 Review by fareal 
UPDATED: 1.9 years ago
member for 2.9 years, 479 visits, last login: 1 days ago
 undisclosed location
 $10 per month (13 month contract)
 about 3 days
 "Great Voice Quality, Multiple Servers, Price"
 "Cancellation Policy"
 "It's been surprisingly reliable for me, I'm impressed with the voice quality, Try it out for yourself."
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Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
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I signed up on August 23rd. Order was processed and shipped on August 24th. Received Linksys PAP2T on August 26th. USPS Priority mail from New York to California, 2 days, wow, nice (this isn't a review for USPS though  ). So needless to say, the order process was great. Only thing I would change is for ViaTalk to display the total cost (including any discount, coupons, etc) of your order before it actually gets submitted. They do show the total that will be billed to your credit card, but not until you've actually completed the online order process.
When I received my equipment on the 26th the setup was pretty painless. Only issue I had was incoming calls were not triggering the ringer on my phone. I could see the caller id of incoming calls and I could pick up the call and connect and talk, but I couldn't hear the ringer. I phoned ViaTalk Tech Support and they changed my ringer profile from Sinusoid to Trapezoid and the problem was resolved.
I haven't actually used the phone a whole lot yet but I have made a few test calls and I was impressed. Especially considering I'm on 768/128 DSL. I even tested by downloading large files at the same time as talking and it only occasionally and barely affected the phone call. If this continues maybe I won't upgrade my Internet service to something faster as I had planned to do.
I'm using a WRT54G router with an 8/23/06 build of DD-WRT SP2 firmware. I have QOS setup based on MAC addresses.
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Update September 6, 2006
I've had the service for ten days now. I'm still impressed with it. Voice quality is great and I've had dialtone every time I pick up the phone. But the real test is with the wife since I don't use the phone nearly as much as her. Surprisingly though, no complaints. I make it a point to ask her when she uses it for long periods.. but she hasn't given me any negative feedback yet.
Faxing is intermittent, hit and miss. I've tried a variety of settings, filter configs, etc, but bottom line it seems is it isn't going to be perfect. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but since we don't fax daily or even close to it, it shouldn't be a problem. That is until the wife has to send a fax and it doesn't go through . Wish me luck!
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Update September 21, 2006
Still been reliable for me, can't complain. Their redundant servers have been working great for me. Some go down, some stay up, but the times that I pick up my phone I have dialtone because I've always been rolled over to one that is up and running. I will be upgrading to higher speed internet afterall, probably TWC, since with my 768/128 I cannot do a 3-way call since each call would need around 90kbps upstream. I hope I get the same stability with cable internet, we'll find out in less than a month. Also, I'm no longer user DD-WRT, I'm now using Tomato on the WRT54G.
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