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Review by thatguy5245 
UPDATED: 7 days ago
member for 4.3 years, 264 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Dunbar,Kanawha,WV
 $14 per month (18 month contract)
 about 9 days
 "Works quite well with excellent quality."
 "Have to use their adapter. Call log is limited to last 10 of missed, dialed and answered."
 "Might not be as feature rich as others but i def trade that for their reliability"
| Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
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Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Let me just state that I have been around the block when it comes to VOIP offerings. Having never wanting to go mainstream I have sampled the following providers in order.
1. Packet 8
2. SunRocket (How I miss thee)
3. ViaTalk (Hard to believe they have talk in their name, unless it is when you are talking to yourself about the service being down again)
4. PhonePower
So far PhonePower is right behind SunRocket in being the choice in VOIP.
PhonePower like others in the VOIP industry have mimicked SunRocket's pricing structure of $200 for a year's worth of service. Of course it is not really $200 as everybody pays Uncle Sam some green but I appreciate not being charged every month fees and taxes after I made the commitment and paid the $200 with another company. I don't mind paying if I know what it is and more importantly all at one time so I don't have to worry about anything until my contract is up.
I signed up for the "VoIP Residential Unlimited" and received 6 months free with my 1 year prepayment.
Here is the breakdown of my invoice:
Summary of your Initial Fees
Service Price:* $199.95
Hardware Price: $0.00
Hardware Shipping: $14.95
Regulatory Recovery Fee:* $11.88
911 Cost Recovery:* $11.88
Federal, State and Local Services
(FSLS) Recovery:* $14.60
Total Initial Fees:* $253.26
* If you ordered a Non-Prepay package this charge will not be final, it is an estimation. Your initial charges will vary based up your activation date and are generally less than 1 full month of service. Your first month charge will be based upon when your line is active and you have received our hardware.
So the normal cost per month is $21.11 but because of the 6 months free it drops the cost to $14.07
Now as I previously mentioned I had signed up for the "VoIP Residential Unlimited" but as it turns out this is not entirely true. The plan includes 3,000 outgoing minutes and does provide unlimited incoming minutes a month. So while it may seem misleading they are very generous and it is spelled out in their TOS when you sign up unlike other companies who add to it later and never notify you of any changes.
I signed up 5/10 and selected the earliest available date available for my number port which was 5/19 and the equipment was received before the port date. Porting our number was so easy. I didn't have to fax or email any signatures as they just took my info from their site. Imagine that things can be simplistic and still work too!
On 5/19 I hooked up my adapter and ....
Dialtone....Check
No fast busy...Check
Place a call...Check
Both parties could hear....Check
Our number showed up on their Caller ID....Check
Hanging up and on to Check # 2
Phone Rings.....Check
Their Caller ID shows up...Check
Everybody can hear....Check
It works!! The call quality is great no echoes are complaints from the people on the line.
Now PhonePower's website and feature set is pretty basic. It does have a pretty good layout for navigation though.
There is no custom caller id (assign a contact's number to say something else so "Wireless Caller" doesn't show up but instead "Sues Cell" shows)
****"10/4/08 Edit You can do this by adding the person as a contact"******
The call log is very limited at a total of 30 calls that is divided to missed answered and dialed.
****"10/4/08 Edit They now allow you to view your log for 30 days, now it is not as long as some providers but much better than their initial 10 calls per category plan and if you want the logs you have the ability to save them in CSV format as well"******
Of course like every other VOIP provider you can check voicemail online or set it to go to your email. You can block and forward calls but unfortunately you cannot setup a "network outage" emergency forward. You can set change the quality settings to conserve bandwidth and now they recently added a feature called "Cloned Line" (think ViaTalks extra line feature same phone number but you and your spouse can have two different conversations with two different parties at the same time). They also say "Virtual Number" is coming.
Overall PhonePower is what I wanted and that was a reliable working VOIP solution. Now it doesn't every feature in the book but it does look like they are improving it that area and honestly I don't care at this point. I had all of those features before but I didn't have the most import feature of VOIP, which is being able to talk!
Followup comments:  
discjoker
join:2002-02-18
Billerica, MA | Custom Caller ID There is Custom Caller ID, however they don't call it that. When you add someone to your contacts, the calling name will show up as what ever you enter. | |
| | thatguy5245
join:2004-05-25
Dunbar, WV | Re: Custom Caller ID Thanks for pointing this out. I didn't bother adding but two contacts and they were showing up the same as always. Not quite custom but it does work. Unfor it includes a "," even if you don't type one. | |
| rdwarrior
join:2007-07-20
Conway, AR
| PhonePower I tried them and their support isn't that great. Also, the quality is pretty bad. I just went back to TeleBlend and the quality is pretty good and their support is nice. With taxes and everything, I only pay around $17 per month. They definitely don't have limits on their unlimited service so it is really unlimited. Thumbs up to TeleBlend! | |
| | thatguy5245
join:2004-05-25
Dunbar, WV
 ·PHONE POWER
 ·Suddenlink
 ·Cingular Wireless
| Re: PhonePower Teleblend??? Are you serious? They opened their doors just to make a buck on SunRockets demise. From what the majority state here in the forums support with them is terrible. What ISP to you have? I have to assume that this a problem because of your ISP just like the other guy who blamed AT&T yet wrote a negative review for PhonePower for being lousy.
Just remember this is Voice Over Internet Protocol meaning you should have a reliable connection on both ends. Make sure your end is not oversold like SuddenStink Cable does. | |
| 
PhonePower
Premium
join:2007-07-20
Winnetka, CA
edit:
October 4th, @05:34PM
| The call log fully updated The call log now shows the last 30 days, but click on the "detail call log report" button and you can see, print and/or download call logs for any lenght of time you select.  | |
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Review by mikeshoup
Posted: 20 days ago
member for 123 days, 28 visits, last login: 19 days ago
Denver,Jefferson,CO
$12 per month (month by month)
about 3 days
"Great value, Quick and Easy Install"
"No BYOD, No 24/7 Tech Supp"
"Great service for the money"
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I purchased this service to use for working from home. I do Technical Support, so reliability and sound quality are quite important with any phone service. Not wanting to pay the prices the local telco charges, I decided to look into VoIP solutions.
After looking around, I decided to purchase PhonePower and so far, the service has been fine.
I placed the order, and about thirty minutes later, I was e-mailed saying my ATA was being shipped. The GrandStream Handy Tone 502 arrived on the same day my service was scheduled to start. I simply hooked up the WAN port of the ATA to my router, and the Phone 1 port to a telephone jack.
As the instructions said, I waited 10-15 minutes. Picked up the phone and heard dial tone. Tested by calling my cell phone. Worked great.
My only dissapointments is there is no BYOD support or softphone support. This is okay as the device they ship to you works great.
Also, tech support is not 24/7, so if your phone goes out on a Sunday, you'll have to wait for Monday. Fine by me as I have yet to have service problems.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of PHONE POWER |
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Review by groingo1
UPDATED: 24 days ago
member for 4.5 years, 25 visits, last login: 24 days ago
Port Orchard,Kitsap,WA
$12 per month
"Low price and ample features"
"Echoooooooo and MUST have a very GOOD ISP and patience"
"If you don't have an excellent ISP, great packetting it aint a gonna work!"
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I had been fighting with these guys for months trying to resolve the line noise issues, echoing and broken connections and in the end after four routers (theirs) and countless tests and time I had to pack it in because ultimately it was a fifty fity split on who was at fault, my ISP or them.
Ultimately many months later my ISP (Wave Broadband) has after 8 months of testing finally admitted that they have oversold internet, the equipment is 12 years old and cannot keep up so now they are replacing the works, from nodes to repeaters so they can offer up to 20 meg services.
I did go back to Qwest (it sucks) till something better comes along.
The real kicker, I haven't had their service now for a year and I just got an email from them telling me the hardware has been shipped...I didn't order anything though.
Looks like they're still screwed up.
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Review by khartojo
Posted: 33 days ago
member for 8.1 years, 514 visits, last login: 3 days ago
Colorado Springs,El Paso,CO
$10 per month (3 month contract)
about 5 days
"painless setup, much better voice quality than viatalk"
"not as many features as viatalk, no byod either"
"was looking for phone service, got exactly what I ordered"
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taking care of business.
most customers are looking for phone service, phonepower provided exactly that.
kudos.
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Review by ialexei
UPDATED: 36 days ago
member for 36 days, 2 visits, last login: 32 days ago
Nashua,Hillsborough,NH
Contract price not specified.
"It Really Works!!!"
"Setup instructions could be made better"
"Great value"
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I had vonage several years ago and after about 6 months I switched back to a land line. Calls were not clear (lot of noise) and line would go dead regularly even when my broadband was working. At that time I thought I would get back to using VOIP after the technology had matured. After that I dropped that too and stuck with using just a cellphone with lots of minutes.
I decided to try VOIP again last week. I was pleasantly surprised to see so many choices other than Vonage and Lingo. I chose Phone Power after some research. Equipment arrived in 3 business days and I had to pay for just shipping.
The instructions tell that the device has to sit between your Cable/DSL modem and your router. I didn't want to do this as I suspected I would have to call up the broadband company to update them with the new MAC address of the device. So I connected it like a regular PC (i.e wired it from one of the vacant LAN ports on my router to the WAN port on the Phone Power device).
The dial tone came on in 2 minutes and after about 10 minutes was able to make calls (they mention the 1 time delay in their instruction sheet).
I don't understand why they would encourage people to put the device in between the modem and the router and go through the extra hazzle of a support call with the broadband company instead of the much easier way like how I did.
The quality of the calls is just awesome. This AM I made some calls to India and I was pleasantly surprised to see they were better in quality than any other phone cards/companies I have used in the past.
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Review by discjoker
UPDATED: 39 days ago
member for 6.6 years, 704 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Billerica,Middlesex,MA
$13 per month
about 3 days
"Plug and play! It"
"None so far."
"Phone Power combines reliabilty, features, and price. The service has been perfect for me."
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Update 9/2/08: With the addition of some more features on the web portal I am changing my website rating from "4" to "5". I can do everything I want and need to do.
Update 8/11/08: I have had Phone Power for about 4 months. Phone Power is still meeting my expectations. I have had no outages, no hiccups, no distorted calls, no dropped calls. The service is flawless so far. With my old provider (Viatalk) those who I called constantly complained of a poor connection (garbled audio, etc). Have not had one complaint since switching to Phone Power. VERY happy! Highly recommend!
Original Review:
I have been a VOIP customer for 6 years. My first 4 with Vonage and my last two with Viatalk. See my Viatalk review if you would like to read my experience with them (not good).
After deciding it was time to leave Viatalk, I searched for a replacement provider. I am a big believer in VOIP and knew I was not going to return to landline. After researching several providers I decided on Phone Power.
Signing up for Phone Power was easy and straightforward. I needed to provide them with the standard info (address, etc). One thing I liked about their sign-up was you could choose your port date and didn’t' have to fax anything to get the port started. I also appreciated the fact that they showed ALL charges. Taxes and fees were clearly stated when signing up.
My adapter arrived in a few days. Plugged it in and I had service. My number ported on the date I had chosen. Since then service has been perfect. Calls connect every time (both incoming and outgoing). Calls are as clear as a landline and I have not experienced any dropped calls.
So far so good with Phone Power. They provide reliable service with plenty of features.
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Review by coaster
UPDATED: 39 days ago
member for 1.2 years, 68 visits, last login: 17 days ago
New Port Richey,Pasco,FL
$23 per month (month by month)
about 4 days
"Support, quality and features"
"none"
"Can't go wrong with these folks!"
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09/01/08- It has been over a year with Phone Power and they have exceeded my expectations. No drama, just rock solid service. No switching servers to Galvatron, Houston, Megatron or BFE servers. It just works and has been very reliable. Web portal keeps being updated with new features that are very helpful. Happy with my gamble on a voip service that had not been put to the test a year ago.
I signed up the first part of August 2007 before anyone had posted anything about this company. Liked their 6 month promotional price and no activation fee. Needed a replacement for Earthlink TrueVoice and it's awful India tech support. PhonePower sent my adapter the next business day after the weekend I signed up.
The Linksys RT31P2 phone adapter I was sent fits perfectly under my Linksys WRT54G. Quality has been crystal clear. Only one issue I recall of losing incoming for a few hours one evening. Would not of noticed it had someone else not posted about it. Support has been easy to reach when I have had questions about features. They have added many to their web portal since I have been a customer. The promotional rate is over for me, but their regular price is worth the great experience I have had with them for the past 7 months.
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Review by sarah1967
Posted: 67 days ago
member for 75 days, 2 visits, last login: 67 days ago
Oakland,Alameda,CA
 Business customer
$11 per month (18 month contract)
about 3 days
"easy order and install. u can pick your telephone number"
"no toll free numbers to choose from"
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ordering and install was simple. I like the fact you can pick your number from a list of 20. I wish they had toll free numbers to choose from. But a customer service rep said they will soon. I've run my business from the service for a couple months now and it's been a good service. I originally signed up on the cheapest plan, but was happy enough to switch to the annual. They will let you upgrade to one of their other new customer promotional plans, but only in the first 30 days.
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Review by tweek21
UPDATED: 78 days ago
member for 105 days, 6 visits, last login: 70 days ago
Napoleon,Lafayette,MO
$14 per month (month by month)
about 3 days
"Call quality, plug-and-play setup"
"carribean?"
"Good service, great price"
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I've been looking to reduce my phone bill, and their Freedom500 plan at $14.95 is very attractive. Plus there's no contract so I'm not locked in. The service worked out of the box, and the MyAccount portal is pretty straight forward.
500 outbound minutes a month is more than sufficient (inbound is unlimited). This seems like a huge upgrade from my old phone service. I did have trouble dialing St. Croix, and have emailed support to find out why.
UPDATE: Had the service for a month now and am still pleased. Call quality is excellent.
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Review by markhieh
UPDATED: 79 days ago
member for 79 days, 2 visits, last login: 58 days ago
Sacramento,Sacramento,CA
$9 per month (month by month)
about 25 days
"I do not know any"
"bad equipement, bad costomer service"
"avoid them"
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attracted to this company by the falsely good reviews, the price and ATT high charges. as a result, I was out of phone service for a month and back requesting ATT to restore my service. First for some reason my service with Att was turned off automatically after I made the order from Power Phone. 5 days later I received the equipment, when I read the instruction I understood that I need a dry loop dsl line, I found out that it will take 2 weeks to transfer the line from a regular phone line to dry loop line. once I did that I had to spend a whole evening to setup my dsl with my provider. I spent the next evening trying to get in touch with PP support with no luck. the next day I was able to make contact and set up a call time when I get home. They called me on time and from there we spent exactly 4 hours trying to setup their router with no avail. then the support tech said the equipment may be faulty and they will send in new router. at this point I was so frustrated and decided that I do not want to trust my future connectivity with such company. when I requested to cancel my service the next day they refused to offer any refund back and told to send their router back or I will be charged for it even if it does not work. I requested to talk to the supervisor, and he did not budge. so here I am spending an hour more of my time to express my frustration which I hope will help save you from an experience similar to mine
Followup comments: sarah1967
join:2008-07-27
Oakland, CA
·PHONE POWER
| Don't blame your new provider. This is an ATT screwup. It sounds like your troubles are with ATT. When you port your number away, the telco is supposed to change your line to dry-loop automatically. ATT either accidentally or purposely screwed up and dropped your dsl. Either way, sounds like it worked. You're back with ATT, right? | |
| excessive
join:2006-11-04
Panorama City, CA
|  I am seeing this more and more with DSL
This is (in my mind) very suspicious especially when AT&T is involved, i dont think i have even seen a port from them that was put on dry loop. And when they are contacted about why they cut off the DSL and get wind of the number port being to switch service to a voip provider, they hammer you with solicitations about their service.
Verizon does this too but far less, usually they will just switch you to a dry loop and that is that.
As frustrating as it is, and as easy as it is to place blame on phone power, the previous poster was very correct in stating who was at fault. voip uses your existing broadband connection to provide you telephone service. so if that service is terminated it obviously cant function, and only you, or your ISP, can order a disconnection of your internet service, and i dont think you did right? right.  | |
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