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dsl2u
join:2012-05-16
R3L3A1
·VMedia

dsl2u to cell14

Member

to cell14

Re: Recommended alternatives to MagicJack?

Unfortunately I'm in Canada so no Google Voice for me. Gmail works very well for outgoing calls though.

Good suggestions so far. Many thanks to those contributing. There seems to be 2 classes of VOIP. Vonage, Primus and the like who have enormous advertising budgets and charge about half of normal phone service with the same quality as Magicjack most of the time, and companies like MJ and Voip.ms which charge a fraction of the phone company and operate on a small scale.
cell14
join:2012-01-04
Miami Beach, FL

cell14

Member

said by dsl2u:

Unfortunately I'm in Canada so no Google Voice for me. Gmail works very well for outgoing calls though.

If you know somebody who opens for you a new Gmail account with Google voice in the US( and provides a verification US number) you would be able to use Google Voice from Canada. I did it for somebody and configured the Obi for GV and Localphone and she can use it now in her country.
SCADAGeo
Premium Member
join:2012-11-08
N California

SCADAGeo to dsl2u

Premium Member

to dsl2u
said by dsl2u:

Unfortunately I'm in Canada so no Google Voice for me.

A free IPKall number (Washington area codes 206, 253, 360, and 425) SIP forwarded to a free CallCentric IP Freedom account may help you overcome some of the hurdles.

Something to keep in mind with an IPKall phone number... it must be used at least once every 30 days (call must be answered/completed).
grand total
join:2005-10-26
Mississauga
·Fido
MikroTik RB750Gr3
MikroTik wAP AC
Panasonic KX-TGP500

grand total to dsl2u

Member

to dsl2u
said by dsl2u:

Unfortunately I'm in Canada so no Google Voice for me. Gmail works very well for outgoing calls though.

Where do you call to? If you just call major Canadian cities then FreePhoneLine may be your best option. It gives you a Canadian incoming number (if that matters to you). You could still use Gmail for outgoing calls that are not free with FreePhoneLine.
dsl2u
join:2012-05-16
R3L3A1
·VMedia

dsl2u

Member

> Where do you call to?
Just major cities in Canada mostly.
FreePhoneLine is $60 plug $5 a month. Pretty close to MJ. Wondering how the audio quality is and how many minutes a month they allow. And is there any software that interferes with Windows like MJ?
ConstantineM
join:2011-09-02
San Jose, CA

ConstantineM to SCADAGeo

Member

to SCADAGeo

IPKall is good, but not CallCentric SIP

said by SCADAGeo:

said by dsl2u:

Unfortunately I'm in Canada so no Google Voice for me.

A free IPKall number (Washington area codes 206, 253, 360, and 425) SIP forwarded to a free CallCentric IP Freedom account may help you overcome some of the hurdles.

Something to keep in mind with an IPKall phone number... it must be used at least once every 30 days (call must be answered/completed).

I highly advise against putting CallCentric into the mix. Especially from a SIP-registration standpoint, their servers are highly unreliable, since they have no backup power generator, and don't have geographic redundancy (all servers are in their office in New York City; CallCentric doesn't co-locate a single server in any professional-grade data centre with backup power etc); in addition, CallCentric servers don't support TCP registrations (UDP registrations are a huge battery drain on a mobile device), and also they only allow at most one device per account to register with their SIP service at any given time (e.g. you won't be able to use the same CallCentric account on a mobile phone, tablet and a home phone at the same time — if you do try that, only one of the 3 phones would ring).

OnSIP solves all of the above problems other than the lack of TCP registrations, and their basic accounts are free, too (but they still don't offer TCP registrations even as a paid service).

A good choice would be IPKall with OnSIP, with something like Acrobits Groundwire on iOS (make sure to enable APNS against OnSIP's advise, so that instead of having a direct UDP connection to OnSIP that would drain your battery in less than a day, you'd piggyback onto the APNS to have great battery life of at least a week or so).

I've heard that »CallWithUs.com does offer TCP registrations, and so does PBXes.org; they're on my list to try out with my Google Nexus 3, which, obviously, lacks APNS.

Trev
AcroVoice & DryVoIP Official Rep
Premium Member
join:2009-06-29
Victoria, BC

1 recommendation

Trev

Premium Member

said by ConstantineM:

I highly advise against putting CallCentric into the mix. Especially from a SIP-registration standpoint, their servers are highly unreliable,

Is there even anything left to beat of that poor unfortunate horse?

For every ConstantineM who highly advises against CallCentric, there are 20 forum regulars who will highly recommend them.
PX Eliezer704
Premium Member
join:2008-08-09
Hutt River

1 recommendation

PX Eliezer704

Premium Member

said by Trev:

For every ConstantineM who highly advises against CallCentric, there are 20 forum regulars who will highly recommend them.

Indeed.

It is particularly galling that he feels that an arrangement including IPKall is a preferable alternative to CallCentric.

IPKall is housed in a single place with not even any pretense of customer support other than in a Voxilla forum. All of the things he doesn't like about CC are even more true of IPKall.

Connie was also going on and on last year about how CC caller ID display didn't include a [+] sign. Yet CC follows the same practices as a score of other providers he never carps about.

Mallow stopped playing with the ash tray and looked up, "That's not the Sutt I used to know. He's a blood-blind bull. Galaxy, he hates me."

"All the more dangerous then."

"More dangerous? Nonsense! He's lost all power of judgement."

---Foundation.
ConstantineM
join:2011-09-02
San Jose, CA

ConstantineM to Trev

Member

to Trev
said by Trev:

Is there even anything left to beat of that poor unfortunate horse?

For every ConstantineM who highly advises against CallCentric, there are 20 forum regulars who will highly recommend them.

First of all, your proportions are completely not true. The amount of people who no longer recommend CallCentric, to those who blindly ignore the apparent problems, is not nearly 1 to 20, or not even 1 to 2 (it's probably max 1 to 1).

Second, even CC seems to be advising, or have been advising just a couple of weeks ago, to not use their SIP servers for registration due to their apparent DDoS, and to instead register a free account with some competing provider, and to forward incoming numbers to such competing provider. That's what I've been doing with my numbers with CC for a long time anyways (since they don't support simultaneous registrations), and I've been mostly unaffected by their DDoS.

With that said, what exactly is wrong with my advise as given above in my previous message? You obviously didn't quote my reasons, but it's not like I'm just bashing CallCentric for no reason whatsoever.

Lack of multiple concurrent SIP registrations alone is a good enough reason to avoid CallCentric when all you want to use is IPKall and Google Voice. I stand by my words. If they didn't want to be "beaten", maybe they should finally address the problems instead of bashing their competitors.
ConstantineM

ConstantineM to PX Eliezer704

Member

to PX Eliezer704

CO and diesel

said by PX Eliezer704:

It is particularly galling that he feels that an arrangement including IPKall is a preferable alternative to CallCentric.

IPKall is housed in a single place with not even any pretense of customer support other than in a Voxilla forum. All of the things he doesn't like about CC are even more true of IPKall.

IPKall only provide incoming phone number termination, they don't even provide SIP registrations, you have to have a SIP registration with another provider. IPKall having a second place wouldn't make much difference at all; noone here is expecting for the COs to be in the cloud.

Also, I highly doubt that IPKall doesn't have a diesel power generator; I'm pretty sure they have plenty of diesel power (but then again we were all pretty sure that CallCentric had one, too); CallCentric is probably the only major provider to lack a diesel power generator at their facilities.
ConstantineM

ConstantineM

Member

IPKall locations

said by ConstantineM:

said by PX Eliezer704:

IPKall is housed in a single place

IPKall only provide incoming phone number termination, they don't even provide SIP registrations, you have to have a SIP registration with another provider. IPKall having a second place wouldn't make much difference at all; noone here is expecting for the COs to be in the cloud.

BTW, for what it is worth, there is actually no proof that IPKall is housed in a single place. It's my understanding that they have a presence at several COs; and as such, I would not be surprised if some of their numbers are serviced and terminated completely independent from others, meaning that should a single CO/DC go down, some other CO/DC would still continue to terminate at least some other numbers from other COs for at least half (etc) the customers.

Of course, it'd be interesting to know more about their actual setup.
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Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

4 edits

Davesnothere to Trev

Premium Member

to Trev

Re: IPKall is good, but not CallCentric SIP

said by Trev:

said by ConstantineM:

I highly advise against putting CallCentric into the mix. Especially from a SIP-registration standpoint, their servers are highly unreliable,

Is there even anything left to beat of that poor unfortunate horse?

For every ConstantineM who highly advises against CallCentric, there are 20 forum regulars who will highly recommend them.

 
I see both sides' points here.

CallCentric has acknowledged (at least in this forum, thru Iscream) that the geo-redundancy and backup power limitations exist, and intention has also been stated that they will be seriously examining what improvements can be made, in what order, and how soon.

MY only comment to ConstantineM is that (s)he should take them at their word and give CC a brief 'time-out', to see what happens.

I have not read of his/her alleged past complaints against CC, nor their merit, though in principle, (s)he DOES have a point about the recent issues, IMNSHO.

But as I suggested above, let's all give CC a chance for a while, and see what they do after the small particulate content of the air comes to rest.
rblizz
join:2001-12-16
North Richland Hills, TX

rblizz to ConstantineM

Member

to ConstantineM
said by ConstantineM:

I highly advise against putting CallCentric into the mix.

You've turned into a one issue crank, Constantine. Give it a rest.
ConstantineM
join:2011-09-02
San Jose, CA

1 edit

ConstantineM

Member

What a bunch of trolls!

said by rblizz:

said by ConstantineM:

I highly advise against putting CallCentric into the mix.

You've turned into a one issue crank, Constantine. Give it a rest.

CallCentric themselves have been advising quite recently to not use their SIP registration servers (and use "Call Forwarding" to a SIP URI instead) due to their DDoS attack (I still haven't received a memo that this was no longer the case, BTW (but that is another topic)), yet here we are, people take what I said completely out of context, reducing it into a one-line advise that it never was!

Besides, you've obviously completely ignored the basis of my "highly advise against" advise: CallCentric disallows multiple simultaneous registrations. This is a big deal, and the reason I've never used CallCentric SIP registrations even prior to the downtime event, because in many cases, they could be highly unreliable. I use several VoIP apps on my phone, and CallCentric SIP registrations HAVE ALWAYS BEEN VERY UNRELIABLE BY THEIR DESIGN OF NOT ALLOWING CONCURRENT REGISTRATIONS! This has nothing to do with October 2012. This has nothing to do with the rest of the services that CallCentric provides, which I've never unconditionally recommended against.

The sub-discussion in this thread, which I've joined, was about Google Voice, IPKall and CallCentric SIP registration. The advise I gave was SPECIFICALLY AGAINST CALLCENTRIC SIP REGISTRATION SERVICE. Not about any of their other services, might you notice if you weren't trolling!

PX Eliezer704 See Profile, thanks for reminding me that I don't like CC not sending a proper "+" sign in their Caller ID; now please kindly so tell us how that's relevant to this sub-discussion of IPKall and Google Voice? To be even, maybe I should mention that PX Eliezer704 See Profile rather openly hates both IPKall and Google Voice, because they're both free and offer great and unmatched service (IPKall being unmatched prior to CC offering the Free New York Phone Numbers), but don't offer any value-added services and present little need for a support helpline?
Networx
join:2012-06-27
Canada

Networx

Member

Amen!!!
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