CircleNet would like to introduce ourselves to the Obi world

[Phonequestion]

Down to the last line...
Click the REBOOT button located in the window upper-right corner.

I do not see a reboot button anywhere on the screen.

[Sam_from_CircleNet]

Hello Phonequstion,
This website has a good obi screenshot illustrating where the button is
http://blog.voipdiy.com/2013/05/obihai-obi100-three-ways-to-reboot.html

Hello Obi Community as a whole,
CircleNet plans on being very busy today please bear with us if support and signup verification take longer than expected.

Sam

[mo832]

Sam,

I understand you may be swamped today and for the next few days, and am willing to be patient. However I wanted to point out that I received a "unable to verify account" email today. I replied to it, but don't know if it goes to a robot.

To set up a trial account to sample everything, it is seeming to be a bit of a hassle. I know you have measures like the 12-hour delay and other things to prevent fraud, but since it is prepaid, all the personal info you collect seems excessive IMO. In addition to the issue about encryption/SSL that was discussed early in this thread.

I await your response

[voiper1]

Sam,

I understand you may be swamped today and for the next few days, and am willing to be patient. However I wanted to point out that I received a "unable to verify account" email today. I replied to it, but don't know if it goes to a robot.

To set up a trial account to sample everything, it is seeming to be a bit of a hassle. I know you have measures like the 12-hour delay and other things to prevent fraud, but since it is prepaid, all the personal info you collect seems excessive IMO. In addition to the issue about encryption/SSL that was discussed early in this thread.

I await your response

I had no problems getting my account setup.  Configuring my OBI was my issue.  I am sure Sam will reply asap. The SSL was fixed as was mentioned in the thread as well.  Read down further and it states he fixed it right away.   You can also try creating a support ticket if you did get login credentials, but if not simply email them as well.  support@circlenet.us. this forum might be a slow way to reach him.
This page appears to be SSL.
https://customer.circlenet.us/customer/signup.php

Hope that helps
Cheers... 

[mo832]

Thanks voiper1.... yes, I know they fixed the SSL issue a long time ago, I was just mentioning it for historical value, noting that we all have concerns about privacy and security.

They have already responded to me via email, but it is good to have the support ticket info you gave for future reference. Thanks.

[Sam_from_CircleNet]

Hi mo832,
You should be good now we are all caught up on account activation. I do ask for an address and phone number because in the past we've been hit by scam artists. Their normal pattern was to signup late at night from an overseas IP or from a VPN, fund their account using a stolen credit card and call away until someone caught them.

The second type of issue that we would run into would be telemarketers who would create accounts with fake credentials and use these accounts to blast out calls to hundreds/thousands of people just to get them to call them back on the number passed as callerID. This costs me time and money, also I don't like having my dinner interrupted by a bogus telemarketing call any more than the next guy so not only is there a business reason to police this there is a personal one.

In order to stop this we do an automated address verification on everyone and then go back and have a human look at each account before activating it. I am open to better ideas on how to do this but for the time being I need to know my customers are who they claim to be.

It's a pain in the butt and I apologize for that but like I said I'm open to other ideas :-)

Sam

[gderf]

I'd keep doing it the way you are now. Legitimate users will be patient, so long as the potential delay for activation is clearly visible on the signup pages. As to what the crooks think about any delay, tough ^#(*.

[voiper1]

I'd keep doing it the way you are now. Legitimate users will be patient, so long as the potential delay for activation is clearly visible on the signup pages. As to what the crooks think about any delay, tough ^#(*.

I second that.  I think Sams approach is great to protect his company and the users.  Last thing he/we want is his service shut down.   

[HighTechnology]

Sam,

Just wanted to say thanks.  I put the service through its paces today, and didn't encounter a single glitch. I've been a loyal GV user for years, mostly to get simultaneous ring on my cell phones.  I work from home one day each week, and bought my OBI 100 a couple of years ago so I could use GV and a cordless phone instead of tying up my home phone or using my cell...

I signed up about a week ago, and everything worked but had only really made a few test calls before today. I use CircleNet for outgoing, and Callcentric for incoming DID (especially since I am in NY, so the local DID is free, even though I only use it as a GV forwarding number so incoming works on my OBI).

I made about 300 minutes of outgoing calls, which were comprised of 4 toll free conference calls (about 180 minutes in total), plus a few regular domestic dial long distance calls (about 120 minutes).  The call quality on all of the calls was very good, as good as I usually get on my cordless phone.  There were no odd sounds, no muffled voices, nothing...

My cost for the day was about $0.30 -- the only strange thing to me is the disparity in rates -- some calls are about one-sixth of a cent per minute, when others are one-third of a cent per minute.  I know it really depends on the routing, but the costs are really low for good quality.  I just hope you got paid something for my toll-free calls too...

After my CircleNet account was activated, I changed the CallerID to my GV number.  Then on the OBI, I just cleared the OBI dashboard, reset and rebooted the OBI (so it would be completely clean) and then used the Dashboard to set up both CallCentric (on SP1) and CircleNet (as generic on SP2), and made sure to check the box on CircleNet that it's the default outgoing service.  No other settings were necessary -- everything just works!

I don't really use GV for voicemail access from my VOIP, but I know I can't dial my own GV number for access to that yet -- I'll need a sub-account if I want to do that (covered in another post in this forum).  For now, I am happy just using my cell to get my GV voicemails since I really use this as a second line.

[ipse]

I don't know how I missed this thread until now...I suppose the imminent demise of GV (of which I've been a fan for 3 years) reactivated some rusted neurons and I started to look around.
Not that I was under any immediate pressure - I'm happy with residential service from Anveo - but I wanted an Android solution to complement my sh!tty (B-h-ell Mobility) plan minutes.

So far CircleNet seems promising, in terms of rates and more important, customer support. I immediately bumped into an issue with DTMF tones (* disconnects the call) and Sam offered to fix it either this weekend or the next. CSIPSimple was set to "Auto" - which could be RFC2833 - as once changed to InBand the problem went away.
The CN website could use some work and I'm sure the user community will provide feedback as we go along...I know I opened a ticket regarding the Notify page error "No Data Found!" after form submission.

[Sam_from_CircleNet]

Hello IPSE,
Welcome aboard! I wanted to take a minute to let you know that we were able to test the fix for the hangup when "*" was pressed in our test environment late last night and the fixed code just went into the production side. You should now be able to use * like any other DTMF digit.

Thanks
Sam

[Sam_from_CircleNet]

Also HighTechnology,
Your welcome
Sam

[ipse]

Hello IPSE,
Welcome aboard! I wanted to take a minute to let you know that we were able to test the fix for the hangup when "*" was pressed in our test environment late last night and the fixed code just went into the production side. You should now be able to use * like any other DTMF digit.

Verified and found working with the "AUTO" option in CSIPSimple...thank you Sam.
Also, I put in a request last night to have a sub-account created and by morning it was there
Like I mentioned in the ticket, it would be good to have the SIP credentials available for both accounts (now it only shows the latest), but that's a minor issue...

As it was said many times on this forum, people like us (that might not be the average user, as we claim to posses a little bit of knowledge ) appreciate customer support and responsiveness even more than low rates. When you can combine both, you have a winner.

So far so good CircleNet.

[rawsis]

Like other GV users, I am looking for an alternative VOIP service and just looked into the OBI forum for help and advise ---- and found your posting.  Reads promising and just signed up, but waiting for validation.  Hope it works out well...on a limited budget and your service would greatly help out.  = TIA

[voiper1]

Like other GV users, I am looking for an alternative VOIP service and just looked into the OBI forum for help and advise ---- and found your posting.  Reads promising and just signed up, but waiting for validation.  Hope it works out well...on a limited budget and your service would greatly help out.  = TIA

Having looked all over, this is about as free as you can get.  CallCentric free incoming or any other free solution you have and CircleNet outgoing pay as you go.. great deal.

Cheers... 

[rawsis]

Got validated. 

So what are the steps to use your service on my existing OBI account?  Is it posted somewhere in one of these posts? 

I've used GV and OBI only.  I see a recent post to use this only for outgoing calls and to use callcentric (or something similar) for incoming.  I'm pretty techo but this is a bit challenging for me.

[voiper1]

Got validated.  

So what are the steps to use your service on my existing OBI account?  Is it posted somewhere in one of these posts?  

I've used GV and OBI only.  I see a recent post to use this only for outgoing calls and to use callcentric (or something similar) for incoming.  I'm pretty techo but this is a bit challenging for me.

Hi, pretty much it is listed in all the threads. I spent a long time hunting but it is all here in this thread.  below I gathered a few links.  Hope it helps.  Its not hard, but remember to turn off the Auto Configuration I think it is.  You can find that in the threads in this forum thread.

http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=7614.msg50681#msg50681
http://www.callcentric.com/support/device/obihai/obi100
https://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=3640.0

some stuff seems cryptic but just use some reasoning.

Cheers...  

[rawsis]

thanks volper1.

I'll first get my callcentric account then get started.  Keeping fingers crossed it doesn't take me all day to get setup on OBI.

[swg0101]

My cost for the day was about $0.30 -- the only strange thing to me is the disparity in rates -- some calls are about one-sixth of a cent per minute, when others are one-third of a cent per minute.  I know it really depends on the routing, but the costs are really low for good quality.  I just hope you got paid something for my toll-free calls too...

This is generally how US terminations work. In the backend, calls are billed based on the network you are calling. Generally speaking, more rural areas and networks have higher rates (in the 0.6 - 0.7 cpm range - although I have seen some networks charging more than 1 cpm), while more urban areas usually have rates in the 0.3 - 0.4 cpm range. Interestingly, US mobile / cell phones are billed at a lower rate unlike other countries where mobiles are charged more (usually close to 0.1 cpm) possibly due to IP networks that the operators use to terminate calls. VoIP providers also generally charge lower rates if a provider has termination routes to them (around 0.2 - 0.3 cpm). As far as I know, Circlenet doesn't bill based on the network you are calling, but rather on the prefix the number you are calling. For example, if you were calling 415-731-XXXX, the prefix will designate an AT&T landline number, with Circlenet you will still be charged the same rates if you ported this number away to say a VoIP provider. Other providers bill on a local routing number (LRN), so if the number you are calling have been ported away to some other provider, you will be charged at provider's rate instead of the prefix rates.

[rawsis]

can we port of google voice number to circlenet?  I don't see anything on your website for this.  TIA