[CJohnston]

ctylor,

Thanks for the well-wishes in the provider search. Unfortunately where I live (northern Michigan), there aren't many providers who offer local numbers in my city. BroadVoice and VoicePulse both do. That, alone, determines whether or not I can even try the provider.

I've got a buddy who uses Vonage, and he's had pretty good luck with it. He wanted me to sign up and use him as a referral, however, Vonage doesn't offer any phone numbers (at all) in the 989 area code (where I'm located). There's NO way my wife would like it if her friends had to call long distance just to talk with her (and I wouldn't do it, either).

I've been running G.729a for a good two solid weeks. On a whim, I switched back to G.711u yesterday. An hour later my wife called one of her friends and the first thing I heard was, "Wow! This is the best I've ever heard you sound on this phone!" So, my wife noticed the difference when moving back to G.711u.

As far as latency goes, the delay involved isn't really that noticeable. That's never been something my wife's complained about -- low audio, audio drops, dropped calls, echoes -- yes. My latency on the "Info" page normally runs about 40-50ms, with very low jitter, so that's pretty decent.

I'm excited to try out VoicePulse. I really think it's cool that you can change your codec via your account portal (or whatever they call it) by simply selecting various quality settings in the bandwidth saver. I think Vonage has the same functionality. BroadVoice doesn't. If you don't have your admin password, then you have to call BV to request they change it.

Speaking of that, when my friend called to request they change him from G.711u to G.729a, they tried to talk him out of it (even after he mentioned his uplink was only 128k). He eventually convinved them to do it, and wouldn't you know, nothing changed. I had him reboot his adapter to force it to reprovision (figuring that might be the reason why it hadn't changed yet). Nope. He was still encoding with G.711u. I've not been terribly impressed with BV's customer care.

As an example, I spoke several weeks ago with a customer care rep named Chip. He seemed pretty knowledgable. I told him about the fast-busy issues we were all receiving on occasion from incoming calls. He said we had two options: (1) have BV submit a trouble ticket to Verizon (from whom the DID numbers were purchased) and hope that they fix it, or (2) get a new phone number and hope the problem doesn't exist on that number. He said, of course, that there would be no charge to us for the number change since it was for the purpose of fixing a problem on their end. I wasn't terribly excited about the success of either option.

Well, last week when my friend call customer care, he was told they could give him a Traverse City number (long distance from here), but that he'd have to pay for the number change. He mentioned having them submit a trouble ticket to Verizon for his current number, and they told him that was crazy. They said that the numbers that receive the fast busy when calling his phone would have to submit the trouble tickets, not his number. That's absurd. When incoming callers get fast-busy when calling, it's from every number we've tried (POTS lines, cell lines, etc). He's not comfortable with his knowledge of this stuff enough to fight them on it, so he just reluctantly accepted what they told him then called me and relayed what he was told.

So, I feel like we've been given the run-around. I'm very encouraged with the reviews of VoicePulse, so they're worth a shot in my book. I'll post my results as the test unfolds...

Chad

[lmaurin]

hello !

some useful documentation on codecs here (page 4) :

http://www.sipura.com/Documents/Impl...B_Services.pdf

another one :

http://www.grandstream.com/FAQ-Codec.pdf

[CJohnston]

I just received my ATA (Sipura SPA-2002) from VoicePulse today. Got it installed while I was home for lunch. Set the BV line to call-forward all calls to the VoicePulse line.

Called the BV line 6 times in a row from my cell: fast-busy each time - wouldn't ring through (this has become commonplace recently with the BV line).

Called the VP line directly 6 times in a row from my cell: it rang through quickly each time. No issues. Voice quality seems excellent on the VP line. One call began with a few slightly-echoed syllables until the echo cancellation kicked in and completely eliminated it (just like it should). Awesome!

Tested a couple outbound calls, and they worked fine, too. When I got home at lunch (before installing the VP hardware), my wife said she hadn't been able to call out on the BV line all morning. Sounds like I picked up VoicePulse just in time...

So, cursory testing looks good, but only time will tell. I'm encouraged by the reviews I've read of VoicePulse. I've got a good feeling about this new VoIP relationship.

Chad

[DownUnder]

Originally Posted by lmaurin

hello !

some useful documentation on codecs here (page 4) :

http://www.sipura.com/Documents/Impl...B_Services.pdf

another one :

http://www.grandstream.com/FAQ-Codec.pdf

Thanks for giving the links for these document. The Sipura document was published in April 2004 .Do you have the lastest codec implementation documents from Sipura?

[ctylor]

VoicePulse sounds like it is doing the job well for you. In Canada where I am, I can't use any typical US VOIP provider one hears mentioned positively a lot in this forum or the DSL Reports VOIP forum because unfortunately many of the big name competitive providers do not provide Canadian DIDs. My choices in VOIP providers are unfortunately limited to INX, VBuzzer, Axvoice, G3Telecom, NetFone, InPhonex, Unlimitel, and ZingoTel... any of whom are hardly big names in any VOIP forum community. Oh well, my set up works and the price is very decent. That's all we can ask for.

[CJohnston]

ctylor - Yes, VoicePulse seems to be working out very well for me. I'm not being bombarded by complaints by my wife of dropped calls, one-way audio drops, callers complaining of not being able to get through to the BroadVoice number for 20-30 minutes straight (fast-busy).

I'm still a little gun-shy, and my wife is even moreso. I'm keeping my mouth shut for a while until I can see if things will stay good with VoicePulse before I start recommending them to others. After I signed up with BroadVoice, I had five other people sign up with them based on my initial experience with them. Unfortunately, after about the first month (i.e. the "trial" period), the service really started taking a turn for the worse. My wife is still expecting that to happen with VoicePulse, too (and there's a part of me that's sort of expecting it, too).

So, only time will tell. For now, I'm enjoying great call quality and reliability. Also, incoming CallerID Name delivery actually works with VoicePulse. All I got with BroadVoice was CID number. Oh, and I haven't actually asked VP yet, but their signup-to-live times are longer now because they're doing E911 call center registration for their customers now, and if you don't live in one of their natively-supported areas, they have to do some manual work to figure out where a 911 call is supposed to be routed. From what I've seen, I'd almost guess that 911 is supposed to work (though I haven't dialed 911 to find out what happens). When my order took longer than "advertised" (on the broadbandreports.com customer reviews section), I emailed VP to make sure I hadn't fallen through the cracks. They confirmed my order was still in process, and it was currently in 911 verification stage.

Anyway, that's the latest on the VoicePulse front. BTW, I'm really surprised that at least ONE of the big VoIP names hasn't decided to start serving the Canadian provinces. I have heard good things about Axvoice and Vbuzzer from others in many of the hundreds of reviews I've read. I'm curious to know what provider you're using...

Thanks (again) for the input...

Chad