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Review by LilYoda See Profile

  • Location: Smyrna, Cobb, GA, USA
  • Cost: $25 per month
Cheap if you call Europe a lot, reliability is okay
Not really plug and play if you have to plug it behind a router
Was good, until something better for me came along.
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

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*** UPDATE *** May 28 2006
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Well, after over 2 years as a lingo subscriber, I'm out
The service is sound, and if you call a lot of European countries, and know a bit how to configure your router and LAN, this is still a good value.

However, since 99% of my calls are to the US and to France, I have switched to www.wengo.com. 7 euros a month, they give you unlimited calls to France (not mobiles, though). They also give you a french phone #, so you can have people call you and pay only local charges. Then to get a US phone number, go to www.libretel.fr, and get a US number in any city you want, for an additional 6 euros/month. And to call the US, only 1 euro-cent per minute.

For me, it beats the $25 that my Lingo bill was going to be, now that they switched me from $19.95 to $21.95 before all the taxes...

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*** UPDATE *** Dec 30 2004
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Well, Here's technical data I have so far:
I'm using Charter HighSpeed Internet -> Cable Modem -> Cisco 4500 router -> Lingo box

- Every call takes from 20 to 40 Kbps of upstream bandwidth.
- If your internet connection dies for any reason, then there is a 50/50 chance that you'll have to reboot the ATA, or wait a long time (1 hour) for the ATA to re-sync.
- if your connection dies, but you get the same IP address back, then most of the time, the ATA doesn't require a reboot. I'd say 1 out of 5 times, it requires reboot.
- it works a lot better after you forward UDP ports 69, 5060 and 13456 to the ATA IP address. It's even better if you set it as a DMZ host on your router (just make sure you block incoming web requests, so that someone can't login to your ATA)
- there are scripts you can find on those forums that monitor the ATA and reboot it if needed. It's a must download if you have a computer running 24/7

I'm polishing up my Cisco settings then I'll post a link to a template for cisco config adapted to Lingo

On the service itself, well, you can't beat $20 for unlimited calls to US + Canada + eastern europe. So I'm willing to put up with the little inconveniences of VoIP with Lingo for the time being.
So far only problems are:
- lock up of the ATA every once in a while, requiring reboot. Will be solved by using the script that monitors your ATA
- sometimes poor quality upstream. Seems to be random. If that happens, hang up and try again

Next stop, hooking the ADT system to the lingo box... Will try that next month.

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*** UPDATE *** Sept 8 2004
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Well, for now call quality is OK, to the US, to cell phones, and to France.
I have noticed the VoIP loss a couple of times, but as the Cisco router isn't on yet, it's been hard to troubleshoot. The lingo box seems not to like when I try to do IP filtering though, so I suspect it to exchange a ton of ICMP sync messages with the server.
When my current router fails and reconnects, the VoIP light stays on, although as the IP address give by my provider has changed, I can't be called in. Placing an outgoing call resets that, and after you call out, I guess the lingo box updates the server with the new IP, and you can be called in again.
I haven't checked yet how long it takes for the box to update the server with the new IP when you do NOT place a call out. Will test that soon.
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*** ORIGINAL REVIEW ***
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Heya
Considering my wife calls her family overseas 6 hours or more a month, I can not tell you how happy I was when I stumbled my way on lingo's web page
It took me time to decide myself, but after a while, I figured that worst case scenario, I'd loose the $40 or so that you pay at first if I cancelled before i reach the 3rd month

Shipping was OK, ordered on Monday, got delivered on thursday.
Packaging is OK, looks like they included almost everything. I still had to pull a crossover cable from my 20 miles of cables stacked in the garage, but no biggie here

Here's my setup so far:

Bellsouth DSL line -> Speedstream 5660 (router mode) -> LAN (100Mbps switch) -> PCs

I simply tried to plug the lingo box on the LAN like the PCs, and find out if it was clever enough to learn it's things from DHCP and work straight out of the box.
Well, yes and no. Yes it does get all the relevant info from the DHCP server; and I was watching attemps from the Lingo box to connect to a device in Primus's network using TFTP. But I don't know why, this would fail and/or time out after a while, and the box would just sit there stupidly not doing anything

I tried resetting it a couple of times, connected to it using "user" and "ph3taswe" as described in a review below, and all looked OK, except that the damn box wasn't completely starting, and the VoIP service wasn't running

After trying out a couple of differetn settings on my router, I gave up, and decided to try out what the lingo box was worth if it was directly connected to the net. So I configured the Speedstream to act as a bridge, then put in all the Internet info in the lingo box, double reboot, then fix my screw up on the router, reboot the router again, and wow, that's an active DSL link I got here, and the lingo box is flashing like a christmas tree

So by that time, I realize I have to plug all my PCs behind the lingo box so here's what the setup was

Bellsouth DSL line -> Speedstream 5660 (bridge mode) -> LAN (old 10Mbps hub) -> Lingo box -> LAN (100Mbps swicth) -> PCs

By the time I had setup my PC and remembered what the IP address of the lingo box was, when I check it, it says "downloading firmware" on its web admin page
After a couple of minutes, I hear the box rebooting (it makes funny little clicks inside the box, like old relays are used or something) come back to check on it and YAY there's a VoIP light waiting for me.

I just plugged my phone on "phone1", and started calling my own cell phone, with my wife on the other end. There's a half a second delay between when I speak, and when it gets to my cell, which isn't bad considering my cell has miserable reception in the house. The call quality was OK. Not stellar, but hey, for $20 a month, I'm not expecting Audio CD quality

When the tests were done, I went back to my old design, to see why the Lingo box wouldn't work when sitting behind the router, and to my surprise, it now works without a problem. Either my router was for some reason not liking the lingo box and needed a factory reset, or the new firmware that the box downloaded works better than the one it's shipped with...

So bottom line is so far that it does seem to work, but may require some tweaking.

On a side note, I really like their customer website, really clean and clear IMHO. Plus you see the calls you just made on the website, which is cool (don't have to wait for days to see how much a call costed you)
I checked and called 2 different cell phones (1 AT&T and 1 Sprint) and both were in-plan, so no surprise here. Just thought I'd mention it as I saw a couple of ppl raising concerns on wether cell phones were considered in plan, or would be charged the 3 cents/mn out of plan rate.

I will receive a Cisco router tomorrow which I will use as the main router (the Speedstgream will be back as a bridge). This will allow me to do some serious monitoring in terms of how much bandwidth that thing is needing, etc... I will also check how it reacts to different types of failures, and last but not least, I will let my wife call her family in France, and I'll have real user feedback about call quality.
I will also try to call tech support, and we'll see how they can answer to some tech questions.

If Lingo makes it as a voice service, I will probably hook my ADT alarm system behind it, so that should be another funny adventure...

So stay tuned for more detailed review...


member for 19.5 years, 3268 visits, last login: 10.4 years ago
updated 17.8 years ago


LingoSufferer
@lmig.com

LingoSufferer

Anon

Lingo sucks

I had bad experience with lingo; starting from setup to cancelling the account.
1. It took couple of days before I could make a call.
2. Every time I called tecnical support, they kept me waiting for ever.
3. I got billing problem couple of times which took lot of my time to call the customer support up and make them realize the problem.
4. Never got the referral bonus they advertise.
5. Most of the time call from outside US gets dropped.
6. I am glad that I finally got out of LINGO.
7. I will never never come back to LINGO and would not advice anybody to take service from LINGO.
8. Its not cheap anymore compare to other VOIP available in the market. VONAGE is much better if you want to spend couple of dollar more per month.

Review by gakkuken See Profile

  • Location: Germantown, Montgomery, MD, USA
  • Cost: $16 per month
good quality
wait over 1 hour on the phone and still can't reach anyone
don't bother with company with no service.
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everything is fine when you sign up, activation is fast, and installation is easy just like every other voip company. don't really have any problem with lingo until i need to cancel my service, emailed them twice and i didn't get any response till my 3rd email. then they want me to call in for cancellation..... fine, called 3 straight days... and been on hold for little bit over 1 hour and i was still not able to get a hold of any rep... come on, i would be happy to hear they being honest and just flat out saying "there are no rep available to answer any call, hang up and don't bother waiting on the line"

member for 17.8 years, 1 visits, last login: 17.8 years ago
lodged 17.8 years ago


Review by jlb31 See Profile

  • Location: Suffolk, Suffolk City, VA, USA
  • Cost: $22 per month
  • Install: about 3 days
Good call quality, decent amount of features, price.
No caller ID with name, website could use some work, tech support.
A cost effective solution for telephone service.
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I ordered Lingo because of the great rate they were offering (unlimited calls to the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe). My wife calls home to Germany every weekend and the cost was killing us. Being able to make calls within the U.S. and to Germany under the same plan (not having to worry about added charges for international calls) is absolutely wonderful. We've only had the service for a little over a week, but so far, the call quality has been great. I really can't tell the difference between Lingo and POTS. I think the website needs a little work when it comes to account management. When accessing incoming and outgoing calls, it shows the time in GMT instead of my local time. It also shows the amount of minutes in my plan (even though I have the $19.99 unlimited plan) and the amount of minutes I have currently used. After looking at these amounts, I can't figure how Lingo came up with them.

There was also a minor glitch in the ordering process. I ordered the service through their website. After filling in the required information, I clicked on "submit". This promptly brought me to "Page Not Found". I decided to call them and find out if my order had been put through or not. After being on hold for about 5 minutes, billing told me it couldn't find my billing or account information even though my credit card had already been billed (but not cleared). I couldn't seem to make the person understand my situation. I eventually ordered through the website again and was successful. I then showed two billings to my credit card from Lingo, so I called billing again. This time, the person on the other end was very helpful and assured me that the first billing would not be processed. After everything cleared on my credit card, I only showed one billing from Lingo, which is what it should be.

I received the telephone adapter 3 days after placing my order. I followed the instructions that came with it to set it all up, and I had a dial tone within 15 minutes. Since then, I've had very good call quality, no dropped calls, and a happy wife. She really put it to the test this past weekend when calling her family in Germany. She spent about 3.5 hours making and receiving calls from home. As far as the 911 service is concerned, I will be using my traditional phone service for that. I have to keep the most basic of calling packages for my DSL service because I'm serviced through a remote terminal and I am unable to have dryloop (naked) DSL.

All in all, I would say it is worth the money to try Lingo.

member for 20.2 years, 1355 visits, last login: 9.1 years ago
lodged 17.9 years ago


Review by lakeratbbq See Profile

  • Location: Lees Summit, Jackson, MO, USA
  • Cost: $23 per month (12 month contract)
  • Install: about 5 days
better value than my previous landline by $55.00/month
New Credit Card processing -- 911 service
Good Value. no major glitches. Minor issues
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I was coming back to update my previous review, but I can't seem to locate it. Re-reading the posting rules I don't think any were violated. It was more positive than negative, so I'm not sure why anyone would have complained about it...perhaps it expired or suffered it's demise after a system failure.

I installed Lingo in Oct 2004. The only major problem was call quality once and it really turned out NOT to be lingo's problem. Our cable provider was lagging speedwise.

Have had to call Tech support several times and really haven't had issues with that. I think once I hung up called back got a differnt rep and solved the problem.

that scenario can happan with any company today.

The reason I came back to update my review (that seems to have been deleted) was that Lingo has recently changed its payment processing to an office in London UK. As I result I now have an added international banking fee being subtracted each month ( I pay with Debit Card). I emailed Lingo on 4/30/06 and received an automated response that I would hear from someone within one business day. That has not happaned. I emailed the inquiry again today.

Also, I am considering changing to another VOIP carrier over the issue of 911 service. Lingo has 2 types of 911 service called ECS and E911. E911 being the real thing. ECS routes calls to administrative numbers without Calling Party Location Services. Our area apparently is not E911 compatible yet. I also emailed Lingo seperatly today asking the status of conversion to E911. This is a major issue for me. At the time we signed up only packet8 offered E911 services in our area. I orignally signed up with packet8 but found they did offer the call control options Lingo did. Cancelled packet8 in the 30 day period and decided to wait out the upgrade with Lingo because Lingo offered so many features. I asked Lingo in January to provide a timeline for conversion to E911 -- they could not provide any information. Now 4 months later it still has not happaned. This is a major issue to me because our ECS-911 calls are not even routed to the correct agency at this point (we have made test calls). If Lingo is not going to make E911 available to us soon we are going to switch as other carriers in the industry have made E911 service available.

I have not been following FCC mandates on the 911 issue. But 9 months ago my understanding was that we would have E911 by the end of last year. Lingo seems to have complied with the FCC order by making us understand the differnces between E911 and ECS. That however does not solve the problem of the calls being routed to the correct agency.

A footnote about the correct agency (this was contained in my original review): When we first installed Lingo I spent about 2 hours total talking to several Lingo techs. Apparently the routing is based on the exchange. We selected the nearest exchange for our number. While the City our number is based out of is nearby our calls should be routed to the local county Sherriff's office and not the nearby cities Police admin number. yes my address with Lingo is correct. No they can't change the agency of record. I wrote to alot of people at Lingo when I found this out and got nowhere. The number the call is routed to is based on WHERE the exchange is located not on your 911 service address.

member for 19.3 years, 33 visits, last login: 13.7 years ago
lodged 17.9 years ago


Review by arturse See Profile

  • Location: Rosemount, Dakota, MN, USA
  • Cost: $20 per month
  • Install: about 7 days
free calling to Western Europe, advanced features
terrible service and quality
not worth the trouble, you have to be crazy to stay with this provider
Web-site:
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The cheaper monthly price than Vonage and the inclusion of Western Europe in the calling plan were the driving features to get this service. I have been a customer for almost two years and it's time to dump Lingo.

Pros:
-US, CA, Western Europe free calling area
-lots of features (some don't work)
-universal numbers in other countries

Cons
-'cheap' ATA
-very unreliable
-call quality often choppy, with echo
-lots of dropped calls
-not open SIP
-no softphone support
-impossible to send faxes and even after going through, they are corrupted
-no name on the caller id

I have submitted probably 50 trouble tickets in the last two years. The customer support 'resolves' them but in the end the problem remains the same. Calling Western Europe was of high quality, in fact, higher than calling across the street. But I have had enough. Don't even bother using this service for business - spare the embarassment.

If you need to call internationally, try internetcalls.com - 51 countries for free after putting 12$ into your account and they are open SIP so attach any device you want. Also, see broadvoice.com with 35 countries on the plan, sunrocket or viatalk. DO NOT GET LINGO!

My co-worker is also dumping them. We both have had enoujgh of these losers (the recent one was that our caller id number was another random invalid number).

I truly hope Lingo goes bankrupt, the sooner the better.

member for 19.1 years, 9 visits, last login: 15.9 years ago
lodged 17.9 years ago


Review by tombo16 See Profile

  • Location: Damariscotta, Lincoln, ME, USA
  • Cost: $21 per month
  • Install: about 60 days
Lots of features, good call quality
Sometimes Tech support sucks, its hit or miss.
Not sure why other people write hate reviews, they have good service
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Good service, tech support is alright, lots of features but I don't need half these features. I'm going to give vbuzzer a try pretty soon. If you have any questions about lingo feel free to msg me.

Update: I got rid of Lingo and switched to Vbuzzer, I'll write a review once I get my pap2t fully functioning

Update2: Vbuzzer worked fine here. I don't use VOIP anymore though.

member for 20.8 years, 102 visits, last login: 13.9 years ago
lodged 17.9 years ago







Review by parkernet See Profile

  • Location: Macon, Bibb, GA, USA
  • Cost: $22 per month (12 month contract)
  • Install: about 7 days
Price, Ease of use, Reliablity has been very good.
Call quality is irregular, but managable.
Works great as primary phone, Have recommended to friends.
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When I first installed the ATA, I had some problems with call quality, but a few searches on DSLreports forums and I was up and running without calling tech support. Great value for 22.09 after taxes.

Satisfied customer since 9/2004.



member for 23.2 years, 2267 visits, last login: 11.4 years ago
lodged 17.9 years ago







Review by serg_leo See Profile

  • Location: Germantown, Montgomery, MD, USA
  • Cost: $22 per month
  • Install: about 1 days
Excellent value for the money. Good customer service and quality of calls. Great features and prices for overseas.
None so far.
Honestly recommend this provider for people who want save money or have relatives around the world.
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I'm using Lingo for one year and I'm really happy with the service. I'm using WRT54GS router with QoS support, and my Lingo router is behind of the Linksys router.

I love those features like simultaneous calls.

Honestly recommend this provider for people who want save money or have relatives around the world.

member for 22.3 years, 1018 visits, last login: 12.9 years ago
lodged 17.9 years ago







Review by dddane See Profile

  • Location: Chicago, Cook, IL, USA
  • Cost: $19 per month (12 month contract)
  • Install: about 3 days
Reliable, Well priced
Can't get it to work with Dish Network
Reliable and well priced
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I switched to Lingo after having no luck with Vonage (Vonage echoed and they couldn't fix it...). The service is reliable and we haven't had any real issues.

Compared to some of the bigger companies, Lingo is a bargain. You can get unlimited long distance for $10/mo less than some of the bigger places.

Getting any VOIP connection to work nicely with a fax/modem can be challenging. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to get the DISH DVR 625 to work with Lingo. This is partially Lingo's fault for how they do their dialing pre-fixes (that would make it more compatible and possibly work...), but more Dish Network's fault for purposely blocking the support of dialing prefixes on this particular unit.

member for 22.2 years, 480 visits, last login: 10.1 years ago
lodged 18 years ago

mcaslan
join:2000-06-17
Baltimore, MD

mcaslan

Member

Modem modulation

Modem modulation is not very reliable in any VOIP. The VOIP codecs are built to modulate voice. They were samplings of speech. Modem squeels and blips and squaks were not built into the samplings and as such do not work very well.

Since the uptake of Broadband there has been no real need to revise the VOIP codecs to include modems, since who would want to use a modem over Broadband?

Well Satellite systems, Alarms, faxes we know the issues as you describe.

Faxes now have a standard to incorporate their support but modems and alarms are Out of reliability luck.

Review by flashyphotos See Profile

  • Location: uk
  • Cost: $22 per month (12 month contract)
  • Install: about 7 days
value, quality, features
mediocre tech support
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First let me say my position is different from the AVERAGE USER.

I am based in the UK, but need a US number for work,

I chose Lingo as the offer of Unlimited US/Canada & Europe beat anything on offer in the UK, (I also use sipgate in the UK just for the free UK number they offer for incomming calls!)

As to Lingo, the only problem I had in placing the order is that they would not ship the ATA to my UK address or my US PO Box, so I had the unit shipped to a friend who then sent it to me in the UK by Airmail, The total time from order to it arriving in the UK was 7 days, (Airmail of the unit cost $3.75 on top of the Lingo delivery charge) Billing was done thru my US Debit card registered at my US PO Box

The First time I setup the system I was using 1Mb ADSL, and a Belkin wireless ADSL Modem/Router, all worked well from plug in no problems,

3 days later my upgrade to 10Mb Cable came online and I had to change my wireless router as the Belkin was not compatible, I bought a DLink Wireless DSL/Router, all seemed well but it turned out I could not make outgoing calls, all failed with a busy signal, incomming calls worked fine, I called Tech support who checked many things but seemed totally stumped, they filed a ticket to get it investigated, but I decided to try a solution myself, so I took back the Dlink to the store and purchased a Belkin DSL/Router, Plugged it in and it worked fine, So it seems it just did not like the DLink for some reason, Still no answer from Tech Support!

Anyway I have been using the service for some months now out of the UK and have now cancelled my expensive Landline altogether, I used to spend about $150 a month on phone service & calls to the US and collegues & customers at work complained about having to call a UK number to reach me..

I refuse to pay Lingo $10 a month + taxes and fees for a UK additional number that I can get free from Sipgate, so I have a PAP2 unit now for my Sipgate number,

I used to pay (Converted from UK Pounds)

$52 US a month for Phone service with Free UK Calls (US Calls $0.05 a min)
$48 US a month for 1Mb Adsl (Fast24!)

(Approx $100 a month in US Calls)

Total Per Month = Approx $200 !!! (For Phone & 1Mb Internet)

Now I Pay

$61 US a month for 10Mb Cable (NTL)
$22 US a month for Lingo with all calls
$0 US a monoth for a UK number from sipgate

Total Per Month = Approx $83 (For Phone and 10Mb Internet)

I have found Lingo to be very good in all areas, except for the poor Support I got with my router problems,

I would recommend them to all, (And have to many)

Cheers

Richard



member for 18.1 years, 7 visits, last login: 17.9 years ago
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