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What is this new Vestalink (obivoice) service provider?

Started by QBZappy, January 11, 2014, 08:34:53 AM

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giqcass

You can just configure it on SP2. After that to test outbound calling dial **2 and the number you want to call. 
Long live our new ObiLords!

KAura

Quote from: carl on January 23, 2014, 07:29:03 PM
If your business is just half way serious and quarter way profitable, i would not for a second consider junk like Magic Jack. BTW MJ charges all kinds of junk fees on the top of the advertised price which have not been mentioned here. Also, they do not connect for free to very many US phone numbers.
For a real business I would go with a real quality VOIP provider like Callcentric.
BTW if you do not want to depend on internet cell phones are pretty good, at least in metro areas.

MJ definitely IS junk.  They even sent out an email after my friend gave me the MJ+ saying that they NOW had a better chip and to pay $30 to upgrade AND service for 6 months was included.

That's not the problem...  I have never had good service with them UNLESS I was using a cable modem.  DSL and lower (wireless dongle) doesn't work well...  static, and codec problems on both ends, eg. no sound and then a quick sped up donald-duck like few secs until it caught up LOL.

As far as unlimited, HA!!  Everybody who has EVER used MJ knows that they cut you off after 10 minutes and then when you TRY and call back you get a message "all circuits are busy now, please try you call again later!".  We all know that all circuits aren't busy!

As far as junk fees, fees are only paid once per year or once per 5 years and there are no additional fees.  I have never had trouble connecting to anybody.


The Straight Talk Home Phone device IS technically a cell phone for $15/mo and the carrier is Verizon wireless.  Why ALL of their (VZ) services start out at $35 is beyond me, but perhaps they saw the light and went in with Straight Talk (TracFone) on this for hidden reasons yet to be unveiled.

While we've been able to talk on ST for over an hour without interruption to a few close friends we hadn't talked to in years, there are times when the voice quality dropped to what sounded like an mp3 file with a bit rate of <32 and it garbled a little.

I will be testing out the device some more soon.


Thank you for your reply...  I received my OBi110.

The OBi110 is set up to block anonymous calls right out of the box ;) but I still have to figure out the * code to bypass the OBi110 to be able to place outbound calls from my landline connected phone.

MurrayB

Hitting # puts you directly to the PSTN (landline) dial tone bypassing the Obi.

zorlac

FWIW, they don't support SMS text messages, that's a real non-starter for my wife.  :P

giqcass

Quote from: zorlac on February 03, 2014, 01:33:50 PM
FWIW, they don't support SMS text messages, that's a real non-starter for my wife.  :P

If they did SMS I might have switched and paid the whole 2 years in advance.  The interesting thing is they appear to have been toying with the idea.  The proxy is sms.intelafone.com.  They appear to be using Amazon AWS.
Long live our new ObiLords!

cluckercreek

If you check out their suggestion page the SMS question has a tag on it "planning". Not a big deal to me but I would use it to contact my siblings across the state.

mikeatwork

Quote from: giqcass on January 12, 2014, 06:59:58 AM
Has anyone got the outbound CID Spoofing to work?  I have tried several times to verify my number but every attempt fails with my trial account.

It is working for me. make sure you entered the correct number. It should verify by calling you and asking for a two digit code.

mikeatwork

Quote from: cluckercreek on February 04, 2014, 07:25:17 AM
If you check out their suggestion page the SMS question has a tag on it "planning". Not a big deal to me but I would use it to contact my siblings across the state.

I just forward my GV number to this number. This will still work after the change. This way you get texts and messages in you mail box just as before.

I like the quality much better than GV. I am also testing Callcentric. From them you can get a free inbound line. I have not tried the outbound except to other Callcentric numbers. It is very good quality and the setup is almost fool proof. So easy just need to remember the phone number and the password. I am testing now with two systems and four lines. Not sure what I will choose yet.  Almost done with my free trial minutes on obivoice without any problems. I registered the number on both systems. Callcentric allows me to have unrestricted extensions on one account. This might tilt the vote for me. Perhaps I will use both :)

giqcass

Quote from: mikeatwork on February 21, 2014, 03:50:11 PM
Quote from: giqcass on January 12, 2014, 06:59:58 AM
Has anyone got the outbound CID Spoofing to work?  I have tried several times to verify my number but every attempt fails with my trial account.

It is working for me. make sure you entered the correct number. It should verify by calling you and asking for a two digit code.

The web portal was giving me the wrong code to enter.  I contacted Ryan and he got back with me once but it didn't get fixed.  He set the system up so that I would hear the code I entered read back to me.  Even though the system was reading back the same number that was on the screen it still would not activate even with multiple attempts.  He didn't get back with me after that.  I believe that in some circumstances the system gets knocked out of sync when a verification attempt fails. I suspect that is why Ovivoice has the reset button in the "Spoof Outbound Caller ID" panel now.  I was able to activate it by using a brute force strategy. Hopefully this bug is fixed.
Long live our new ObiLords!

Newme

courtesy of http://www.myvoipprovider.com/

SunRocket

SunRocket was founded in 2004 by some MCI executives that decided they wanted to compete directly with Vonage, CallVantage, Verizon VoiceWing -- all the big dogs in residential VoIP phone service.

And SunRocket was competing. SunRocket had 200,000 customers in 2007, in large part due to their exceptional promotional offer: 2 years of service for $199!

There were minor murmurs and tremors, though, signs that something was wrong: SunRocket affiliates stopped getting paid. Staff started getting laid off, here and there. Then the sales department went.

And then the service cut out.

SunRocket greeted all callers with a helpful message: "We are no longer taking customer support or sales calls. Goodbye."

Note: You can no longer hear this message in all its glory. Someone else bought the number.

And that was it for communication. Most customers only found out about SunRocket's demise when they picked up the phone - and heard nothing on the line.

SunRocket ... disappointed its customers. SunRocket's collapse also caused a wave of damage to the VoIP industry: 200,000 angry subscribers poured into the subscriber market.

Some switched back to cable and traditional PSTN providers, swearing off VoIP for life. Some subscribers inundated other VoIP providers and caused service overloads. Most lost money - some lost lots of money.

SunRocket's meltdown is the nadir of VoIP collapses. 200,000 households shoved into the cold.

QBZappy

@Newme

Welcome to the forum,

That was an interesting historical account of SunRocket. We can easily find many other examples of failed companies. Any nascent or established voip player can pull a SunRocket at any time. As detailed in your account even seasoned veterans can fail. Look around at the different voip players in the market today. Any one of these players could for different reasons pull a SunRocket despite charging more for the service. I have a Skype call out account which is charging me $30/year for unlimited (subject to fair use). Skype may have set a barometer price for voip service. A phone conversation via the Skype or sip protocol is irrelevant in the minds of most users. The ubiquitous nature of the telephone is what, in my opinion, is driving sip and all sip related paraphernalia such as ATAs and IP phones. To date it looks like Vestalink has earned the respect of their clients by demonstrating to my surprise a new level of customer support that I have yet to see elsewhere. Respect is a double edged sword. As soon as they show less humility and start being arrogant by giving us the take it or leave it attitude the sword will swing the other way. They have given their customers a sense that they have a say in how the company should evolve. Any reason for failure has been addressed directly and without hesitation. Many features have been added as a result of their customers requesting it. In general queries are promptly resolved. To their credit, the fact that they changed Obivoice to Vestalink to avoid conflict with obihai despite the fact that it seems they had rights to the name Obivoice shows the Zen like method of dealing with what ever issues that may arise.

As per PX Eliezer
( http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r29072906-Am-I-The-Only-One-Who-Is-Confused-~start=60 )
Feds report:
First used in 2012.
Application for Obivoice filed by Intelafone: January 18, 2014
Abandonment Date: March 3, 2014

http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=tess&state=4809:jzwp9u.1.1
(Do a "basic" search for Obivoice)

They have positioned themselves as a voip player open to form working relationships with both their customers and any commercial partner. How can anyone not like a company with that kind of spirit. Like I have mentioned before, the longevity of this company largely depends on the business model they have adopted and the revenue streams they are capable of sustaining. Time will tell. In the meantime every new customer they get is a vote of confidence for Vestalink.
Owner of the 1st OBi110/100 units in service in Canada & South America. 1st OBi202 on my street. 1st OBi1032 in Montreal.

OneForTheTeam

I can attest to VestaLink's prompt customer service. I sense an ambition and willingness to stay for a longer run. VestaLink is growing by organically (winning each customer) and word of mouth. This is a positive thing in my opinion. But as with any person or entity, you never really know....

brossow

Just wanted to throw in my 2¢ worth on this provider.  Ever since the announcement that GV was dropping support in May, I've been looking at alternatives.  When Vestalink (then Obivoice) popped up on my radar, I checked it out and signed up for a trial account.  Not willing to let it overwrite my OBi202's configuration, which I discovered after signing up it wanted to do, I more or less ignored the trial and kept researching.  With their warning that promo pricing was only good through the end of March, a couple days ago I bit the bullet and signed up for the two-year 2000-minute plan; I checked with them before signing up and if the 2000 minutes doesn't meet our needs (family of 5) we can upgrade for the price difference (and if the service doesn't meet our needs at all, there's a 30-day guarantee).

My impressions are varied but mostly positive:


  • They aren't able to port my GV number as they apparently don't have a presence in the city where my GV number is based. That's a bummer, because it means I have to forward the GV calls and spoof Caller ID in order to avoid having to change my number again (which I'm loath to do). That leads to another issue that I hadn't considered....
  • GV forwarding works fine for the most part, but because I can't disable GV's voicemail I'm now stuck with no notification on the phone when someone has left a voicemail message. Of course, I get the notifications via email, but if I'm in a meeting or otherwise unavailable, there's no way for my wife to know that there's a message waiting for her.  Really wish I'd known this ahead of time. So....
  • Along with the above, there's no way to configure the ring time before Vestalink's voicemail kicks in.  If I could configure it to kick in earlier, I could avoid the GV voicemail you can control the ring time in the account settings, but only in 10-second increments. 20 seconds is still too long to avoid GV; 10 seconds works but doesn't give enough time to answer the phone. More granularity for fine-tuning would really help. I've added a feature request for it but am not holding my breath.
  • Their support reply times have been very quick (sometimes within minutes; never more than a day -- and yes, I've asked quite a few questions), even if they haven't given me the answers I wanted.
  • Call quality doesn't seem as crisp as with GV. Because incoming calls are forwarded through GV, I wonder if they're passing through GV, then through Vestalink and being compressed multiple times.  I'm not techy enough to know the answer to that. I'm going to try to pay more attention to outbound call quality over the next couple of weeks to see if I notice a difference. It's not unusable by any means, but even my kids have mentioned it so it's definitely not my imagination.

    UPDATE: Placed a few calls last night (outgoing, obviously) that didn't go through GV and the calls were nice and clear. Either it was a transient issue or else incoming calls through GV are being double-compressed. If you're not forwarding through GV, this probably won't be an issue for you.
  • Cost of international calls is comparable to or higher than with GV for the numbers we call (but is somewhat or even MUCH lower to some other numbers that we wouldn't be calling; for example, for some UK mobile numbers I checked, the rate was only half of GV's cost). Of course, we can go back to the old way of initiating those calls via the computer, but that really detracts from the user experience. This is important to us as my wife calls family and friends in the UK frequently. I'm just beginning to look at adding a separate provider like Localphone where she'd just have to dial something like **2 to place the call through the secondary provider, but again I'm not techy enough to know all the ins and outs of that. If there was a way to automatically route international calls dialed directly through the appropriate provider, that would be killer and would solve this issue. This is much more my limitation that Vestalink's. After more research, I've found that it's trivial to automatically route international calls through a second provider like Localphone that offers significantly lower international rates than either GV or Vestalink ... as long as you disable the functionality that automatically loads configuration from a Vestalink URL every time the device is rebooted. (It took me some time to figure out why the DigitMap kept reverting when the device restarted, which of course is required for the new DigitMap to take effect.)
  • Speaking of international calls, Vestalink's phonebook is exceedingly basic. It doesn't have grouping, for example, and much worse from our perspective is that they assume that all numbers are US (okay, or Canada) numbers. It only supports 10-digit numbers and formats anything else as a US number. I've requested they support international numbers as well, but again not holding my breath.
  • Overall value for money seems very good (not as good as free with GV, but GV doesn't offer E911, for example) so I don't feel I've made a bad choice.

Hope this adds more than just noise to the conversation.   :)

Brent
OBi202 • Google Voice (domestic) • Localphone (international)

joecandle

I would like to make a comment on previous comments by Brossow.

I mostly dial Europe and Mexico (both landlines and cellphones) and I checked. Their International call prices are quite a bit lower than Googlevoice. What am I missing?

Thanks

brossow

Quote from: joecandle on March 08, 2014, 09:28:55 AM
I would like to make a comment on previous comments by Brossow.

I mostly dial Europe and Mexico (both landlines and cellphones) and I checked. Their International call prices are quite a bit lower than Googlevoice. What am I missing?

Thanks

I only researched relative to the numbers we actually call.  All of our international calls are to the UK, which costs 2¢/minute with GV for the numbers we call and for the numbers I checked in Vestalink's rate table those calls would be 3-4¢/minute.  (Some of our calls would be the same at 2¢/minute but none lower than the GV cost.)  Having said that, however, those same numbers are only 1¢/minute with Localphone and while a penny here and there may not seem like much, taken in total it means that calling via Localphone cuts our overall international calling costs in half even compared with GV's or Vestalink's already low rates.

Having said that, I checked GV's rates to UK mobile phones (10¢/minute) and compared with Vestalink's rates to the same numbers and found Vestalink was only half that price (5¢/minute).  For us it's a moot point because we don't call UK mobile phones, but in that case Vestalink clearly beats GV.  I was not trying to do a complete across-the-board-to-every-country comparison but only reporting based on our usage, and I'll update my post to clarify that.  Now, again having said that, Localphone again beats both with their rate of only 2.3¢/minute to the same UK mobile numbers (less than half of Vestalink's rate and less than a quarter of GV's).
OBi202 • Google Voice (domestic) • Localphone (international)

OKPhoneGuy

Hey all...

I was preparing to set up a Vestalink account to migrate my phone away from GV. I was also content with the notion of forwarding GV to Vesta, and spoofing my local # on the outbound Vesta side....but when I went to sign up, they tell me there "are no numbers in the area."

I didn't think that this would be an issue for someone willing to forward inbound/spoof outbound, but I see no way to register with them without getting a local DID number.

What am I missing??

Thanks, David

brossow

Quote from: OKPhoneGuy on March 08, 2014, 10:00:57 AM
Hey all...

I was preparing to set up a Vestalink account to migrate my phone away from GV. I was also content with the notion of forwarding GV to Vesta, and spoofing my local # on the outbound Vesta side....but when I went to sign up, they tell me there "are no numbers in the area."

I didn't think that this would be an issue for someone willing to forward inbound/spoof outbound, but I see no way to register with them without getting a local DID number.

What am I missing??

Thanks, David

Not sure I completely understand, but if you're going to forward from GV and spoof the Caller ID for outbound, having a local number shouldn't matter.  The nearest Vestalink phone number I could get is in a town an hour or more away from me, but since my local GV number forwards to it and Caller ID gets spoofed for outbound calls, for all practical purposes I still have a local number.  It wouldn't matter if my "real" number was down the road or across the country.  If there's not a local number in your town (or even area code) just pick a different one and set up the GV forwarding/spoofing as you would with a local number.
OBi202 • Google Voice (domestic) • Localphone (international)

OKPhoneGuy

Okay I think I was just being dense - who cares where the DID number originates - just pick a place and move on.

Doh on me :)

Newme

Quote from: joecandle on March 08, 2014, 09:28:55 AM
I would like to make a comment on previous comments by Brossow.

I mostly dial Europe and Mexico (both landlines and cellphones) and I checked. Their International call prices are quite a bit lower than Googlevoice. What am I missing?

Thanks

GV Rate to Cuba Guantanamo Bay   98¢
Vestalink Cuba Guantanamo Bay   $1.90

Disgruntled

I was a very satisfied Intelafone subscriber. Then they merged and created ObiTalk, then they changed their new name ObiTalk to a newer name, Vestalink. I was happy with Intelafone and the price is right, so in January 2014, I bought an Obi adapter and signed on with a VestaLink residential plan. It's been downhill ever since!

Sometimes my outgoing calls go through sometimes they don't. And twice, since January, my account has been dropped from their system, necessitating that I go to their website and create a new account, as if I've never been a customer before. My phone service is down while I wait for all of this to go through, and if it's a weekend, well I just don't have a home phone until they get back in the office.

I travel a lot and count on VestaLink to send incoming calls to voicemail where they show up on my smartphone, but my VestaLink service has been so spotty since the first of the year I feel like I have to call my Vestalink number every morning from my cell phone to make sure it's working and will receive incoming calls. 

I'm really disappointed. They had a good thing going but it aint working now.