Review by n1418 Location: Honolulu, Honolulu, HI, USA Cost: $32 per month (12 month contract) Install: about 30 days LOW prices, Excellent Quality, Great Features Nonexistent tier-one Tech Support, Slow startup time, don't return calls, nearly impossible to get service started/stopped Not Worth the Hassle--

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

My experiences with 808netfone have been varied, but overall great.

I signed up around 40 days ago online and waited. After a week, I began to call their technical support to ask how much longer it would be until my service would start. After several days of leaving messages (it's impossible to get through to a live person), I was finally told "oops, we'll get on top of it." I wasn't too concerned, as mistakes do happen-- no big deal.

After a couple more days, my Analog Telephone Adapter showed up along with the temporary number they had issued me until my home phone number had been ported over from Hawaiian Telcom. I also received an email requesting an authorization letter to port my number over from HawaiianTel. I tried to fax the letter in to them, but couldn't seem to get a good connection. I ended up mailing it in to the address on the form.

After a few more days, I called back in to leave a message inquiring as to when I could expect my number to be ported over. No response.

I waited another week, then called in again to leave a message. No response

I emailed Tech Support through their website, hoping they would at least read emails. No response.

Finally, in a fit of desperation (bear in mind I am paying two phone bills during this time), I called into 808netfone's main office and insisted on speaking with a Customer Support Supervisor. I also emailed the address listed below in another review on this website. Between the Customer Support Supervisor (who was incredibly courteous), and the other individual I emailed, my number was ported over and my service began flawlessly within four days!

I really haven't had any technical problems other than getting the ball rolling, and you really can't beat the price or the reliability.

Also, I want to state that my fax works considerably well. I get about 80% to go through. I do have problems with a couple of specific numbers, oddly enough, but that might not be fault of 808netphone.

For the record, Oceanic's VOIP service doesn't officially support faxes either.

Caller ID works fine as well. I don't get names, but the numbers come through fine.

"Follow Me" is a really neat feature they include that starts ringing my cell phone after my home phone rings unanswered twice. Whichever phone answers the call gets it. Caller ID, surprisingly enough gets passed through to my cell phone as well.

If you are tenacious enough to make it through the initial setup and bad first-tier tech support, this is a great service that offers an incredible alternative to Oceanic's VOIP, and beats the living tar out of anything those jokers at Hawaiian Telcom offer.

---UPDATE---

2008/03/24

It's now been over three months since I ported my 808netfone number to Verizon Wireless. After calling over a dozen times, I'm still being billed, my 808netfone account is still active, I still have a dial tone on my home phone line (meaning my account has not been cancelled), and I'm still not getting any results.

Considering the amount of stress it has taken to get this service started, the ridiculous customer service (or lack thereof), and the ineptitude of the billing department, not to mention the apparent inability to terminate service before mankind lands on Jupiter, I cannot recommend 808netfone for anything.

STAY AWAY from this company.

Reid Palmeira @aloha.net Reid Palmeira Anon 2006-Aug-2 2:32 pm 808NetFone Fax support There are known issues with faxing based upon where the fax terminates. For local (808) faxing you shouldn't see any issues, but some faxes to long distance numbers outside of the 808 area code will not complete because the long distance carrier on the termination side may not have a fax gateway to properly terminate the call locally on the other side. It's kind of hit and miss as to which ones work. The larger metro NPA/NXX codes (first six digits of a ten digit phone number) will typically work, but you really won't know until you try one. cheers, rpalmeira at plni.net 2006-Aug-2 2:32 pm: · hey mods ·

your comment..

Review by burnside91 Location: Kailua, Honolulu, HI, USA Cost: $13 per month (12 month contract) Install: about 1 days Great price, absolutely trouble free, excellent call quality, full same as landline E911 (for HI customers). No fax/modem support, crude web interface Instant setup, great price, no reason not to get it. Only choice for an 808 number.

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

I called to order the service over the phone because I had some questions about the contract term, etc. that isn't outlined on the website (!), although now it appears to be there but buried in the T&Cs.

I called and talked to a very nice person at PLNI in Honolulu, she offered to waive the $45 set up fee, which I'm not sure would have happened if I ordered online. There is a reasonable $45 cancellation fee if you cancel after 30 days but before 12 months. But, I do believe that you don't get charged any extra if you don't return the adapter, and you can recoup that by selling your adapter on eBay for $60, or keeping it and using it with another provider like FWD or BroadVoice (if you can unlock it that is). Also, if you want to get up and running immediately you can pick up your adapter at their downtown office, or their office in the Koko Marina shopping center in Hawaii Kai. I chose to pick up my adapter in downtown, in their 19th floor office building, and was up and running making calls and receiving calls with my new 808-447 number the same day. I can't attest to how smoothly it would go if you were to port in your 808 landline or cellular number, but they do offer that service.

They're just about the only VoIP provider to offer and 808 number (Vonage, AT&T, Verizon, Lingo, BroadVoice, VoicePulse, Packet8, all don't). I have seen two other ones but they were small ones with dubious names, and definately didn't offer as cheap of a monthly rate. 808NetFone is provided by Pacific LightNet who also runs Hawaii Online and provides phone service to a lot of local businesses and has for many years (f/k/a GST). So they're a trusted name with their own switch and equipment, not just a cheap reseller..

Setup was brainlessly easy. I just plugged in the adapter to the power and into a free ethernet port on my wireless router (connected to a EarthLink/Oceanic Time Warner cable modem) and within 10 seconds the ATA showed a green light and I had a dial tone. The ATA is a Sipura SPA-2100. It appears to be set up to automatically pull a DHCP address from whatever you plug it in to, I'm not sure how I would (or if it's possible) to configure it for static IP or PPPoE use (808NF disables the Sipura SPA-2100 web interface for the adapter itself, but maybe they would give you a password or something if you needed it in that situation). Their service is quite helpful, the customer serivce/support is provided by a dedicated VoIP person at their office in downtown Honolulu who is very knowledgable and responsive, when I had to call to ask about their features (how to block my number and *70), no calling India to someone who has to take down all your information first, and look for a solution.

I had a bit of trouble with the voicemail. Apparently the voicemail system password is separate and unrelated to the web interface password. A random voicemail password was generated for me when I signed up (which can be changed of course) and the representative forgot to write it down on my welcome sheet. They were quickly able to retrieve for me though when I called customer service (local representative in Honolulu, and no hold time to speak with them).

The call quality is great. I tried calling a few people, and having someone else in my house call me with a cell phone and talk to each other. The voice of the person talking into the VoIP line comes through on the other (cell phone) end crystal clear. The voice of the person you're talking to sounds a little "sharp" but perfectly intelligible, however this might be my new cordless phone which I purchased for use with the service and not the service itself. I tried A/B ing with a regular landline and couldn't tell the difference.

I'd have no problem with cancelling my landline and relying on this exclusively. It hasn't gone out or even skipped a beat once (not a single dropped word or metallic echo) in a month and hours and hours of use. I tried having someone else in my house call me on my cell phone using the VoIP while I was in another room, the voice quality of the person talking into the VoIP phone was amazing, even better than a landline (maybe because there's no noisy copper lines for the conversation to diverse?, or something about the clean G.711 to GSM transcoding?). PLNI also offers full e911 service automatically included (unless you specify that you're out of state--if you are, why are you looking at 808NetFone anyway?), so your call is routed to the exact same place as your landline 911, and the dispatcher gets your provided service address on their screen.

They also seem to have a big advantage in call quality in theory over the national guys. I pinged their server (voip.aloha.net) located in Honolulu 100 times, and got an average of just 12ms (9ms min, 18ms max) on my Oceanic cable modem, I do not think one could hope for a lower ping time anywhere for VoIP. That's what you get when your packets stay on the island. I was also amazed after seeing the comments I've heard about VoIP dying during heavy downloading or uploading how robust the connection was. I couldn't kill it if I wanted to, I tried to place a call while playing 3 streaming movies, download a 300mb file, and running the Broadband Reports Speed test, and it still wouldn't miss a beat. Including when I initiated the call in the middle of the bandwidth load and when I initiated it before the bandwidth load. I can even play Starcraft without messing up the VoIP.

The price is great, it includes everything but your standard Hawaii GET, and $1.20 if you want an unpublished number.

My only complaint would be that they are not as fully featured as the major national providers. The web interface is pretty crude, all there is is a missed call list and a crude "phone book". There is a click to dial feature, but it doesn't work.. They do send you voicemails through email though, with the messages attached as WAVs, their voicemail system is identical to the IPKall (www.ipkall.com) one if you're familiar with that.

Also, it does not appear to work with fax machines or modems. I tried and my fax machine started to load the page, but eventually gave up and spit the page out unsent. I might have better luck if I could set a lower trasmission speed or something, but unfortunately my fax doesn't offer that option. Woe is me, but they don't claim for faxing to work anyway. I don't fax often anyway and can get away with just a service like eFax though.

Overall, highly recommended. I hope to see them to continue to add more features to the service, and maybe advertise it better, they don't seem to have a lot of customers (they have almost zero advertising though) and I hope they don't go out of business.

Update: I tried out the VoIP on a friends Hawaiian Telcom DSL, and it didn't work as well latency wise, since they switched over the network from Verizon Online, the ping times to voip.aloha.net from DSL are 300 ms+ (traceroute shows that the traffic has to go across the pacific to Los Angeles and back again, no wonder, stupid HawTel no Hawaii interconnection). An Oceanic cable modem gives you ping times around 8 ms.

Konaguy Live From Hawaii Premium Member join:2000-10-21 Kailua Kona, HI Konaguy Premium Member 2006-May-10 12:14 am OTW Actually Oceanic Time Warner's VoIP service offers 808 area code too by the way.. »www.twcdigitalphone.com/hawaii/ 2006-May-10 12:14 am: · hey mods ·

binzo3 join:2006-10-09 Honolulu, HI binzo3 Member 2006-Oct-9 6:10 pm 808NetFone's customer support blows! The unvarnished truth about 808NetFone is that their customer support is in a word: terrible. Live people are nearly impossible to reach. Promises to return calls are not kept. I have waited weeks for calls to be returned. I'm sorry, but when a telecomunications company is billing you monthly for a service, they better have someone to answer the phone and return calls as soon as possible--the same day, or at the latest the next. Follow up on technical problems is also similarly lax and takes an extremely long time for resolution. Example: we had one of their Grandstream ATA devices and the thing was just horrible--calls would consistently drop after 10 minutes. 808NetFone was aware of the technical problems of this device but did nothing in the way of contacting/advising customers whom they sent this device to. Long story short, we put up with a malfunctioning ATA for 5 months while WE CALLED THEM REPEATEDLY for some kind of response (excuse me, but we've got better things to do). Finally, they offered to exchange the ATA for a SIPURA device and offered a one month service credit. After 5 months of a malfuncitoning device that we had to chase them about, that's the best they could do?! I personally do not like paying for spotty, or just plain non-functioning service. This kind of stuff just won't fly. To make things worse, a few of the customer service reps gave us attitude and were rude and sassy. Escalating the issue up to a Customer Service Manager was also equally horrible as they just don't seem to believe in returning phone calls. I really wanted to work through a local company, but 808NetFone has dropped the ball so many times, I feel like a parent getting after a misbehaving child. If anyone is a subscriber to their service, and the situation is working, good luck; but when it isn't, don't expect 808NetFone to jump to fix the problem. If you're looking for a voIP provider in Hawai'i,,,my advice is to look elsewhere. 2006-Oct-9 6:10 pm: · hey mods ·

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