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 Review by dataiv 
UPDATED: 128 days ago
member for 7.7 years, 3388 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Burlington,ON
 $45 per month
 about 8 days
 "Great call quality."
 "No direct international calling, no way to change settings of features, one price plan."
 "Good service, but it's time for them to add some more features, and have a better international calling plan."
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--- July 20, 2009 ---
A new feature on the Cogeco Digital Phone is direct international dialing. At first glance this seems like a welcome new feature. However, the per minute rates are completely nuts and it is obvious that all Cogeco is thinking about is profit, profit, profit - "how can we rip people off some more..." - Given that the cost of the digital phone is already around $55/month, I would have expected reasonable per minute rates - most European countries land line calling should be around 3 to 5 cents/minute and mobile around 25 to 30 cents/minute. This would be competitive (which is what their website says - "competitive international long distance" - HAH!). No, forget it! The average land line per minute price for calling most European countries is 10 cents/minute and mobile ranges from 39 to 69 cents/minute. They are out of their freaking minds! I hope not too many people fall for this. It's completely unacceptable.
Since having the phone service installed just over 3 years ago, the price has gone up significantly. The internet price has also gone up, as well as the cable TV price. Some increases can be expected of course, but this is getting out of hand. I believe now the pricing of the phone is basically the same as we could get for a normal land line again - which always worked. Cogeco's phone has had several days where it doesn't work for half the day because of issues at their main office.
--- September 24, 2007 ---
Still have Cogeco VoIP. Since December 2006, data (modem or fax) calls outside the local exchanges have not worked. Apparently this is "being worked on", but come on, it's been 9 months! So, I would say don't count on data calls working.
Secondly, in my opinion they could have done better than to provide international calling through an external calling card company. This is pretty ridiculous. It took two years to come up with a URL link to an external company, and up until that point, no suggestions at all! Also, the suggested calling card service requires prepayment, rather than billing after calls are made. Rather annoying to have to prepay. There are other companies with similar rates that charge monthly after calls are made, resulting in much less hassle. Come on Cogeco...
Thirdly, the number of features has not changed since the service was launched over two years ago. Many features are still listed as "being launched in the future".
Fourth, if you want to listen to your voicemail remotely from another person's Cogeco phone without calling your own number, good luck. The access numbers recognize the calling number and only ask for a password, not a mailbox number. In my opinion, if an access number is called, as opposed to the usual "22#" for voicemail access, you should always be asked for the mailbox number.
The original review follows:
Had Cogeco VoIP installed on Friday, June 23, 2006. My neighbours have had it for almost one full year now, and they have no complaints, except from the first couple months when they had some problems.
I have a YAK Calling Card that I use for overseas calling, but I am hoping Cogeco adds direct overseas calling soon at good rates, like Mountain Cable appears to have. I think unlimited north america is great, and I do like the fact that I have one point of contact for internet, telephone and television service. It makes it easy to get action quickly.
Using a fax machine for faxing on Cogeco's VoIP service works fine. Dialing up to a modem works, but not all that well. There seems to be a lot of reported latency over Cogeco's VoIP for this type of call ... Not that I do it that often, I was honestly just testing to see if it worked, but perhaps someone would want to know. If I dial up to the Queen's University modem pool, with the Bell line the first hop latency was about 160ms. With Cogeco's VoIP it is about 400ms.
It's been 2 days now and no problems. I hope it stays that way.
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Cogeco Voip
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