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Review by kcorscadden 
UPDATED: 2 days ago
member for 2.6 years, 72 visits, last login: a few minutes ago
 Kingston,ON
 Contract price not specified.
 about 5 days
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Review by koreyb
UPDATED: 120 days ago
member for 4.8 years, 771 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Etobicoke,ON
$29 per month (month by month)
 "LOADS of features, fairly good support and priced perfectly!"
 "Level 1 Customer Service is sometimes not the best, Bell Thottle effects all VoIP.. even Primus"
 "A Great Canadian VoIP service, with great value for the Money"
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I have had Primus Talkbroadband now for a few years and I can't tell me enough how happy I am with the service. It's been rock solid, with only a few bumps in the road. You can expect this with NEW technology.
My only major beef is SOME of the call centers are overseas... but not all are.. Communication within the company on brand new features/policy doesn't always get echoed to all reps on the phone right away, but overall nothing has been a big deal to work out.
IF you have DSL in Bell Canada's area, you may find their throttle effects talkbroadband and any voip service, especially if you have a high bandwidth codec set. I was able to fix this during throttle hours by setting the line to a low bandwidth setting, giving the same sound quality as a normal line vs better than normal at the high setting. This is not any fault of Primus or any other voip provider.
I personally have been very happy with the service they have... GREAT value for the money, especially when you get all calling features, unlimited 24/7 North American long distance, and an option to save 4 bucks a month by buying your ATA box (which I have).
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Review by Mrcoffee
UPDATED: 131 days ago
member for 131 days, 0 visits, last login: 131 days ago
undisclosed location
$21 per month (12 month contract)
about 4 days
"CS I dealt with were supper, setup was fast. Sound so far great."
"Current issue is dtmf tones are heard occassionally (see issue's below)"
"Great price, great features. Sound is good"
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Ordered by phone(costco deal). Upgraded from basic to full. Received gateway 3-4 days later. Got it setup and working within an hour (incoming calls took an extra 1 day until rogers released my line). Spoke to customer service 2-3 time, had no problem and were curtious and helpful each time.
Install:
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Internet : Rogers high speed extreme
Router: Some G router
Gateway: connected to Router in DMZ
Played with the portal features, most tested and working successfully.
Forward voicemail to email - works
Forward notice of email to cell - works
Changed caller id setting - works
Ring time prior to voicemail - works
Changed on hold music - works
etc..
Issues:
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Some voices (usually female) set off dtmf tones on callers phone (can live with it though).
Currently got billed for first month which I should get free, but could be because I upgraded to ulitimate bundle from basic(emailed CS).
Overall:
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My wife can't tell the difference and likes the new features = success.
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Review by brucebeh
UPDATED: 169 days ago
member for 4.6 years, 271 visits, last login: 51 days ago
CALGARY
$20 per month
about 5 days
"Fast Delievery, great quality, great price! get more than you pay for!"
"Kit came with faulty hook-ups, needed to use my own network cable"
"Not bad for the price, have to wait till they port my # from telus"
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Well I finally got my gateway yesterday, was a bitch to setup. But I gotta praise for the quick delivery, I ordered on a saturday and it came on a thursday (monday was a public holiday).
Let me explain.
I come home from school, see the gateway on my desk, and I plug everything in, reading the manuals, following every instruction they print in the book, took me 45 minutes of playing around and I can't get a dial tone.
So I try plugging it directly into my cable modem, restarted the thing several times, plugged it into my hub, still doesn't work, then my router, restarted everything a couple times.
For some odd reason, I decided to switch network cables, and lo-and-behold, it WORKS! I finally have internet connection on the gateway and my status light turns green.
Turns out the network cable that came with the box was defective, it was pretty frustrating, as it wasted nearly 3 hours of my time.
--- ASIDE FROM THE RANT ---
It works great, I am getting my # ported from Telus, so it might take a while since they are still kinda on strike, but outgoing calls are great, very good quality, I am not using the QoS of the router.. my setup is currently like this.
CABLE MODEM --> HUB
HUB --> VOIP Gateway
HUB --> Linksys Router
Linksys Router --> 2 Wired and 1 Wireless computer
I haven't noticed any issues at all when I'm downloading at max my bandwidth, however, when I'm uploading at max my bandwidth, the other party notices that my voice jitters a bit, I'm guessing if I have my router behind the gateway, that wouldn't even happen at all.
So far i am fairly impressed with this. However, I better wait till my number actually gets ported before praising primus anymore =)
Lastly, I would like to say, it is a GREAT bang for the buck, you get more than you pay for.
Note: I am on SHAW located in CALGARY
Update:
Primus customer service is probably the worse to deal with, technical support is OK, it is dependent on the rep how they treat you, overall service is not too bad but customer service for Primus is almost non-existent.
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 Review by Styvas
UPDATED: 1.2 years ago
member for 5.1 years, 2734 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Edmonton,AB
$30 per month
about 7 days
"Decent call quality, AirMiles reward miles, good value for money"
"Calls into tech support or customer service often a long wait; ISP problems can sometimes hit Primus service hard"
"The service and price are excellent, and Primus takes performance/quality issues seriously"
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My Other Reviews ·Shaw
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I have the Unlimited bundle at $29.95. This includes all calling features and unlimited long distance within Canada and the US. International long distance rates with this bundle are competitive, but not drastically so (ironically, Primus' rate for the country I call the most is the highest of the various Canadian VoIP companies). Other similar Canadian services charge on average a bit more for the same package but some of these offer more calling features. However, they do not give AirMiles.
Currently Primus provides customers with a D-Link DVG-1120M MGCP VoIP gateway, or a Linksys SPA2100/2102 that operates on the SIP protocol (I believe all new signups receive the Linksys). The D-Link is adequate but it lacks many of the functions available on even the cheapest routers. It is also supposed to do LAN-based QoS in order to maintain call quality, but this function seldom (if ever) seems to kick in. The Linksys offers slightly better router functionality, however call quality does not appear to differ significantly from the D-Link. Call quality for the Primus service in general is good as long as the local ISP is not experiencing problems. Primus uses the G.711 and G.729 codecs, the choice of which is user configurable.
My only other significant complaint is to do with call centre wait times. It is fairly typical to wait for 40-60 minutes or more to reach a customer support rep. Tech support wait times, however, have significantly improved in the past months. If you are calling on your cell phone because your VoIP phone is not working, that can be extremely frustrating and expensive. The free SkypeOut to toll-free numbers may solve this problem for those without a cell phone to call Customer Service or Tech Support.
In recent weeks (Summer 2008) , Primus seems to have been hit with a number of outages and other problems. While they seem to take these seriously and service is restored quite quickly, it does leave me a bit reticent to recommend their service to anyone who requires 99.9999% reliability (even landlines go down from time to time). Perhaps their customer base has outpaced their ability to keep up, or perhaps competition has forced them to cut costs to the point where quality is affected. I don't know, but I hope they can get back to the stellar service that I've enjoyed for 4 years now.
Not having tried any of the other Canadian VoIP services (Vonage, Yak, Spectravoice, etc.) I can not recommend any of the others. However, I would say that the Primus offering is worth giving it a try. Barring some serious degradation in the overall service, or an increase in pricing, I will be continuing as a Primus customer for the foreseeable future.
For more information you can check out Primus' website (»www.primustel.ca) or the »Primus TalkBroadband VoIP FAQ.
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Review by ohmer
UPDATED: 1.6 years ago
member for 6.3 years, 1172 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Quebec,QC
$15 per month (month by month)
about 15 days
"Great price, many functions"
"Level 1 Tech support/CS is horrible, cannot call 1-900 lines"
"It's cheap and it's just work. It's only what I want !"
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On a technical side, Primus TBB is an excellent service. It just works and many functions included for free (no fees for things like caller id display, call forwards, voicemail like at bell).
But... hope you will not need to call 611. First, you will wait for at least 45 minutes before to be online with a technician. Second, you will receive averages answers. If you have a non-standard problem, many months can pass before Primus fix it (example : my 911 service is reduced to basic since September because I moved... they say my number/address cannot support E911, but Bell and my city say this is not true...)
EDIT March 2008: Tech support is better when you call directly a level 2 technician 
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Review by sirius4
UPDATED: 1.7 years ago
member for 1.7 years, 6 visits, last login: 1.7 years ago
undisclosed location
Contract price not specified.
about 90 days
"fast shipping of the router"
"porting the phone number take a LONG time, mostly due to ALLSTREAM"
"sometimes they are clueless and just tell you anything to get out of trouble"
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Everything is in order now, the problem was not Primus but ALLSTREAM who is in charge of transferring the phone number to primus..
it can take up to 45 days to port a number be patient
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Review by daboom
Posted: 1.7 years ago
member for 7.9 years, 1192 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Oshawa,ON
$29 per month
about 7 days
"Great Service overall"
"Takes a while to get numbers ported couple weeks in my experience."
"Overall great service for the Value. No complaints here."
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Ordering was a bit slow but once I got the device a Linksys Adaptor I was up and running within minutes. I was using Vonage service prior and found Primus to be more CDN and better price ie much cheaper for the same service and more Features. Vonage's call quality degraded considerably I even canceled before the year was up it was so bad. Only thing they can't control is the speed of which to port numbers over. Takes a good couple of weeks. So be patient.
Talkbroadband does have actual real call blocking etc... you can even route certain numbers to others anytime of the day etc.
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Review by Shamans
UPDATED: 2.1 years ago
member for 2.1 years, 257 visits, last login: 5 days ago
undisclosed location
$16 per month
"cheap, portable, many features"
"depends on the internet"
"good if you need cheap"
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I've used primus for about a year. I didn't order it but I did install it.
Overall, it's not bad - but like all VOIP implementations, it depends on a good internet connection environment.
Lots of features with a nice web portal.
Installation is fast but may be difficult if you want to hook it up to your entire home.
You only pay $16 if you have the gateway. Otherwise it's around $20.
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 Review by Exiled
UPDATED: 2.2 years ago
member for 6.1 years, 282 visits, last login: 43 days ago
Canada
$24 per month
"Quality, Reliability, Value (Unlimited calls to North America)"
"Phone Customer Service"
"Best Voip available, imo. (in its area of service)"
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Get if if you want to make tons of long distance calls, if you want it to be cheaper than your telco, and if you aren't afraid of calling customer service up when a problem arises.
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Primus Talkbroadband
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