PhoneGnome BYOD

[angelzworld]

Hello all...

First post on this forum...I have a Linksysy SIpura 3102 and I would very much like to convert it to a PG Box. I know from the site and from the forums that this is not supported and would like to know if in the near future there is any chance of this. I would def. like to go ahead and test this..if such a project was under consideration??

Also I was curious to know..if I try to convert a SPA 3102 to a PG..what happens?? does the PG tool recognize its a 3102 and not 3000 and refuse to proceed..or does it convert it unstably??

I would also like to know if I buy a PG box for use in Australia , how much would it cost for shipping it here and how long would it take?? Also can I tweak any settings or it comes preconfigured and locked??

Thanks for reading my post..Appreciate ur replies.

[PhoneGnome]

Originally Posted by angelzworld

Hello all...

First post on this forum...I have a Linksysy SIpura 3102 and I would very much like to convert it to a PG Box. I know from the site and from the forums that this is not supported and would like to know if in the near future there is any chance of this. I would def. like to go ahead and test this..if such a project was under consideration??

Also I was curious to know..if I try to convert a SPA 3102 to a PG..what happens?? does the PG tool recognize its a 3102 and not 3000 and refuse to proceed..or does it convert it unstably??

I would also like to know if I buy a PG box for use in Australia , how much would it cost for shipping it here and how long would it take?? Also can I tweak any settings or it comes preconfigured and locked??

Thanks for reading my post..Appreciate ur replies.

We do plan to support the 3102 at some point. We have limited resources and there is no estimated date at this time.

Attempting to upgrade a 3102 usign the SPA-3000 upgrade will not work. It should detect the device and refuse to perform the upgrade (the existing code is not compatible).

Once configured as a PhoneGnome box, configuration is performed using the My PhoneGnome website or XML-RPC API, not directly on the device.

[kalimark]

Originally Posted by PhoneGnome

We do plan to support the 3102 at some point. We have limited resources and there is no estimated date at this time...

Since I like to test everything new related to VoIP I have used the service and several PhoneGnome boxes several years ago, back when the service started and I thought the service had a tremendous potential to change the face of VoIP. Personally I liked the many innovative, at the time, features that PhoneGnome was able to squeeze from the Sipura device and the original stress on simplicity but there were some, mostly minor, aspects or pet peeves of mine, that I could not stand like the annoying announcement that the call is free or going via Internet etc. which I thought was designed for retards. The only justification for such announcements would be only if requested by user in cases when the call could not be connected as the default set-up by the user. To repeat what what the user set up as default every time the call is made was insane.

Anyway, I thought at that time the service had real potential and would make a difference. . . What happened to this service within the past few years that it became almost irrelevant?

I know there were some growing pains a few years back with service interruptions and quality and then the company dissed the core users by shutting off some users without warning for undefined or poorly defined TOS offenses which, I am told, are still vague and undefined up to this point.

I am sure that the few highly publicized cases probably spooked the rest of loyal customers and started the rapid decline in the rate of new users signing for the service. I guess this is the same thing that happened at Sprint where they also terminated small number of users who had problems and complained about it. Immediately after the company started to lose customers in record numbers and it is still loosing them years afterwards (record 5.1 million last year).

Anyway, I think PhoneGnome should admit to its past mistakes and start anew maybe with streamlined services (fewer but better) because it looks at this point it appears that the service has lost its focus. It appears that it does everything from plain old landline to iPhone but there is no focus and the marketing is just horrendous. And BTW, how do you justify talking in almost one sentence about iPhone application and praise for keeping the landline? How many iPhone owners care for the old landlines?

Personally I do have a landline (like many others) not because I need one but because it comes with the Verizon Fios triple play package and that package happens to be the least expensive way for me to get the fastest Internet available right now. And even though my landline comes with unlimited calls in the US, Canada and something else it is still the worst piece of crap if you compare the features it has with anything on the market – it has even less features than my Magic Jack, the $19.99 per year unlimited service that I use sometimes and even much less than PhoneGnome had back in 2005 not to mention some of the newer entrants like GrandCentral or Google Voice now. The problem with landlines is that nobody in 2009, in the right mind, orders one of those standalone. Mostly what people order is Internet and “landline” comes with it. In my area there are only two high speed Internet providers (Verizon Fios and Cablevision OptimumOnline) and the way they work you have to change them once every year or so in order to get the best pricing and the most services included for the buck.

I think for starters you need to get rid of the blog articles praising the landline or at least mute it out and treat the landline and the mobile numbers the way it should be treated – as a utility or one of many transport vehicles for the PhoneGnome service. This should be similar to what GrandCentral or Google Voice has been doing for several years now – they are using the existing utility of VoIP, landline or wireless as a platform to provide really outstanding package of services over it. With a little focus PhoneGnome should be doing the same thing providing excellent service over the utility of existing VoIP, landline or wireless networks.

I would not give the number that comes with Verizon landline to anyone just as I would not give the free IpKall number to anyone. Verizon number is just a platform or utility number, one of many and slightly better than the completely free IpKall number for example, but utility nevertheless that is used only internally by me to transport other services like Google Voice or even PhoneGnome. PhoneGnome in that case should work only with Google Voice number or another independent number and never the utility number – using PhoneGnome on the utility line would tie it up to the utility and thus degrade the service, defeat the purpose, and limit and confuse the PhoneGnome appeal. I think this is where your marketing gets confused and lost. It looks like the market will need increasingly multiple utility number providers like Verizon, IpKall, AT&T, T-Mobile etc. to support all the new services that companies like Google Voice and PhoneGnome should be providing.

I think now that PhoneGnome became almost irrelevant it should break with the past and remove the self-imposed shackles that tie it down to existing number whether wireless or even more so to the almost extinct landline number or provider. It should be more independent and not dependent on any one platform whether VoIP, wireless, and especially landline which means you should forget about concentrating on the upgrade to 3102 or any particular hardware – actually I think you should get rid of the existing Sipura box which only ties you back to old VoIP technology and limits what can be done. If that happens I think there is hope that PhoneGnome may again bring something exciting again and become relevant again.

[PhoneGnome]

Thanks for the feedback.

A couple of questions and a comment.

You have a lot of suggestions for PhoneGnome. How much have you purchased from the company? What is the revenue potential for your ideas? You say PhoneGnome is not focused, and we have to agree, as so many new things have come out it is hard to be. At the same time, your post is not focused either. When you say: "PhoneGnome should be providing excellent service over the utility of existing VoIP, landline or wireless networks." we think that's exactly what we do. How does PhoneGnome need to change, in your view, to do this, if it's not what we do now, by supporting VoIP, landline and wireless networks (which has the risk of being unfocused)?

As a comment, you suggest there was a "rapid decline in the rate of new users signing up for the service." There has never been such a decline. Growth has been steady and consistent. There has been a big decline in mentions of PhoneGnome in blogs and such over time, as it's not the new hot topic anymore, which might give the idea that there has been a decline in customer growth, but, in fact, this has had no impact on the rate of new users signing up for the service - signups have never experienced a "rapid decline".

[Au22]

[quote=kalimark;126795] . . . I know there were some growing pains a few years back with service interruptions and quality and then the company dissed the core users by shutting off some users without warning for undefined or poorly defined TOS offenses which, I am told, are still vague and undefined up to this point.

I am sure that the few highly publicized cases probably spooked the rest of loyal customers and started the rapid decline in the rate of new users signing for the service. I guess this is the same thing that happened at Sprint where they also terminated small number of users who had problems and complained about it. Immediately after the company started to lose customers in record numbers and it is still loosing them years afterwards (record 5.1 million last year). . .

I think that is exactly what happened a couple of years back. I myself at one point have had three Sipura 3000 devices converted to PhoneGnome, and each one of my mobile, home and work numbers was PhoneGnomized. I even had several paid accounts in other countries so I can provide easy local numbers for others. Each of my friends and family members was told about the benefits of the service and most of them had tried the service. I would say at least 200 people signed directly because of my mentioning of the service and most likely many more indirectly.

That was back in 2006 and 2007 at the height of the service popularity. Fast forwad a couple of years and I am not sure how many of the 200 people still use the service because I don’t know that any of them still does. There were several problems with the service but most annoying were the stonewalling by the company or denying that there is a problem.

Simple things like service outage lasting several hours a couple of times. It could go unnoticed for someone who used one account sporadically but someone like me who promoted this service at the time and had a number of friends on the service any interruption becomes visible instantly - often because people feel all of the sudden that because one mentioned some service and they tried it but it does not work the culprit is the person that mentioned the service.

Anyway, service interruption or other problems could happen to anyone but I thought that by having several paid accounts and three PhoneGnome boxes I should be entitled to a simple statement like “there is a problem and we are working on it” - most of the time there was nothing there - just silence. Then soon afterwards there were few instances where my friends were booted from the service for unidentifiable TOS offenses with no explanation (just like w/the service interruption just complete stonewalling or better yet they when the Customer Service decided to respond they would send a link pointing to a wrong place in the TOS).

Then there were just problems with accounts. First, I thought the problems were only with the free accounts but the same problems plagued all the accounts equally (free, paid and the ones connected to the PhoneGnome box). After a while the accounts never worked correctly for more than a month or two. After several complains the customer service started treating me like I am the problem so after I complained about the service on my mobile number (free) they disabled it, then after a while they started doing the same thing even to paid accounts and to accounts on my landlines connected to PhoneGnome boxes – they started disabling the accounts simply because of my complaints. I was livid at the time that I didn’ care I just converted all the Sipuras back to the original set-up and have never looked back. I guess the 200 of my friends and their friends did exactly the same.

It was so bad at that time that the petty thiefs running the customer service at PhoneGnome at the time wanted to even grab the few dollars in each of the paid overseas accounts I had so I had to get separate Voovox usernames and passwords to get my funds back so I could reuse it in Voxalot and other services.

I think what happened is that whoever was running the day to day operations at the time forgot the cardinal rule of viral marketing – it works! It works very well when the service works but it works EVEN BETTER when the service SUCKS.

I think they teach that at Marketing 101: there are many more people who will mention their problems with a company than who would mention anything positive about a company. Some people think that this is fundamentally unfair for the company – that’s not the case at all. Customer has the fundamental expectation to be treated fairly and should take excellent Customer Service for granted. However even when company screws up (which happens a lot with technology companies) the customer will understand when there is clear communication and clear explanation. Ignoring the customer never works and pissing the customer seemingly on purpose does not work well at all especially with companies trying to base its growth on the same customer word of mouth or viral marketing.

AU

[Au22]

Originally Posted by PhoneGnome

. . . Growth has been steady and consistent. There has been a big decline in mentions of PhoneGnome in blogs and such over time, as it's not the new hot topic anymore, which might give the idea that there has been a decline in customer growth, but, in fact, this has had no impact on the rate of new users signing up for the service - signups have never experienced a "rapid decline". . .

Personally, I do not think that there was anything wrong with the PhoneGnome service when the service started several years ago. Now, several years later the whole concept is still atractive but the dated packaging with the old Sipura 3000 Box pictured on the web page probably does not inspire confidence with anyone looking at the service now. If anything it was the horror stories of poor customer service that turned many people off back a couple of years ago.

I myself at that time have stopped using three PG devices, several paid oversees accounts that I used as DIDs and all of my free accounts on all the other mobile, home, and work telephones. In the beginning things were fine so I would phonegnomize all my phones and I would demonstrate to friends how it works. Everybody liked it too so I wouldn’ say there was something fundamentally wrong with the service.

When I was cancelling all my accounts back in 2007 I felt dissed not mainly because any of the particular problems that were clearly there but mostly because of the response (or lack of) of your Customer Service at that time.

I had hundreds of friends who used the service at that time – none of them, as far as I know, uses it two years later. Looking at this forum, and many others, it appears that most of the users left, or drifted away, at the same time sometime in 2007. I think it was viral marketing that started the service and I think it was the viral marketing that made it irrelevant later on.

AU

[PhoneGnome]

Originally Posted by Au22

I had hundreds of friends who used the service at that time – none of them, as far as I know, uses it two years later. Looking at this forum, and many others, it appears that most of the users left, or drifted away, at the same time sometime in 2007. I think it was viral marketing that started the service and I think it was the viral marketing that made it irrelevant later on.

AU

I'm sorry you were not happy. However, back to my other point, while it may appear that users have "drifted off" or usage/growth is down, there has actually been no such effect. New sign-ups and sales are still growing and are as strong now as they were back in 2006-2007. Perhaps these users are quiet on forums, but we see the numbers on the actual PhoneGnome system and signups and they are roughly the same now as back then. So again, it may appear that PhoneGnome is not the talk of the VoIP insiders anymore, but it's being used and is still growing, just the same.

[kami007]

Originally Posted by Au22

Personally, I do not think that there was anything wrong with the PhoneGnome service when the service started several years ago. Now, several years later the whole concept is still atractive but the dated packaging with the old Sipura 3000 Box pictured on the web page probably does not inspire confidence with anyone looking at the service now. If anything it was the horror stories of poor customer service that turned many people off back a couple of years ago. . .

AU

I would disagree that there were no fundamental problems. It is true there were serious problems with the customer service and I also remember the horror stories of some dumbfounded users who shelled $100 (or maybe more at the time) for a locked piece of hardware and were cut-off for some never clearly explained reasons related to TOS. That was not a reason but a result that the company found out it could not deliver on the overhyped “free” services at the time. PhoneGnome started, like other companies at the time, with the idea to deliver free calls between its own users and other VoIP networks, and then beyond that idea of reasonable rates to regular PSTN numbers.

As I recall everything was going reasonably well when the service was confined within the US. I don’t remember instances when users would be booted for things like lengthy calls at that time. The problems started a little later when PhoneGnome decided to expand the “free (unlimited) calls” to users beyond the US. Apparently they did not do their homework and did not calculate their own costs on what are some of the termination fees.

It was one thing to allow “free calls” in the US and then get some extra revenue from the users for the other “paid” calls but you had to be careful when you tried to do the same in some other countries. The termination fees were much higher in some of the countries and most likely the company found out that the users in some of those countries did not purchase as much extra credits as the company projected based on the US users.

The result was that the company started cutting people off. In the beginning there was “free unlimited usage” being heavily promoted. Unfortunately, after expanding beyond US the company realized that they could not provide first the unlimited” and later the “free” but they never changed or clarified “unlimited” usage and at first it was changed from trully unlimited to limited and people would be cut-off for really heavy usage but later on it kept changing and it became several “free” hours per month to later on a couple of hours per month and few months later if you called the wrong “free” country it was just minutes and you were booted out from the service.

Also, at the same time, the company was quietly changing many accounts from “free” back to ”paid” and the rumor was that they were doing it mostly to accountholders who had “funds” in their accounts. Users, mostly in other countries, were converted back at much higher rates. What used to be “free” minutes to other PhoneGnome users became 3-4 cent minutes and the calls to PSTN lines double that – clearly not reasonable for an upstart like PhoneGnome.

There were other unfortunate moments too. A while ago (is it already 2+ years?) there were those unfortunate comparisons with Ooma device. One “overpriced” device tearing apart the other “overpriced” device with baseless hype. There were a lot of confused people then beliving that PhoneGnome for half the price can deliver the same “free” calls Ooma could. Nothing could be further from the truth – at that time PhoneGnome could not deliver even the original promise of “free” calls between its own users and the rest of the calls were priced anwhere from 200 to 600 percent more than the competition – nowhere near the “reasonable” rates advertised in the early days.

Who, in the right mind, would pay 6+ cents for a minute to landline when at that time you already had multitude of providers like Betamax selling minutes for bellow 1 penny at retail. By doing that they first alienated the users they needed most to keep growing and to keep innovating. Once that happened all of the sudden the PhoneGnome became a service for apparently uneducated middle age or retired people – the people with the “landline” and apparently, the hope was, the people who did not know the going rate for a telephone call.

Another unintended result was that once you removed the core users who popularized the service in the early days the service was still too “complicated” to this new targeted audience to do simple things like change the overpriced default long distance providers to something better and less expensive. It appeared that originally the people who knew what to do with the SPA-3000 devices were the same people who promoted the PhoneGnome and many of them were installing PhoneGnome devices for their parents and grandparents but once they moved on, the new intended users, the parents and grandparents would find it still too difficult to get involved into buying some obscure device by themselves and getting it to work by themselves.

Even that the whole idea of PhoneGnome was ease of use it was also mostly relative hype – it was obviously easy to use to someone who knew the original SPA-3000 but still not easy enough for your “average” landline keeper to set-up by themselves. What happened is a lot of those users never even gave up on the whole complicated idea – they never got involved in the first place – the early adopters were mostly the people who already had devices like SPA 3000 and they originally promoted PG as an easy alternative for their parents or grandparents. Once those people were gone there was no reason for any of the parents or grandparents to
get out of their way to find, buy, use and then promote the service.

My grandparents, for example, like to keep things simple. They keep the basic landline mostly for the incoming calls and probably mostly for sentimental reasons or maybe because they have the same number, and probably the same phone, for the past 40+ years but for most of the outgoing calls they use cell phones and that includes all the overseas calls too. It is just that much simpler to use the cell phone, simply point to the contact and press the green button. It only requires someone to only once input all the extra numbers with the right prefixes or access codes from something like one of the popular Betamax services. Not only no extra equipment is required but the price per minute to most of the countries comes to a fraction of what PhoneGnome charges.

So saying that customer service was the cause of the problems misses the point. Besides, there is not much need for customer service in the traditional sense for company like PhoneGnome and PhoneGnome was no exception – most of the great “customer service” originally was provided “free” all over the place including here on Voxilla by the original excited users and you could see that in the excited posts by users sharing their experiences, tricks and shortcuts here.

What a difference couple of years make. Now there is no one discussing anything about PG on this forum or anywhere. The new intended users, the people with landlines, apparently do not visit or read Voxilla, Broadband Forum or the likes at all.

[PhoneGnome]

Again, we're sorry you and some of your friends were not satisfied, but please bear in mind that while your feelings about your experiences are valid for you, they are your experiences alone. Please don't project your experience onto the experience of others. Likewise, bear in mind, with no real information on the actual history of the company/service other than rumor, please keep in mind that your theories about PhoneGnome are just that, theories. All we can say is that your theories are way off base - so much so, we're not going to discuss them point by point.

One thing we agree with is that it was unfortunate that the press positioned ooma and PhoneGnome as identical services. We never said as much. Here's how we have always described the key distinguishing aspects of the two products:

Ooma:
- Prepay for hardware plus a bundle of services/features up front
- Service options defined by ooma
- Proprietary, closed, architecture
- Available to users in the United States
- International calls at ooma rates

PhoneGnome:
- A la carte model, with lower up-front costs
- Customers pay less up front and pay for the services/features they want
- Open, expandable and interconnects with other VoIP services/systems
- Embraces open-standards, interoperability, and industry standards
- Available to users anywhere in the world
- Free software extends PhoneGnome-enabled service to a PC or mobile phone
- PhoneGnome box works with VoIP, cable and landline phone service
- Compatible with a variety of international and domestic plans