VOIP Service Provider Selection

[cracker]

I am trying to set up an Obi 100 to mimic my existing residential landline.  I'm having difficulty selecting a VOIP service provider that will meet my requirements.  It would be nice to have a single provider but I would settle for two.  I need e911, inbound and outbound calling, failover, call waiting, call forwarding, caller id, and voice mail.  I need to access voice mail and enable/disable call forwarding from the telephone; I don't want to go to the web to enter a call forwarding number or to manage voice mail.    
I've spent the last couple of months trying to get various combinations of GV and Anveo to work but I don't think they are going to meet my needs.  Any suggestions?  Thanks.

[cracker]

I think voip.ms is the answer.  Voice mail was easy to set up and is easy to manage from the phone.  Call forwarding works well with the OBi star codes.  Call waiting works with the Obi star codes.  I had my system set up and the desired features tested in about 2 hours compared with days trying to accomplish the same thing with Anveo.  It may cost a few dollars more each month.  The few questions I had were answered promptly by voip.ms chat sessions.  All in all a good experience.  

I should mention one problem I encountered when registering the voip.ms account in OBiTALK.  I use Keepass as a password locker and found that I had to type the voip.ms password on the registration page.  Dragging the password from the Keepass entry resulted in a registration error.

[MurrayB]

Has anyone attempted to use caller ID block either one time or persistent with voip.ms? Google Voice does not support this feature.

[carl]

You may want to check out Callcentric as well

[cracker]

Has anyone attempted to use caller ID block either one time or persistent with voip.ms? Google Voice does not support this feature.

I just tried *67 (block one time) with my voip.ms/Obi and it shows up as "unknown caller".  Without the *67 it shows up as my DID number or whatever number I put in my DID account info at voip.ms.

[MurrayB]

Great info, must there be a voip.ms DID number? Suppose there was no DID number only outgoing service?  - Thanks!

[cracker]

I know that having a DID is optional w/ voip.ms.  Without a DID you can set up your main account or sub accounts with CID numbers of your choosing.  I have'nt seen anything that would suggest you couldn't just set up a permanent block of the CID  if you wanted to place calls in this manner.

[MurrayB]

I will have to carefully check voip.ms website and figure this out. The problem I am having is people not calling me on the number I leave them but hitting return call and they end up in GV voice mail or worse instead of reaching me.

[cracker]

I've found their live chat support people very helpful and knowledgeable.  I think you can use it to ask questions without having an account.  You might want to ask them for if they have a solution to this problem.

[MurrayB]

Good advice cracker, thanks!

[cracker]

I did a quick check with my voip. ms.  I set the CID on my voip.ms account to the number of my cell phone to remove any confusion or interplay with my DID then used the obi/voip.ms to dial the house phone and left a short vm.  I listened to the vm and used the return call feature of the vm attendant (TMOBILE) to dial the calling number.  As expected it called my cell phone.  I repeated the same sequence but dialed *67 first to block caller id.  No calling number registered on my house phone and it would not call back to the number of the "missed call".  After listening to the  voice mail, I tried the return call option and the attendant told me the option was not available. Maybe some of the garbage calls you are getting are a function of the voice mail processing agent(s) being used.  At least we can be pretty certain that voip.ms is not sending through any CID number.

If the problem is you want people to call you back on varying numbers maybe you could use sub accounts since sub accounts can each have their own CID.  Perhaps this would force them to use the desired number.