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Google voice dropped support for the Obihai protocool. Phone Power still supports it. Signed up for Obihai-Lite, they issued a number, ported my Google Voice number, set up a voice mail box all within 24 hours. Required me to reboot my Obihai. Done. Works perfectly for 4 months now. All done online. No problems. As a bonus they masked my outgoing calls to still show my Google Voice #. There are no international calls included, doesn't affect me. So far, so good! Still going strong as of 12/15. member for 20 years, 4635 visits, last login: 4.4 years ago updated 5.8 years ago
I've used PhonePower for a number of years. Overall call-quality was fine. But there were a couple of major outages during that time, and they seem to have issues with calls to more rural areas. In addition they were never able to get issues with my outbound caller-id (CNAM), so all of my friends had to learn my new (wrong) name when answering calls from me. They tried a number of times to fix this and it always came back. I've ported my number to voip.ms - but PhonePower handles porting away in the sleaziest manner possible. They will wait until your next billing date before giving the new carrier a FOC date, then they will tell you they need 30 days notice for cancellation after your FOC (porting away) date. The net impact is that they get three months of billing from you (month 1 order port, month 2 ported away, month 3 waiting for cancellation). member for 5.9 years, 1 visits, last login: 5.9 years ago lodged 5.9 years ago
The nightmare begins after you discontinue their service. PhonePower tried to charge me for services they did not provide after cancellation. Then they turned my fictitious $63 bill into a collections agency that sent my credit score into free fall. Buyer Beware this is only a billing scam disguised as a VOIP. PhonePower has a D+ with the BBB. Use at your own risk. member for 6.1 years, driveby review (so far) lodged 6.1 years ago
UPDATE 08/11/2015 My Contract was up on Aug 08. On the PhonePower website it is showing new lower rates for the same unlimited plan I have. The rate is now $9.95 a month. (With a 12 month contract) I logged in to my account portal to renew and only the old rates were shown. I had to call customer service and they gladly gave me the new rate. So here is the new rate: $9.95 a month for unlimited U.S. and Canada and 60 minutes international to select countries plus $1.98 Regulatory Recovery Fee plus $0.99 911 fee plus $1.16 FSLS for a grand total of $14.08 a month. I am still very pleased with the service and I am paying less for the same thing. This price is only a few dollars more than Vonage's 'basic talk' but with phonepower you get more features and full CID with name and calls to Canada are included. I have been using PhonePower for 6 months now and I am a very happy customer. I originally signed up for the month to month plan so I could test it out first. One month later everything was working well so I ported my number (that I have had since 1983) to PhonePower. Everything went smooth and the number was ported exactly on the day they said it would happen. This is my second VOIP company my first VOIP experience was with QWEST (Yes QWEST, the telco offers VOIP service and I was one of the few who used it) I liked QWEST VOIP I never had any problems with their service and I would still be with them if it was not for there Horrible Customer Service but that's another review. The Grandstream adapter arrived and I installed behind my WRT54G router and I checked it 10 minutes later and it was registered and I was able to call out. Many people on these forums always say to put the ATA before the router but with both of the VOIP services I have had I always put it behind the router and it always works well. I am a bit unhappy about the HT-502 when it arrived 3 of the little rubber feet had fallen off and were laying in the box. I tried to glue them back on but two of them have since fallen off again. Also the cable that was sent with the HT-502 would not stay connected I have since replaced the cable and everything is working fine. I think this Grandstream HT-502 is not very good quality and phonepower uses them because the are inexpensive and probably get them for a very low price after a volume discount. I have lost internet and power a few times and every time I have had to reboot the HT-502 before it will register with the network.QWEST VOIP supplied a lynksys spa2102 and in the whole year I had QWEST VOIP I NEVER had to reboot the ATA! Also the HT-502 seems to run hotter than the spa 2102 and I have put the HT-502 on ventilated shelving to help it run cooler. I am very happy with phonepower and I changed my plan to a 24 month contract my credit card is charged $18.02 a month $14.95 + taxes and fees of $3.07 There are a few features I wish they had like custom incoming caller id (I was told they had this but dropped that feature) and a different call blocking setup like QWEST had with there call blocking you could specify a starting string like 360 this would block all numbers from the 360 area code or 360777 this would block all numbers starting with 360 777 and so on. But phonepower does have many features, more than most and they say they have plans to add more.Also the PhonePower call quality is very good. member for 11.1 years, 173 visits, last login: 1 year ago updated 6.6 years ago
Update (02/08/2015) Customer service did finally change my number as I asked. They even waved the fee for the change because of the delay on their part. I appreciate their acknowledgement of the delay and their completion of my request. member for 14.6 years, 1643 visits, last login: 2 days ago updated 7.1 years ago
I have been a customer of PhonePower for over 4 years now. I originally signed up in July of 2010. The service has been great I have had almost no issues and have only had to contact customer service a few times. One of the reasons I chose PhonePower was back then I had a 13 year old daughter (she is 17 now) she talked on the phone a lot. PhonePower has the most generous amount of minutes of all the providers in their unlimited plan 5,000 minutes a month outgoing, Totally unlimited incoming, Totally unlimited toll-free I can confirm this is true by logging in to my account portal and checking minute usage only outgoing is counted. Voipo and ooma also have a stated 5,000 minute limit but it is a total of incoming + outgoing + toll-free so Phonepower is great if you are a heavy user. I pay $16.92 a month (yearly prepay) this price includes tax My daughter got an unlimited plan on her cellphone and Never uses the house phone anymore. Me and my wife both have cell phones with cricket (now owned by at&t wireless) for $25 amonth unlimited talk & text so unfortunately the PhonePower line does not get as used much any more some months we don't even use 500 minutes but I am going to keep my house phone I am 53 years old and grew up in an era where every house had a landline. I am using my own SPA 2102 adapter BYOD using sip credentials. Some things I don't like about phonepower is they promise features and then never implement them. For instance their ICM (incoming call manager) is a very sophisticated feature to manage incoming calls. The feature is very powerful but poorly written and far to complicated than it should be and it has been in BETA for 3 YEARS. They have also promised a feature to send you the caller id name of the person that you have saved in your contact list instead of what the phone company sends This feature was going to happen within weeks That was over a year ago it never happened. All in all I am very happy with phonepower and everything just works very well member for 8.1 years, 77 visits, last login: 7.3 years ago updated 7.4 years ago
Been a customer for 4 1/2 years now through thick and thin. I have seen the Good, Bad, and the Ugly. The main complaints I have read are dealing with the Incoming Call Manager (ICM) on the newer Aquarius network. That is to be expected because peeps are impatient and even though they were told repeatedly that ICM is\was in BETA they still expect everything to work flawlessly. Of course when it doesn't it; the Taylor Trolls come out from under the bridge and we all know misery likes company on the internet hence the smear reviews. Got my hands on the new Innomedia MTA-6328 about 6 months ago and have been loving it. Provisions in less the 30 seconds and since PhonePower can securely tunnel into for support issues the End User experience is much more enjoyable. Much better then the old HT-502 which I would almost forget I was using VoIP until I would have to reboot it for my phone service to work every week or two. Not a big deal mostly just a PITA.  Now I don't even think about me using VoIP it just works  I can usually reach a Tier 1 tech within an 10 minutes and depending how busy they are a Tier 2 within 1-12 hours. It really depends on how swamped they get. Like most businesses the best time to call is early in the mourning or late afternoon. If I find anything more out I'll add it; as always thanks for reading any comments are welcome! --update- Been a customer since 12/3/2008 so I'll be going on my forth year this winter. Originally had a buy one year get a year free deal. Now they keep throwing my peeps & I renewal specials for being a valued customers. 3 Originally ported my # from Verizon and it was dumb luck the port went through within the hour of receiving my Grandstream HT-502. Any problems I experienced with voice quality was do to Verizon DSL (they switched to me another router @ the CO) about a year into my PP service. Reliability has been outstanding I only remember 2 multi-hour outages, one from a router going bad and the other a major DOS attack. It can\does happen to every telephone service provider I have been with including Verizon (s!@t happens). To bad some jealous competitors try to make a failed smear campaign from it »bit.ly/L4ogIF I have watched them grow from the older (Capricorn) network to (Aquarius) which has more advanced call routing, filtering, fail-over, etc. Been loving the new Android app (still in BETA) along with many others in the PhonePower forum. Despite all the growth they still make you feel like your not just a number and will call me back just to make sure a ticket was resolved. When I first signed up I knew allot of the staff by name, with their tremendous growth not so easy anymore but hey it keeps my brain working. Just now got off the phone with support and they answered withing 5 minutes! Since I'm using their new Innomedia ATA I confirmed that with tech support that they can access my device with no problems.  Which is good if they ever needed to Troubleshoot anything related to the intertubes. My ole Grandstream was and still is a great rock solid ATA and served me well but for whatever reason the new Innomedia has cleared up some latency issues. Rated Website 75% - Although the backend works fine for everyone I know; it could be a little more streamlined\intuitive for newbs but definitely not a deal breaker. I'm hoping the new ICM will include a nice slick polished GUI all geeks\newbs alike want. Aquarius is definitely a BIG improvement from Capricorn! Ease of Installation 75% - Lets face it 100% Plug N Play Residential VoIP would be like us humans talking to our computers like they do in Star Trek (not happening). PhonePower makes it as painless as possible with clear directions, tech support, FAQ, etc. If you are purchasing PP you may need to get your feet wet doing some trouble shooting, opening ports, etc. I had to call tech support to help me out with above ^ again not a deal breaker. Just be aware when using any VoIP service you may have occasional minor hiccups. Call Quality 100% - PP does not control the public internet or my ISP I can't fault them for the one in every 50 calls not being perfect. With people using VoIP, cell phones, old aging copper, elusive payphones, rating something so subjective with so many variables just does not seem fair to me. Far as I'm concerned PP has cleared the bar enough times so they get perfect from me. Reliability 100% - For how long I have been a customer vs. how much downtime I have experienced due to acts beyond their control I'm not complaining. My ISP has many more outages! Every time I had to call 911 the call was routed properly and the E911 worked flawlessly. Tech Support 100% - Call them yourself and ask them questions, don't take my word? Value for money 100% - Ask your cable company, Landline, Wireless Carrier, etc. if they can give you all the features PP offers for 20\month or less. That's all I have to say about that..hehe member for 11.1 years, 610 visits, last login: 7.1 years ago updated 7.5 years ago
I've been with PP for over 5 years now and have had awesome service until late, lately they've had months worth of "one way audio" issues that the engineers are trying to resolve. Honestly I'm over this audio issue and am looking for another provider as I type this. There are numerous others that have this same issue and all seem to be jumping ship. I honestly cant figure out why it takes months to figure an issue out, you'd think they would have a backup plan. member for 20.9 years, 10477 visits, last login: 1 day ago lodged 7.7 years ago
Let me start off by saying that I have had service with PhonePower for several years, and performance has always been excellent. Not so when I signed up with their new Obi-PhonePower service. This service would save me a worthwhile amount off the monthly fee I had been paying, so I leaped right in. Signup was easy, almost instant, and service excellent (while it lasted.) Which turned out to be one evening. I put in a ticket requesting that the DID on the old account be transferred to the new account, then the old account was to be cancelled. Sounds easy, right? Next morning, I received email telling me the number had successfully been transferred, and as soon as I rebooted the PhonePower ATA, i would be good to go. That ATA had been disconnected - I was using the Obi. Nevertheless, I hooked it up and rebooted both the ATA and the Obi. Nothing. The phone on the new account had stopped working BEFORE i went through this. Same with the old account (which was supposed to happen.) To me, it seemed that some over-zealous employee had cancelled BOTH accounts, since I could not sign into either on the PP web site. No problem, a call to customer service will clear that up Yeah, right. First off, the CS who took the call told me that Billing handles number ports, and transferred me. Short conversation with Billing, then transferred back to CS. Different operator. He first took control of my computer. No idea what he did. Then he had me go to the Obi web site and click on the "Approved Service Providers" button on the Obi Dashboard. Next. click on PhonePower, as if I were signing up Scroll down the page, find two boxes for choosing device and SP slot. It was installed on the Obi 110, SP 2, so that is what I chose. Next, click on a large button captioned "restore existing account". I clicked, and a message came up informing me that the requested page could not be found, an suggesting that I check the URL Same thing that comes up when I sign into either account. After about 1-2 hours, he gave up. Next day - encore performance. That's where it stands now, except that PP put an unauthorized charge on my debit card for $99 and change because I have not yet returned their ATA. I really would like to get this resolved because, as I said earlier, PP is capable of excellent service. Perhaps a simple solution would be to cancel the account, refund the money I paid for a year of service, and then let me sign up again - providing my phone number is not lost somewhere. UPDATE - 5-24-2014 i can't say whether PP read my review, since they have not contacted me. However, today, I once again tried going to the "Approved Service Providers" in the Obitalk dashboard. This time, when I selected PP, it told me to sign into my account. Something new! Previously when I attempted to sign in, a window would come up with an error message to the effect that the desired destination could not be found. Hurriedly, I signed in - A message appeared, atating that I needed to resync the Obe 110 with PP. A button was provided for this task. I clicked, then glanced over at the Obi. Red light! It was re-booting! As soon as all the lights seemed OK, I dialed **2 (for PP) and the local time and temp number. I worked! Next, called my cell phone to verify the CID. Sure enough, it was the number I had requested to be transferred to this account. Made a few more calls, and all seemed well. Recall, when I first signed up for this account, it worked for one evening and the next morning was kaput. Let's hope it lasts longer this time! (Just kidding, PP - I don't know what you did, but if you fixed it, I'm sure it will stay fixed.) member for 17.4 years, 2481 visits, last login: 6.7 years ago updated 7.8 years ago
I was with Voip your life for a few years, started to have so much down time I gave up. Switched to phonepower this past spring all in all I was happy. But over the last several months I have had more and more problems with people calling me. I have a 50% chance of the call from my work to get to me. The get the message "number has been disconnected". I have called PP support, and they tell me the problem is they are not even getting the call routed to them. There is nothing they can do to fix it. I then call my log distance carrier at my work. I actually get someone that knows what they are doing, presto it works! for a few weeks. I ask them what is the problem. They tell me that PP is rejecting the call. And they have to re-route the call over a different connection and the PP will except it! What? It is actually PP fault? More research! Church members can't call me from there home number. Sure enough the county where my church members live (just this one county) can't call my home both on there land line or on there cell phone. When I am at church, I can't call my home, from my cell! Now when I drive to work I drive through another county. Guess what!!! When I am in this specific county, I can't call home, but when I am at work I can call home with no problem on my cell phone. Verizon (cell carrier) is no help, they just tell me that the problem is with PP! Everyone get's the same message "this number has been disconnected" What gives? I had this number ported from VYLMedia to PP this last spring! Is it possible the calls are still getting routed to VYLMedia? Is it possible the PP to keep costs down, are rejecting some companies from allowing inbound calls? No one seems to have an answer! ---------------------- Update! 1/25/14 After posting this, phone power gave me a call as requested. The support person told me that he was assigned to me to get this issue resolved. He was very nice, and spent several hours with me testing and working with friends to perform test calls. He even called me back at strange times just get get me when my cell phone would be in an area that not work. He was shocked, and at first was trying to blame the cell carrier, then Vonage, and other phone carriers. He told me he would research it and get back to me. I kept telling him there can't be this many companies that the problem is on all of there ends. Several weeks passed, still no call. So about Mid December I called him back, he was not available, but did find my support ticket. That new tech told me they where still working on it, and hoped to have my account changed over to a new carrier that coming Friday! Fantastic! So I waited to see. The following week, I made a few calls and could not get it to mess up. I then got a call from the origional support person and he told me about the change and that should fix my problem. I told him I would test it out. Well I have now tested it out for about 4 weeks. And have not been able to get a single call to fail. It's now seems perfect! Not sure what switching to a new "carrier" does, but why could they not figure that out the first time? Because of this I have moved my "Tech Support" from worst to Average. Phone power would have gotten "best" if they had fixed this the first time. I still plan on calling phone power back and thanking that tech person and letting them know that all is well. -------------- Update 5.21.2014 The fix only lasted about two months. I have been hoping that the problem would go away again, but it has not. We are done. I am planning and currently looking at other providers to see what all is out there. It's a shame that phone power can't get a number to work correctly. member for 8.3 years, 16 visits, last login: 1.9 years ago updated 7.8 years ago
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