Review by caylor931 Location: Parker, Douglas, CO, USA Cost: $8 per month (24 month contract) Install: about 5 days Price, Call blocking & Routing Features SIP, International Call Blocking, DO NOT USE if international calling from SIP

Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money:

My wife is from Panama and routinely makes calls to her family there. We had Vonage and she regularly used their "extensions" program on her android smartphone with ZERO limitations on the number she calls. The only difference is the rates are higher for mobile numbers vs landlines (Vonage clearly shows the pricing difference if you research the number). So we set up the SIP soft phone software on VOIPo and she tried calling and kept getting the "call is not authorized" message. I added the country to the authorized list and it still blocked the calls. Finally reached out to VOIPo customer support and they informed us that mobile numbers are not authorized to be called from a SIP (soft phone), thus they were being blocked. I switched back to Vonage as this was a deal breaker for us. Also to note....when I was switching back to Vonage, I discovered they have now added Panama as a location where we can have an international extension. So now her family can call her at local rates and we set up the simultaneous ring so it rings her mobile phone when they call. Vonage rocks here!!!

One plus for VOIPo: Their ability to block or route calls on a per-number basis was really nice. Vonage would grab even more customers if they implemented this feature.

BOTTOM LINE:

DO NOT USE VOIPo if you want to call overseas numbers from your BYOD. While they let you use SIP (soft phone) from your mobile device, it is likely you will not be able to call mobile numbers overseas. Since the majority of the people you will likely be calling overseas will be using mobile phones (mostly only businesses use landlines overseas now).

VOIPo doesn't notify you of this fact, that mobile numbers are blocked for international calling from SIP, their tech support just said that "certain international destinations may not be reachable through the remote access number or BYOD features." I disagree that that is the same as certain numbers (mobile numbers only) within a certain destination, because their website says that if the country is not listed it is not available for use by BYOD. Even more contradictory, is even when I try to use the International Calling Security features to allow only calls to Panama by using the whitelist for the country for the VOIPo Adapter those numbers don't work so their service is broken....period, as it only allows SOME calls to Panama from the adapter which is not what their functionality states.

I did my research and all their website states is that to unblock an international number it is based on the country code. The VOIPo site says Panama calls to country code 507 are allowed. Obviously that isn't completely true because it also checks the prefix to see if it is a mobile number. they need to clarify that fact. This is so unfortunate because their service looked so promising only to be such a HUGE let down.

Consider me taken for $36 (paid $185 and was refunded $149) for the service used for the time it took me to realize this and get the service turned off (getting the number ported back, etc). No way to get in under the 30-day money back guarantee and had to pay the shipping to return the ATA.

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