Review by fatuous 
UPDATED: 30 days ago
member for 54 days, 9 visits, last login: 7 days ago
 Eatontown,Monmouth,NJ
 $12 per month (24 month contract)
 about 15 days
 "Great prices, good set of features, g.711 64Kbps codec"
 "Echo cancellation, recent multi-hour outage (hopefully a one-time thing)"
 "A tremendous VoIP value with a broad set of features."
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Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I'm a CallVantage refugee. So my review is mainly going to cover the difference I've noticed between PP and CV. I've had PP for almost 3 months now. It took about 15 days from my order date until PP ported my numbers over from AT&T, which I think is totally reasonable when moving a number from one carrier to another.
The PP Grandstream TA is plugged into my Verizon FiOS Actiontec router. I initially had the PP TA in front of the FiOS router, but later changed it because of my particular setup. The PP TA works just the same whether in front or behind the FiOS router.
Things that were better with CV than with PP:
• Tivo and fax worked fine over CV. Not with PP. In fairness to PP, they don't make any claims that this will work.
• PP has echo cancellation problems. As per PP recommendations, lowering the headset volume does typically get rid of it, but with CV, I never experienced echo at any handset volume, and CV was louder than PP, comparing highest volume setting to highest volume setting.
• PP plays horrible and annoying music to people that you put on hold. Currently they have no way to disable it. CV's hold was just wonderful silence.
• I've noticed 1 major and several minor outages with PP. I never noticed an outage with CV, and I've had CV since it was launched. Reading the forums, it seems like the recent PP outage was an anomaly, and I'm hoping that's true. But since it's me writing this review, and I've only had PP for close to 3 months, and they happened to have a major outage since I became a customer... I'll come back and update my feeling on PP reliability as time goes on.
• PP's account management website is functional, but not great. CV's website was much more intuitive and easy to use. Having said that, I get along fine with PP's website.
• CV had a softphone option. They charged an extra $5/month for it, but at least it was an option. I see in the forums that PP is developing a softphone, and I look forward to updating my review when it's released.
Things that are better with PP than with CV:
• PP is cheap if you get the 2 year upfront contract like I did. I'll have to pay some fees again when I reach 12 months like taxes and fees, but at worst, I'll pay less than $300 for 24 months. That's at most $12/month vs. the ~$31/month I used to pay for CV. Those prices are totals that include all the taxes and fees and such, not just the plan price.
• PP has the cloned line feature. I needed 2 numbers, so I got 2 lines and I haven't yet had a use for the cloned line feature though I did try it out, and it worked as advertised. So cloned line isn't a needed feature for me, but I could see how this would be great if I only had 1 phone number.
• PP uses a Grandstream TA that's very small, which is great. The DLink TA that CV provided was huge and generated tons of heat.
So considering the price, I'm happy with PP. But if CV came back tomorrow, even at the $31/month I was paying, I very well might choose to go back to CV. For me, phone service needs to be as reliable as possible, and I'll pay more for that. (Yes I know POTS is more reliable than VoIP for a whole plethora of reasons, but I'm in the business, and I want VoIP.) At the time I ordered PP, they seemed to be among the most reliable VoIP providers. Hopefully that will continue and the recent outage will go down as a one-time footnote in their hopefully long and successful history.
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