VOIP services. Any suggestions

[fluiduk]

Hi All

I am starting to dabble in VOIP and am thinking that I will use it for my main voice service when I move next month.

Can anyone reccomend any VOIP service providers.

I want to get it right now so that I dont end up having to change suppliers and numbers contsantly.

Might be worth mentioning that I have the Linksys PAP2.

All comments appreciated

Thanks
Aaron

 

[OllyM]

What are your requirements? May help with the suggestions...

Do you want to pay a monthly fee and get certain calls included?

 

[fluiduk]

At the moment I am not sure as to the billing requirments, so a service that is flexible in that respect would be best.

My main need is stability. I cant have it dying all the time.

Aaron

 

[fluiduk]

Any comments hten?

 

[OllyM]

No need to bump it after only 8 hours... surely?

I use a variety of voip providers:

1. Gradwell - www.gradwell.net - not cheap but very reliable. I use both their SIP service for my personal phone and their IAX service for my company's office phonelines. It works but you pay a premium.

2. voip.co.uk - www.voip.co.uk - £1.99/month inc. VAT for unlimited evening/weekend calls to landlines, other calls are pretty cheap. I've been testing it for a while and it seems fairly reliable, but they have been having issues recently, and things like voicemail haven't been too reliable from what I've read (although I run an Asterisk box so it's not important to me).

3. Sipgate - Free geographic inbound number - I've used them for a while but I'd never rely on them, very flakey service and it often disappears offline for periods of time. Unfortunately I have a decent number with them (it ends 001) so I've still got it, although I wouldn't make outgoing calls using them.

4. SipDiscount - www.sipdiscount.co.uk - may be worth a look, but they gave me an 0560 number rather than a geographic one for some reason (probably because they didn't have any numbers for my area). You deposit €5 (that may have changed now) and you get free calls to certain places, including UK landlines. It's not super reliable though.

Out of those, I'd only (currently) rely on Gradwell if I was ditching my landline. voip.co.uk could well improve though... I've not actually noticed too many problems with them.

 

[fluiduk]

Doh! lol, i have just set up sipgate lol. I think I will give voip.co.uk a go.

Dont suppose if you know if VOIP.co.uk supports the pap2.

Thanks for the reply.

PS sorry for the bump, just got home with my pap2 and wanted to test it

 

[fluiduk]

Olly... I have signed up with VOIP.co.uk and am having a play. I can recieve incoming calls but when I try to dial a number i just get a beeping tone. Dial tone is fine but it just doesnt seem to connect.

Any ideas
Aaron

 

[RomeoS]

A vote for voip.co.uk, havnt had a single issue with them and works with the Be* router

Drop them a email, they usually reply within 2 hours even on a weekend!

 

[fluiduk]

Do you know if you have type a special code or anything when using voip.co.uk. Whenever I try to make a call i get the error tone. I have credit on *** account

 

[OllyM]

You should just be able to dial the number...

Email them and see if they can look in their logs and find out what's wrong.

 

[fluiduk]

Have done, have to sit tight and see what they say