Review by zhenya 
UPDATED: 112 days ago
member for 2.5 years, 241 visits, last login: 53 days ago
 Ithaca,Tompkins,NY
 $17 per month
 about 14 days
 "Excellent sound quality. Good customer service."
 "Took a couple of weeks for them to get my ATA to me"
 "Still not reliable when compared to POTS."
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(ratings match consensus)
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Update (8/5/09): Still with Voicepulse and reasonably happy. (Very happy every time I see that small bill!) Sound quality has improved if anything (especially at the initial connection of the call - it used to be that the first 'hello' on our end was often not transmitted, this seems to have improved). I still have to reboot the ata every few months, and unfortunately the only sign of this is increased time to dial a call or someone tells us they can't reach us. The cheap ata is still home voip's Achilles heel.
Update (8/24/07): Back up and running. Fortunately this time the new ata was delivered in two days, and after scheduling the replacement on Monday, I had it on Wednesday. Here's hoping this ata has a longer lifespan than the first. (end update)
Update (8/20/07): Over the past month or so my service was going down every 5-7 days or so. It happened a couple of times, and each time rebooting the ata brought the line back immediately. Last week I was out of town for work when my girlfriend told me the line was down again. This time re-booting the ata wasn't bringing it back up. I called customer support and explained the issue. They were fairly convinced that the problem was with my router (despite the fact that the router config had not changed) and ran me through a variety of tests (triggering the sip ports, putting the ata in a DMZ, etc) As I was still not home, I couldn't physically connect the ata directly to the internet to take the router completely out of the equation. In any case I could monitor the logs on the router and clearly see that the router was NOT blocking any traffic. I was a bit frustrated that customer support was so convinced that it was a router config problem, and would not give me a technical reason why the ata would suddenly, out of the blue, need some new ports triggered to operate as normal, or for that matter, take my word that I could clearly see in the logs that it wasn't my router causing the problem. I arrived home on Friday night, but we were now past their M-F business hours for tech support. Monday morning I was able to speak to customer service again, and left the ata directly connected to the internet for the day so their techs would have access. I finally called back after work, and was informed that they are sending me a new ata (pap6) - but billing my credit card in the mean time. I am pleased that I have someone to talk to at tech support, and they are generally helpful, but unfortunately I'm having exactly the kind of experience that would prevent me from recommending voip for anyone not fairly computer and network literate (and willing to suffer down-time). At this point, IF the new ata ships on time (see original post for that if) and I get it before I leave town again, I'll have been down for 1.5 weeks. While helpful, customer service never apologized for the inconvenience, never offered compensation (I had to ask), and I'm being charged for the new ata that is being sent via normal shipping methods to me. Hopefully the new ata will last longer than the 6 months I got out of this one. It is surprising to me that these companies are willing to stake a large part of their reliability (and hence their reputation) on an inexpensive consumer level ata. The least they could have done was offer me direct sip access to my number (that I'm paying for!!) until they get me back online with an ata. (end update)
Other than the two weeks or so that it took them to get me my ATA from NJ to NY, and the month to transfer my existing number, my experience with VoicePulse has been excellent. When that ATA did finally arrive, all that was required was that I plug it in to my existing router and phone, and I was up and running. To be fair, I have it hooked into a good router with good QOS rules defined, but this is par for the course if you want to run voip.
Call quality has been excellent, 100% reliability in the several months we've had service, and the local + 200 plan at $17/month all-inclusive is much more reasonable for how we use this line than the $45/month Verizon was charging us.
On top of all this, the real reason to choose VoicePulse is their customer service. Unlike most other companies, you speak to someone who speaks clear english, and in fact, are generally assigned a case manager whom you always deal with (in my case with little or no wait) who is extremely responsive at knowing the details of your case and following up with you via telephone and email after every call. What a breath of fresh air that experience was!
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