ALL Betamax Services DOWN/DISRUPTED: Fire is excuse

[VeryR]

Voipcheap.com
Voipdiscount.com
Voipbuster.com
Voipstunt.com
etc. etc. etc.

None of the clients will connect; no calls can be made or received.
The website entry pages now say:

Due to a fire at our server site we are currently experiencing severe technical problems.
Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused; we are working hard to try and solve the problem as soon as possible.
Due to the severity of the disruption it may however take at least one day before we can offer full service again.
Please try again later.

Click here to continue.

If you click there [here] you go to the regular website that touts all the features, but you can't download the client, can't make test calls, and can't see your accounts.

I guess pretty soon we'll see if this company (which has ZERO customer service when they are operating) had a backup / recovery plan.....

And just like Skype's liberal [mis-]use of the English language, if you parse Betamax's English, what at first glance looks like it will be fixed in a day or less is really saying it may take MANY DAYS.....

[mc2000]

at least one day..its like saying the minimum is one day.now we will know what kind of stuff they're made off.

[mc2000]

interestingly, i tried it and surprisingly its working now..using ata.

[edokter]

Yep, everything working again. Nothing to see, move along.

[glomph]

Not sure if it's American ignorance, or what, but it is crazy how people beat up on this provider. I think they are better than almost all their competitors, especially at the price. Not nearly as shitty as Broadvoice, Vonage, et al.

[eric]

I don't think nationality has anything to do with it. Any time a provider has an outage, they get beat up.

But you get what you pay for and 99.999% availability isn't cheap.

[glomph]

It's not just a matter of money. Unless you own the White House or the larcenous simian therein.

Five-nines means less than one second unavailability per day. Obviously no internet-based provider can do this, even if internally they walk on clouds.

And these days, the monopolistic descendants of the Bell System do even WORSE, even though they have all the nominal redundancy and (almost) dedicated switched-circuit architecture. Why? Just have a fault on your line,
and see how long it takes them to repair it. Blows away those nines, no problem. Mean Time to Fix for me is a major fraction of a week, and I live in a long-developed affluent suburb of Seattle.

The answer, if there is one, is to have multiple means of communication, multiple internet access paths (my DSL + neighbor's cable), multiple VoIP providers, etc. And several mobile phones in the household. It's all work, and somewhat cumbersome, but it's what ya gotta do to maintain availability.

Originally Posted by eric

I don't think nationality has anything to do with it. Any time a provider has an outage, they get beat up.

But you get what you pay for and 99.999% availability isn't cheap.