[littleswallow]

Originally Posted by liug

It seems they don't support BYOD, or give out login info. I was hoping I could configure my home asterisk to talk to it. Can you check to see if it is possible?

I don't think italkbb.com supports BYOD, but I never asked since BYOD is not that useful to me. I did use BYOD with a Sipura 3000 when I had service with Broadvoice. Now I am debating whether I should sell the Sipura (probably on eBay) or keep it for further use.

[vampares]

Originally Posted by liug

It seems they don't support BYOD, or give out login info. I was hoping I could configure my home asterisk to talk to it. Can you check to see if it is possible?

Broadvoice is compatible with asterisk. Setup a generic sip device in the portal and then view the settings. You can then reffer to the how to on asterisk configuration. There is a reduced BYOD setup fee. Sipura devices work well both as tftp clients through broadvoice or custom devices. This is one of the only providers that offers these features at an affordable price.

[ymhee_bcex]

vampares, no offense, but do you even read the messages that you are replying to? you picked a dozen threads; some of them quite old - and posted some very strange (I would even say bizzare) responses. This one is a perfect example.... liug and littleswallow were discussing whether italkbb supports BYOD... and here comes you with deep thoughts about BroadVoice :roll: ! There are a few other posts that you made that are as relevant as this one. :evil:

[ronfog]

If interested in getting a Wired Test magazine you have to subscribe to Wired. This link offers a cheap one year subscription plus a free Test Wired copy.
https://w1.buysub.com/pubs/N3/WIR/di...s_mag_code=WIR

There is no Wired Test online.

Best

Ron

[AlexanderBell]

Sounds like an advertiser's shill mag to me. Let me guess. BroadVoice had a full-page ad in the "new" periodical.

[ronfog]

Originally Posted by AlexanderBell

Sounds like an advertiser's shill mag to me. Let me guess. BroadVoice had a full-page ad in the "new" periodical.

Usually I am suspicious of testing magazines or at least I take them just for some basic info about a product. Generally speaking Forums are the best source of info. Anyway there is always the possibility that a product has been ranked higher just because of some "favor". I saw BV's insert in Wired Test mag. No full-page ad :shock:
People should judge based on their own experience or consider the following:
- "Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own." Aesop -

Ron

[ymhee_bcex]

I saw the Wired Test mag today... It's a very brief comparison of 5 providers (I can't figure out what were the selection criteria in the first place - Packet8, AT&T CallVantage, SunRocket, BroadVoice and - IIRC - Vonage). The comparison is quite mechanical - prices, features, quality of the website. Nothing about voice quality, customer service or anything else significant... I don't think it's paid for by the providers; but I wouldn't give much weight to it, either!

[dreamdreams]

I'm thinking to leave BV too. Its domestic call quality is always good to me. But I got a lot echo when calling China, since the infamouse outage.

I've been with BV for 13 month. It's been good if you just use for domestic. But their phone/email support sucks. Avg holding time, to my experience, is over 20 minutes and emails don't get response.

Originally Posted by BlindLemonLars

I frequently read such reports of poor BV call quality, and am bewildered. Except for a few weeks after the infamous Global Crossing divorce, my call quality has ALWAYS been outstanding...completely indistinguishable from POTS.

Mind you, I make only domestic USA calls on my BV line. Is the poor call quality you've experienced only on international calls?

I'm also puzzled by reliability complaints, as I've been with them for eleven months now, and have had no outages outside of the GlobalX incident.

(I'm a self-provisioned BYOD customer, which may be a factor in both cases.)

[dpoon]

After more than a year with Broadvoice, I'm planning to leave too, as soon as I find a better provider. My wife, especially, is totally pissed whenever the phone fails. I sympathize and try to fix it, but that doesn't prevent new problems from coming up.

Here's a run-down of the problems I've experienced:

1) Poor quality for international calls.

I installed my adapter in Switzerland while we were living there for a while. Calls between the US PSTN and Switzerland VoIP were generally of good sound quality when it worked. However, VoIP calls to Switzerland were very often inaudible. Even though those calls were free under the Unlimited World plan, we ended up paying the Swiss PSTN phone company per minute for local calls.

2) Overloaded circuits

When placing international calls, we would sometimes get a "sorry, all circuits are busy" recording. Even worse, I test-called my own Broadvoice number yesterday from another line and got a "your call cannot be completed at this time" recording. Who knows how many incoming calls I've missed?

3) General flakiness (dropped calls)

For some reason, their SIP proxy intermittently sends "401 - Unauthorized" responses to my Sipura ATA's periodic SIP registrations. I have the packet traces to prove it. If one of these happens while I happen to be on a call, my ATA drops the call. Mind you, I think that dropping a call that is already in progress due to a failed SIP REGISTER is a Sipura bug, but Broadvoice's intermittent authentication failures are triggering the problem.

4) Mysterious changed password incident

Two months ago, my account stopped working. It turns out that Broadvoice had changed my SIP password for some unknown reason, which prevented my ATA from connecting to their network.

5) No 911 service

They haven't shown any signs of progress in this respect, not even as a beta test. In fact, they mailed me a big yellow sticker to put on my phone saying that 911 service isn't available. Not that it really matters to me... I need to keep my PSTN line anyway because of all the other reliability problems.


And a couple of minor nitpicks...

6) Canada can't call your Broadvoice toll-free number

Canadian callers who dial your Broadvoice toll-free number will get a recording: "The number you have dialed is not available in your area." No big deal, but it's something to be aware of.

7) Broadvoice won't take incoming SIP calls

The only incoming calls Broadvoice accepts are those coming through the public phone network. You can't have a SIP client call your Broadvoice device directly through the Internet. I guess this minor point won't matter to 99% of Broadvoice subscribers.


In summary, the sum of all this aggravation has led me to start shopping around for alternatives. The service may be good enough for chatting with friends and family, if you tell them that you're using a cheap phone service. But if you're using it for any serious business calls, it's positively embarrassing.

I don't mean to say that Broadvoice is a bad company. Their rate plans are cheap. It's nice that they offer a bring-your-own-device plan, can provision your Sipura device automatically, and still give you the admin password so that you can tweak the settings. They offer round-the-clock tech support by phone, and their personnel are reasonably clueful and helpful. But if they really are the best VoIP provider out there, then things look pretty dismal for the industry!

[slicemaster101]

Originally Posted by BlindLemonLars

I frequently read such reports of poor BV call quality, and am bewildered. Except for a few weeks after the infamous Global Crossing divorce, my call quality has ALWAYS been outstanding...completely indistinguishable from POTS.

Mind you, I make only domestic USA calls on my BV line. Is the poor call quality you've experienced only on international calls?

I'm also puzzled by reliability complaints, as I've been with them for eleven months now, and have had no outages outside of the GlobalX incident.

(I'm a self-provisioned BYOD customer, which may be a factor in both cases.)

I don’t like to say it, but I think people are just ignorant as to the real cause of there VoIP problems. The real culprit in most cases is insufficient bandwidth! I don’t like to point fingers at consumers but I think those who are experiencing bad voice quality with BroadVoice or any major VoIP provider for that matter are simply blaming the wrong people, it is the consumers fault for being uninformed as to the actual bandwidth requirements of VoIP and what there broadband provider actually gives them ($15 a month DSL “768kbps down 128Kbps up” simply can’t provide quality VoIP service using G.711). I for one, like you, have not experienced call quality issues with BroadVoice since the few weeks during the global crossings fiasco. However, I also have a huge pipe to pump data through (10Mbit down and 1Mbit up, that ain’t no crap $15 a month DSL line). The most common broadband speed grade in the US is still 756Kbps down and 128Kbps up, and that is simply not enough to feed a VoIP conversation using the G.711 codec with out running into problems. “Stupid” consumers simply don’t know. They look at the requirements for VoIP and see broadband as the number 1 requirement, and think “I have DSL” but what they don’t know is that not all broadband is equal and there $15 a month DSL is simply not enough in most cases.

Signed,
Slice

P.S. don’t think I am letting the VoIP providers off easy though, I personally think every VoIP provider should have a speed test right on there site that people can run and see if they have enough bandwidth and make it a prerequisite to the signing up process so that they can warn those who don’t pass the basic speed test about the potential issues they may run into, and inform them of possible solutions (aka faster internet, lower quality codec, etc.).

P.P.S. I also am blaming the network hardware manufactures. I for one think that any modern cable/DSL router should support QoS and they don’t, this would also fix many problems experienced by those who actually have a fast enough internet connection to use VoIP but also have a high volume of internet traffic such as online games, running game servers, or active on P2P networks. Voice traffic should always get priority but with current generation home routers (aka no more then $120) these features are simply not available, unless you want to pay out the nose for business grade hardware (aka $250+).