 Review by wonko3fc 
UPDATED: 195 days ago
member for 7.2 years, 2174 visits, last login: a few minutes ago
 UK
 $5 per month (month by month)
 about 10 days
 "Good call quality and price structure"
 "Great when it works - pray it never goes wrong support is almost non-existant"
 "More for the enthusiastic armature or professional than the home user."
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When this was first offered as a service way back in 2002/3, I became an early adopter on their UK launch trial.
Getting set up was reasonably painless although obtaining support to allow the then CISCO telephone adaptor to pass through the firewall was a near impossibility. As it turned out, you don’t need to open some 3,000 plus ports as the nice lady suggested to make it work, just port 69. Yet to this day the technical staff appear oblivious to this.
Okay, so it was early technology and problems were to be expected. What wasn’t really expected was the comprehensive lack of support from the incumbent telephone operator in the UK
Essentially, there is next to no support for the service at all and even less if you are not a BT Broadband customer/subscriber. As a Cable subscriber, I am then, the target audience for the service and to this day, I engage in interesting conversations with the ‘customer services’ people who always want to blame third party routers for anything when they learn it is not a BT Home Hub!
However, perseverance and many-many months of refunded bills later, the service is, at best, still flaky. To be honest, when it works, it is first class the call quality is excellent and on a par with my land line. Tariffs are as cheep as they come from the market research I’ve gathered from within the UK and the service offerings call divert, blocking etc are easy to use on the web site, that, whilst constantly changing from one year to the next is still navigable.
Another unexpected surprise was the forced change of server and subsequent telephone number as year or so ago. This is as a result of a technology uplift but it did impact on the service to which, regaining it was another trial of patience and frustration. It didn’t help that about three years ago, they outsourced the call centre support to India where, for the best will in the world, these good people have a very limited understanding of English and next to none of the UK telecom market.
The telephone adaptor has also changed several times as well, each time being replaced by a later and allegedly greater unit, currently a BT Voyager 10V.
These in turn have also had problems and faults both hardware and software requiring replacement units. To cut a long story short, there are/were different models of these with non-flash able firmware/middleware that needed uplifting to a more recent unit.
That said, various units were dispatched and did arrive in reasonable timeframes with various degrees of instruction on how to re-configure, given that the web site address had also changed – this they neglected to inform the customer of.
However, once again, jumping through all the hoops did eventually result in a working service.
I have to say, on balance, if I was offered the same service’s for the same price from another provider, I would have jumped ship a long time ago – the hassle factor alone is just not worth it. Yet I stay. Why? Well for the vast majority of the time, the service is functioning and actually very, very good. But! Be afraid, be very afraid if anything goes wrong. Your patience will be tested to the limit and I would suggest that the unit has more chance of being forced through the nearest window than the service returned – unless you have the patience of a saint and then some!
This is why I believe the service, whilst good when working, is probably better for the enthusiastic amateur or IT professional than the wider domestic market – for which it is aimed. IF they recovered the call centre to the UK, offered a fault resolution path to customers and have a responsive customer support, then yes, it would be well worth paying for.
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