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 Review by otty 
UPDATED: 299 days ago
member for 1 year, 467 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Saskatoon,SK
 $2 per month
 "Cheapest Canadian DID, great interface and features."
 "Have to pay in US dollars"
 "Great for mild users who want a cheap pay as you go DID"
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I use the pay as you go plan for outbound calls on the value routing and have great quality mostly calling in Canada at between .49 cent-1.05 cents/minute depending where you call.
I have one Canadian DID for $1.99/month at 1.49cents/minute incoming. All calls inbound and outbound are billed in 6 second increments. There is no setup fee.
I don't actually talk on the phone much but I am a young guy and my friends expect me to have a cell phone as everyone has one and you're out of the loop without one. I put this off for a long time but finally gave in. I HATE giving my money to the big guys so this really helps reduce that:
I discovered SIP just a few weeks ago after some experience with Vonage and Skype. Did some research and realized I could combine it with my pay as you go cellphone plan and a WIFI/GSM phone so I bought the Nokia E51. My Speak Out wireless pay as you go cell minutes don't expire for a year and keep me anonymous.
I now use voip.ms as it has the cheapest monthly rate for a DID I could find, and I use failover to my cell number for when I'm out of WIFI range (rare in Saskatoon as there is a free public WIFI system covering most of the city). I use a program called Easy WIFI on my phone that automatically connects me to the strongest WIFI signal available.
I'm loving it! It saves me cell phone charges, keeps me in touch and satisfies the geek in me with all the features on the voip.ms site and fiddling with the Nokia E51.
I've contacted support a couple of times. The online chat support is a bit lame as most first tier support is. But I was quickly transferred to knowledgable people who always helped me out. One time when they were unsuccessful helping me live so they did some research and got back to me in 12 hours with the correct settings.
Really good overall. Some providers have cheaper calling and incoming rates. The tabs on the website could be better organized.
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 Review by burgerwars
UPDATED: 302 days ago
member for 5.2 years, 497 visits, last login: a few minutes ago
Northridge,Los Angeles,CA
$2 per month
 about 1 days
"Really cheap for people who make/receive a limited amount of calls. Tens of thousands of numbers to choose from."
"Some odd quirks with making/receiving calls. $25 minimum funding amount. PAYG plan deducts for incoming calls."
"Great for any techie who likes to futz around with stuff like this, but easy for others who can follow fairly simple directions."
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I had an empty port on a Sipura ATA that I previously used with defunct Stanaphone, so I decided to give them a try. I signed-up online and was notified a manual verification was needed. I used their interactive chat, and they got my account running a few minutes later. After adding $25 via PayPal (their minimum deposit in their prepaid accounts), I selected a fairly good vanity type number I found in a nearby area code. It's only $1.49 a month with a 50 cent set-up fee for each telephone number. Caller ID With Name and E911 are optional and cost extra, but since I have no need for either on this line, I'm not subscribing to them
I followed their Linksys/Sipura sample configuration and got up and running in a jiffy. Initially when I placed calls I would get a fast busy quite often. On incoming calls busy signals would happen intermittently. It would be like for 30 seconds there would be busy signals and for 60 seconds not busy, even though the phone wasn't being used. This issue seemed to clear itself up two days later. Also, there's sometimes an issue when I hang up making a call that doesn't answer the other line will just continue to ring. Again, this happens intermittently. The call quality is comparable to other VOIP vendors I've tried.
Basically I've just been testing and playing with it, experimenting with the variety of settings on their website. In all my testing I've haven't even used 25 cents of call time. With 6 second billing you can make a lot of short calls without it adding up to much. I plan on just using this service as a back-up and figure it could take nearly a year before I need to load another $25. I have set-up my voicemail but don't keep it activated to avoid being charged for incoming wrong numbers I am not there to pick-up or for when my ATA is off (callers get a busy if their system can't connect to it and you've not set up any voicemail or forwarding). But when testing voicemail, the audio has been choppy. In any event, at the incoming rate of 0.0149 cents with 6 second billing, unless you get a lot of wrong numbers, the total of all those calls shouldn't add up to more than a few cents.
Followup comments:  WildChild
join:2006-09-08
Quebec, QC
| Same fast busy tone problem... I noticed the problem when you hangup a call that wasn't answered. The remote telephone continues to ring.
Also, I currently have the problem with the fast busy on incoming call. From my Videotron's telephone line, I can call the VoIP box maybe 1 times out of 4... I thought it could be my router, I enabled all keep alive options on both the ATA and the router but still the same problem. Since this morning I try from work and I can't get this fast busy tone. Bell is used here. Can this be a problem related to Videotron? I'll make a few more test tonight by plugging the ATA directly in my cable modem. | |
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Review by Guiness
UPDATED: 306 days ago
member for 312 days, 13 visits, last login: 267 days ago
Durham,ON
$10 per month
about 1 days
"PAYG at $0.015/minute, multiple server locations, lots of configuration options, Good DID selection,"
"Lack of documentation of interface and features, call quality issues, slow DID activation"
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I chose voip.ms because it is well spoken of on this and other forums. Users spoke of great configurability and competitive pricing .
Good pricing overall: unlimited incomming DIDs are more expensive than others, but paying for incoming at $0.015/minute is fine by me. This makes is essentially a full Pay As You Go service. The only fixed cost is the $2/month for a DID. This is attractive to me because I travel for work a lot, and am not paying for a line sitting there unused.
Included with your $2/month DID is most of the things you want, such as VM, caller ID, call forwarding, etc. They also have time conditions that will forward your line during specified time of day and/or day of week. This brings up the first documentation issue however, it's not easy to determine from their website what features are offered, and at what cost (if any!).
BYOD as well, of course, but that's pretty much a given for anyone outside of the big players who are still pretending that VOIP is a distinguishable service as opposed to a value added commodity.
The web portal is full featured, and works well, but there is little or no documentation of how features work. For a seasoned VOIP user, or someone that handles telecom for a company, this might not be an issue, but I was lost at first, and had to either contact their live chat, or google for answers. I would think they'll correct this, because a lot of their agents time must be spent explaining what a ring group is, or how call back works. An FAQ or some sort of knowledge base would solve this.
They claimed they would get my DID up and running in 4h, but it did take about 20h before it was active.
I am currently having some call quality issues, where the party I'm calling hears an echo of their own voice. I have submitted a ticket, and will update this review if the issue is solved satisfactorily.
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Review by gsar
UPDATED: 359 days ago
member for 1.2 years, 257 visits, last login: 3 days ago
Canada
$8 per month
"solid feature set, stable service, 6/6 billing, excellent NA and international rates"
"some calling features not available, minor porting/support niggles"
"great pay-as-you-go provider, especially for calls to Canada!"
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Update 04-Dec-2008: Still quite happy with this provider, though I've had some issues since the last update. I initiated a port of a Canadian DID and there were a few fumbles in getting the port done, though in the end it was completed in about four weeks. Value routes have been rather flaky--I couldn't call India on several occasions on their value route, but premium routing was ok. MartinM from voip.ms responded ( »Re: VOIP.ms DID ) in the forums to acknowledge and comment on these issues in the forums, which I much appreciate. I've adjusted my ratings to reflect my current experience, but I want to make clear that voip.ms continues to be my provider of choice for North American destinations.
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Update 02-Oct-2008: Virtual DIDs are now supported. They allow you to create an inbound SIP URI and attach call treatments to it, just like you can with a regular DID. There is a small ($0.25 monthly + $0.001 per minute) charge for use of a Virtual DID.
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Update 01-Oct-2008: Incoming SIP URI calling is now supported at a small cost ($0.001/minute).
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I'm glad I found this provider. This review is based on about two months of experience with them.
Pros
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They offer no-nonsense pay-as-you-go service. I like the unpretentious, competent and functional customer portal. You sign up for a free account to look at the capabilities, and when ready, add money using a credit card or paypal (minimum you can add is $25 USD). You can set an email reminder when your account runs low to add more funds. The portal has live chat and customer service has always been prompt and usually helpful.
Incoming: They have PAYG or unlimited DIDs in US, Canada and various international locations. US DIDs can be selected out of a big list by state (excellent). Canada DIDs can't be selected by you, you get whatever they allocate. DID activation is near instantaneous. Monthly prices for PAYG DIDs are among the cheapest I've found, though their unlimited DIDs are slightly on the expensive side. Per minute incoming charge for the PAYG DIDs in US/Canada is 1.5 cents, which also is somewhat on the higher side. Their DIDs can be forwarded elsewhere using POTS numbers or SIP URIs (you still pay the DID incoming charge if you have a PAYG DID). Voicemail is included and can be set to email you the message. They've very recently added some more features: failover forwarding, ring groups, callback service, time conditions, and "virtual DIDs" (aka incoming SIP URI). CNAM (which is the name associated with the party calling you in the CNAM database) lookup is available for a small per-lookup charge on inbound calls to DIDs or virtual DIDs--one of the few providers who seem to offer this.
Outgoing: They have two routes for every destination (value or premium) and you can select which one to default to in your account. The route can also be selected per call by dialling a prefix. The value route is very competitive--Canada rates are the best I could find anywhere, while US/Europe rates are good enough. Their premium routes don't appear competitive with other good-to-excellent providers like Callcentric. I haven't experienced any issues with the value route, though I've heard other reports about calls to China/Asia not being that reliable. You can set your outgoing caller ID to a number of your choice (excellent).
There is also a capability to add multiple extensions to a single account ("subaccounts") and you can associate separate voicemailboxes with the subaccounts. Calling in between subaccounts (by dialling just the extension number) is a neat feature, though there is a tiny per-minute charge to do this. It seems they will be adding other mini-PBX features like this in future, judging by the comments from the voip.ms rep who is active in the forums.
Call detail records are accessible from their portal as well with some graphing capability for different types of views into the data (which I haven't tried).
e911 service is available as well (I haven't tried that either).
One of the few providers who bill 6/6 (6 second fractional charge for both initial and subsequent minutes) on both incoming and outgoing calls. If you make a lot of short calls, this can make a significant difference.
They have several servers in North America and at least one in Europe. Uptime and ping times seem very good from various places I've tried all over the world.
They have a sipbroker peering code (*8570) that can be used to dial into subaccounts or virtual DIDs. This will incur the small incoming SIP URI call charge ($0.001/min).
Cons
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My biggest beef with them used to be that they didn't have incoming SIP URI calling, so you couldn't forward a DID with another provider to your voip.ms account. You were forced to get a DID with them and do the forwarding via PSTN, which would incur the DID incoming charges if you have a PAYG DID. What's more, they didn't come out and say this on their website or FAQ, so I had to figure it out for myself. Support didn't give me a straight answer--I had to ask more than once and spell it a few different ways. As of Oct 2008, they now support SIP URI calls (in a somewhat hobbled way--see below) using their subaccounts feature, as well as in a more first-class fashion through the "virtual DID" feature.
There is a tiny per minute charge of $0.001 for all incoming SIP URI calls (most providers that allow this do it for free) and a small monthly charge of $0.25 for a "Virtual DID".
There is a fairly serious and confusing limitation on incoming SIP URI calls to a subaccount: there is no way to forward such calls to a different DID, SIP URI or hunt group. To do this and other things possible with an inbound call into a real DID, you should purchase a virtual DID and attach routing policies to it.
Some of the more esoteric calling features don't appear to be there, but they might well be working on those.
There appears to be no automatic failover capability between their servers. If the server/cluster at a particular location is unavailable you must manually switch to a different server. I haven't seen any server downtime, so this may be largely academic.
Auto-recharge of funds in the account when it falls low would be nice to have.
Summary: Overall, a provider I'd recommend, particularly for outgoing calls and calls to Canada.
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Review by snickersee
Posted: 1.1 years ago
member for 2.3 years, 155 visits, last login: 172 days ago
XXXXXX
Contract price not specified.
"Outstanding International rates"
"Minimum $25 top up may be too steep for some"
"When the Intl. rate is less than 1/2 of all competitors...sold"
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After my POTS provider charged me $40 and $45 for an international call (30 and 35 mins), I knew it was time for an alternative.
The going rate for the international country that I was going to call most was $0.30/min (skype, other voip services). When I found out that at VOIP.ms, I would be paying $0.085, I was sold.
Outstanding call quality. I'm a very happy camper right now. Keep up the excellent work voip.ms.
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Review by gg22
UPDATED: 1.1 years ago
member for 1.2 years, 496 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Thornhill,ON
$10 per month
"Sound quality, BYOD, quick setup, reliability"
"Overall very solid provider"
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I'm using them as my main phone line for three months. Set up was quick and easy - open account on-line, configure ATA using their generated configuration page (even shows your user name, pass, server, etc), and you have dial tone. Deposit $25 and in a few seconds you can dial out. User control panel is surprisingly functional - but you have to register in order to check it. (but registration is free). That's the only provider that has all the features i was looking for - including porting of my Canadian number.
Sound quality is better than my old POTS most of the time.
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