) to my question about MAC addresses. On top of that was the timing of when the disconnect happened with multiple Router reboots (for a unrelated issue).

Frankly, I feel this setup/service is a 'time bomb' waiting to go off. I was hoping for more input here, but it's painfully obvious there either aren't any PP users or they have nothing to add. 

[Taoman]

but it's painfully obvious there either aren't any PP users or they have nothing to add. 

And why do you suppose that is?

[videobruce]

To which part?