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to cb14
Re: What is wrong with Magic Jack? (ROFLMAO)cb14: Your apologies accepted. Actually, all I wanted to do is to find why people hate MJ once I bought the MJ+. I had asked this question a few times and I think PX gave me a balanced assessment. After 3 months of usage, I still feel happy about the service and I want people to know also. It does not mean you are wrong when you said you had bad experience with MJ. On the other hand, your bad experience does not mean my experience is wrong either. As I said, money is not really the objective for me. I spent a lot of money on things eventually turn out to be useless. For example, I bought two Nettalk devices which are gathering dust right now. I just didn't like its voice quality. On the other hand, if you don't have to, why spent more. Think about why people like Obi and GV, because it is free after buying the Obi device. (At least they thought so.) Meantime, there are also people didn't like GV's voice quality. Buying MJ was just another experiment for me. I am glad it worked out so far. If not, well it just 25 Dollars. I just hope it will keep me in the happy camp. If one day it let me down, I will happy to report here also, well may be not so happy at that time  . Let's all keep objective minds and not emotionally attached to anything that is not so important in the life. (Hope I didn't offend anybody. If I did, I apologize.) |
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I think that your post is quite sensible. As for MJ, clearly it gets the job done for many people. But for many others, they end up with the same feeling towards MJ as you ended up with towards Nettalk. ----- I think that a lot of the antipathy towards MJ derives from this: Folks here in this forum by definition want VoIP to survive, advance, adapt, prosper. There are many enemies to VoIP---especially with big wireless companies on one side, and big cable companies on the other. Good VoIP providers help advance things, they create a positive reputation for the field of independent VoIP as a whole. Bad VoIP providers do damage to the reputation of independent VoIP, so they threaten its survival. FBOFW, MagicJack developed a widespread reputation for various problems, for poor customer service, for misleading sales tactics and charges, and this was even made worse by its founder who personally helped to destroy the Women's Professional Soccer League in general and his team "magicJack" in particular. MJ by selling a product that often was poor or mediocre, at a very cheap price (advertised 1.75 a month) undercut better VoSP that were honestly trying to provide good service. At the end of the classic film "After The Fox", Peter Sellers exclaims "the wrong man has escaped!" One wonders in a somewhat alternate world, a world without MJ, if Sunrocket might have survived. (I'm not negating that Sunrocket caused lots of its own problems). But it's hard to get around the fact that selling quality VoIP with good service, features, and customer support for around $8 to $12 a month can be a hard sell when BenVoip might offer calls for 3 bucks a month. So this debate comes down to present day. How may providers that offer good service at good prices over the long term, be safeguarded against those who would destroy them with the seduction of short-term predatory prices only to fade away later on? "Yes. If the Mule's descendants inherit his mental powers - You see? Homo sapiens could not compete. There would be a new dominant race - a new aristocracy - with homo sapiens demoted to slave labor as an inferior race. Isn't that so?"
"Yes, that is so."
"And even if by some chance the Mule did not establish a dynasty, he would still establish a distorted new Empire upheld by his personal power only. It would die with his death; the Galaxy would be left where it was before he came, except that there would no longer be Foundations around which a real and healthy Second Empire could coalesce. It would mean thousands of years of barbarism. It would mean no end in sight." ---Asimov, Foundation and Empire. |
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 cb14
join:2013-02-04
Miami Beach, FL |
to twinclouds
said by twinclouds:cb14:
Let's all keep objective minds and not emotionally attached to anything that is not so important in the life.
(Hope I didn't offend anybody. If I did, I apologize.) Agreed. Big financial loss usually pours some salt on otherwise small wounds. Here is the story : I never really trusted MJ for business use but sometimes out of convenience I used it for outgoing calls when I was on the computer.A potential customer of mine whose expected contract I desperately needed in order to pay my bills lost my card and my cell numbers, never said anything and simply stored the MJ number I called him from. Because MJ voice mail malfunctioned( which i did not know about), he could not get hold of me for three days and assumed that I did not care and gave the business to somebody else. That what makes me a bit emotional on the top of simply rejecting an IMO inferior service.  |
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Now I understand why you are so frustrated with MJ. My sympathy is with you. I wish you have better luck with other VOIP services. One lessen you have learned, and everybody should learn, is that MJ is not for serious business use. I only use it for (not so important) incoming calls. Since my main contact line is my cell phone, I think that worked out fine. I tried MJ's on-line chatting support also. It worked reasonably well. However, as I learned from computer hardware/software support, I never expect much anyway. Overall maybe they have improved somewhat? I feel my MJ+ sounds better than the first generation MJ and Nettalk.
My conclusion so far is that if it is just for casual use or as a second line to your main/cellular line, MJ could have some, say 50% or more, chance to work fine.
I am more interested in the MJ's business model and will form my opinions later by replying to PX's long and interesting/insightful essay. |
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cb14
join:2013-02-04
Miami Beach, FL |
cb14
Member
2014-Mar-15 6:52 pm
said by twinclouds: Since my main contact line is my cell phone,
. maybe they have improved somewhat? I feel my MJ+ sounds better than the first generation MJ that what it boiled down to- 2 cell phones - one main and one back up( gets calls forwarded from the main one when out of coverage or down) for the main line of communication. I have generally good experience with VOIP however Google Voice crossed the bottom limit a while ago and as we remember, even Callcentric is not trouble proof. VOIP simply does not have the supreme reliability like POTS used to have years ago. I cannot comment on MJ+. My impression was that the problems are less when used as smart phone application- based on incoming calls from people who use it like that. At the time I got rid off the service the classic MJ was in decline in quality and reliability. |
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Totally agree with what you said. You cannot really expect the same reliability for VOIP as for POTS. However, I think the quality is also improving. It may be the result of technology maturing and the backbone IP network improvement. I don't think I want to spend $30 to $40 on PSTN that cannot do much. I paid ATT $36 per month for over 10 years for a PSTN line that can only do local call. Eventually, I decided to get rid it off. As a by-product, I got rid off telemarketers also. I think the only way to improve the reliability in VOIP era is to add redundancy as we are doing.
As for GV, I have been using GV as our main mean to make outgoing calls to US and Canada in past a few years. We always get satisfactory results. I don't recall any consistently deteriorated phone calls. (Occasionally, there might be.) My wife didn't complain either. Never had anything like what happened last week with Vestalink. Maybe I was just lucky? After May 15, I will see if and how my callback set up will work.
Another experience I have, not sure it's controversial or not, is for international calls. My wife spends more time to talk to her friend and family member in China than the time making US calls. I tried different companies including VOIP.ms and callwithus. Eventually, we settled down with VOIPRaider, a Betamax company, and SuperVOIP, not sure what is exactly its origin. Again, we are generally satisfied. There are times the call quality was not so good. Then we just say: It's VOIP for international calls so such thing happens. She just dial again and it usually fixed the problem. Their rate is lowest but the call quality is in par with other VOIP services. Of course, there's very little support and their FUD policy is not transparent (yet predictable). If you can live with that, I think their services should be fine, at least from my experience.
My point is that if one have realistic expectations, VOIP certainly serves a useful role. Well, again, it's only my 2 cents from my experience. |
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cb14
join:2013-02-04
Miami Beach, FL |
cb14
Member
2014-Mar-15 9:47 pm
said by twinclouds:Your experience with Betamax companies is rather unusual indeed, they definitely do not meet my minimum expectations.
But with international calls it very much depends on destination . For the past couple of years, all my international calls went to destinations in the countries of western and central Europe and I am used to very good to excellent quality and reliability from the providers I use at low to very low cost. Some Asian destinations are far more difficult.
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to twinclouds
said by twinclouds:Totally agree with what you said. You cannot really expect the same reliability for VOIP as for POTS. I expect and receive [more] reliability for VoIP than for POTS, the only limitation being the internet service itself. I agree that for overseas calls it's a different world out there, but there are too many variables once the electrons leave North America, especially for trans-Pacific calls. ----- SuperVoIP is a Dellmont Sarl company (Luxembourg), Dellmont Sarl seems closely connected with Betamax. Dellmont Sarl and Betamax have both seemed connected with a reclusive company, Finarea. If you eat bad food in Helsinki you may get Finarea. |
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to cb14
said by cb14:Your experience with Betamax companies is rather unusual indeed, they definitely do not meet my minimum expectations. I knew this would be controversial. However, that is my experience. We, mainly my wife, mostly call China, occasionally Hong Kong. Betamax always works fine for me. That's just my experience from past more than 2-3 years. Doesn't means it would be true for anybody else. Maybe I just have a magic touch . Actually, the only bad experience I had was with international call using Vonage. It was o.k. on first day to call Shanghai. Then on second day, when my wife called Beijing she got the calls dropped every two minutes. I asked her to use VOIPRaider and it was fine. I called Vonage. They said they will make some changes in the setting. However, a day later, when my wife called Shanghai again, the calls started to dropped every two minutes also. I was so upset so I requested the cancellation of their service without complete the one month trial. After some pushing back and forth, the Vonage manager agreed to stop my service and refund the one month fee. I will never touch Vonage again. |
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cb14
join:2013-02-04
Miami Beach, FL |
to PX Eliezer1
said by PX Eliezer1:I expect and receive [more] reliability for VoIP than for POTS, the only limitation being the internet service itself.
. Hmm, it definitely starts with internet. My combined outages have been about 3 weeks since I started with VOIP more than 5 years ago. Aside of the MJ woes, Callcentric was down for a month and the very beginning with Localphone was troublesome as well. As opposed to that, the only significant POTS outage I remember was after Andrew and what would you expect after a cat 5 hurricane . Other than that maybe 2 days combined since I settled in the area many years ago. Pots has become less reliable lately because nobody cares but I still do not receive comparable reliability from VOIP. Off course, price and features count very much. |
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to PX Eliezer1
said by PX Eliezer1:I expect and receive [more] reliability for VoIP than for POTS, the only limitation being the internet service itself. PX: Think about this over, I would say you are probably right. The issues are really the network and the service provider's equipment reliability. For POTS, they have been existed for many years since (or before?) Ma Bell days. Specifically, redundancy of equipments is a norm, rather than an exception. Actually, I was surprised to read from this board that many VOIP service providers, including many well known ones, are without redundant call centers (is this the right terminology?) If this is the case, call reliability will not be as good as POTS. Network reliability is of course another issue. The internet services come to our houses subject to outrage more often than POTS. I am not sure it this situation will change soon. I think the WAN would not have outages that often. It should be comparable to the PSTN network because there are many redundant routes to choose from. I believe VOIP is better serve as a supplement, or complement, to cellular network rather than a stand alone replacement to the POTS. |
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to cb14
said by cb14:Callcentric was down for a month. No, they fought off a complex, vicious, evolving, and unrelenting DDoS attack on and off for a month, and came through it. I depend on them for mission-critical needs for my business and my family, and during that month their service continued. At the very end of that month, yes, they had the Sandy crisis and that was indeed very unsettling and I hope never to be even remotely repeated---but that was a bit over 2 days dark. Having the one event follow the other---it was like an old Carol Burnett skit satirizing the movie "Airplane" where the crew manages to save the plane, they get it landed on a runway, and the landing is immediately followed by an earthquake!  |
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to twinclouds
said by twinclouds:The issues are really the network and the service provider's equipment reliability. For POTS, they have been existed for many years since (or before?) Ma Bell days. Specifically, redundancy of equipments is a norm, rather than an exception. AT&T/BellSystem in particular had very high standards, and yet cable cuts then as now could make things go down for a long time. And the February 1975 New York Telephone fire at a Manhattan switching center was a major event, taking out 170,000 lines for about 2 weeks. said by twinclouds:Actually, I was surprised to read from this board that many VOIP service providers, including many well known ones, are without redundant call centers (is this the right terminology?) If this is the case, call reliability will not be as good as POTS. It's a complex issue and there are many ways of having backup systems. As well, although there may be issues with being too concentrated, there can also be issues with being too dispersed. said by twinclouds:I believe VOIP is better serve as a supplement, or complement, to cellular network rather than a stand alone replacement to the POTS. I'd just flip that a little. I believe cellular is best as a supplement or complement to VoIP, rather than as a stand alone replacement to POTS. |
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cb14
join:2013-02-04
Miami Beach, FL |
cb14
Member
2014-Mar-15 11:04 pm
said by PX Eliezer1
I'd just flip that a little.
I believe cellular is best as a supplement or complement to VoIP, rather than as a stand alone replacement to POTS:)
[/bquote :I would not flip it at this point of time- while wireless is significantly less reliable than the old POTS used to be I still consider it more reliable than VOIP and again, the outage times count whatever may have caused them on either side.
But the fact is that the deteriorating POTS, aside of the outrageous price and antiquated features has practically disappeared in our area and has been replaced by big telco/cable provided VOIP like ATT Uverse or Comcast Infinity phone service. |
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I would agree with cb14. I won't flip it either. My reason is that I think I can live without VOIP but have cellular, rather than the other way around. I am not a young person (actually a quite old person ) but I know a lot of young people have cell phones but no POTS or VOIP. I also think cellular is more reliable than VOIP, as long as you have coverage . |
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said by twinclouds:I also think cellular is more reliable than VOIP, as long as you have coverage . The one thing that wireless companies and insurance companies have in common is that coverage isn't there when you need it most. I absolutely [hate] when people on cellphones call my office. My secretary hates it too. In our area, Verizon Wireless is barely tolerable, AT&T less so, Sprint is awful. VoIP, POTS, cable company---any of that is better than cellular. |
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to PX Eliezer1
said by PX Eliezer1:It's a complex issue and there are many ways of having backup systems. As well, although there may be issues with being too concentrated, there can also be issues with being too dispersed. This one gets me curious. How reliable is really our VOIP services? The memory is still fresh about Vestalink's outage last week (or this week) and it was awful if you caught in it. Did such type of outage happen in the past at all for other VOIP services? For example, since we have nitzan here, can you tell us if such outage(s) ever happen at Future9? What are the track records of other VOIP services, such as voip.ms, callcentric, anveo, callwithus and etc.? [PS. I am not really in the VOIP field so sorry for my ignorance. Even though I have been working in the digital communication for many years, it was a totally different technical field, specifically, physical layer processing, design, analysis and implementation. However, I am really interested in the status of the VOIP and learned a lot since joining this forum. Thanks for everybody's patience with me.] |
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said by twinclouds:I am not really in the VOIP field so sorry for my ignorance. Everyone here is ignorant about something or other. If you knew all the even numbers, you would know an infinite quantity of them, but you would not know a single odd number. I'm sure as hell not in the VoIP field....nor are many other folks here. ----- Every VoIP provider has had some outages. For that matter, a server problem caused a daylong outage for AT&T U-Verse across half the country in 2010. As I wrote at the time: To the tune of "My Darling Clementine"
In a cavern, in a canyon,
Excavating a phone line
Dwelt a miner (not FutureNiner)
And his daughter Clementine
Oh my U-Verse, oh my U-Verse,
Oh my U-Verse was so fine.
Are Thou lost and gone forever
Or just till they fix the line.
Light sent the words through the airy,
And the tech crews were so fine
Lots of fiber for the cyber
All up and down the line.
Oh my U-Verse, oh my U-Verse,
Oh my U-Verse was so fine.
Are Thou lost and gone forever
Or just till they fix the line.
She powered up the big ol' server
Ev'ry morning just at nine,
She did it with so much fervor
And never needed any wine.
Oh my U-Verse, oh my U-Verse,
Oh my U-Verse was so fine.
Are Thou lost and gone forever
Or just till they fix the line.
Ruby users called my daughter,
The syntax was so fine.
But staff cut by SBC trimmers
So I lost my Clementine.
Oh my U-Verse, oh my U-Verse,
Oh my U-Verse was so fine.
Are Thou lost and gone forever
Or just till they fix the line.
How I missed her! How I missed her,
How I missed my Clementine,
But I ditched my U-Verse, mister
And I moved to FutureNine.
Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling, Clementine!
The Old Ma Bell's lost and gone forever
Dreadful sorry as we decline. And so much of this is a sequel to the 1984 Bell System breakup.... (To the tune "The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle")
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a powerful grip.
That started from this Federal Court
And a judge with a whip!
The Feds they had a mighty plan
The judge was brave and sure.
After the end of that fateful day
Ma Bell would be no more,
Ma Bell would be no more!
This time it was not a bluff,
Ma Bell's lawyers finally lost.
So everyone truly knew
The monopoly would be tossed,
The monopoly would be tossed.
We went aground on the shore of this uncharted way to dial
With SBC,
And NYNEX too,
Ameritech and PacBell,
BellAtlantic,
USWest and BellSouth,
Here on Judge Green's Isle.
So this is the tale of the BabyBells
They're here for a long, long time,
They'll have to make the best of things,
No more calls for a dime.
NYNEX and BellAtlantic too
They just could not rest.
Then they grabbed up GTE
So Verizon was born with zest.
Then there was USWest
which served the prairie's heart.
But Wall Street was not impressed,
So from our story they depart.
More phones, more phones, must be ours
Said the boys at SBC!
So they bought up Ameritech, PacBell, BellSouth,
And little SNET,
Little SNET!
And after that very big meal
For the boys of SBC,
As a snack they bought out
The rump of AT&T
Where it all started, you see!
Is that where the story ends
or are there new ways to dial?
Well, that's what happened to seven BabyBells
Here on Judge Green's isle! |
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said by PX Eliezer1:Every VoIP provider has had some outages. So the question is how often and last for how long. Is there any such public record somewhere. You are very knowledgeable on the VOIP/Telephone issues as it appears to me, especially for a person not in this field. BTW, I like your poetry quoted here. |
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nitzan
Premium Member
join:2008-02-27 |
to PX Eliezer1
said by PX Eliezer1:SuperVoIP is a Dellmont Sarl company (Luxembourg), Dellmont Sarl seems closely connected with Betamax.
Dellmont Sarl and Betamax have both seemed connected with a reclusive company, Finarea. Finarea/Betamax/Dellmont are all the same company, just different corporate structures most likely for taxation, asset protection, or other purposes. Every VoIP provider has had some outages. The question is not whether a provider will have outages - all will have server failures at some point. The question is what they do to minimize outages, and how quickly they resolve outages when they occur. There really should be a page comparing different providers' reliability somewhere. |
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to twinclouds
Really, too many to think of.
Packet8 (8x8) was down for a day, they were responding to customer tickets by using Twitter.
The Voip.MS dashboard has an issue tracker, they are very good about posting any glitches.
-----
Folks will bring up the CallCentric darktime when a cascade of events from Superstorm Sandy caused a shutdown for 2 days. This was an exception to their excellent long-term track record.
A very extensive discussion of that from an engineer can be found here:
web.archive.org/web/20121218003448/http://myvoipnews.com/
NOTE: You have to COPY/PASTE that full link exactly as shown, otherwise it gets messed up, and then you have to scroll down to the article [Callcentric addresses concerns expressed by multiple posters to DSLRs] dated November 20 on that page. |
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to nitzan
said by nitzan:...The question is what they do to minimize outages, and how quickly they resolve outages when they occur. There really should be a page comparing different providers' reliability somewhere.
Exactly. Does something like that ever exist? The information should include the number of outage in each year, the longest duration if outage, or better, the distribution of outage. For Future9, are such statistics available? |
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nitzan
Premium Member
join:2008-02-27 |
nitzan
Premium Member
2014-Mar-16 12:58 pm
said by twinclouds:For Future9, are such statistics available? We haven't had any noticeable outages in the past 4 years. By noticeable I mean more than a few minutes. Our last noticeable outage was 2 hours back in June 2010 if I recall correctly. |
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That is a great record! I am wondering how others compare. |
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bw5745
Member
2014-Mar-16 1:29 pm
Outage statistics are more complicated than that. Complete system outages are rare. How would you rate partial or localized outages? My Anveo incoming was down for a day because their CLEC Fibermetics has a cut fibre on a link they leased from Bell (Canada). Only incoming service for eastern Canada customers were affected. |
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cb14
join:2013-02-04
Miami Beach, FL |
to twinclouds
said by twinclouds:That is a great record! I am wondering how others compare. Not as good, most of them, I would say.Future 9's record is exceptional indeed. The last thing what I want to do is to revive the Callc. discussion again since it has been chewed and re chewed down to the pulp but the fact is that my CC service was down combined DDOS/storm for a month.I would like to emphasize that I like them and still use them. Here is the problem with this type of outages- whoever has them: If here a cat 5 hurricane passes through and half of the county looks like hit by a nuclear bomb everything and everybody is down and nobody expects anything and everybody has the same problem. If a Chinese hacker hits the jackpot or they have bad weather 2ooo miles away from here I, and only me, have a problem and nobody expects it and nobody understands it. that's the problem with the global character of VOIP- you can get both the benefits and the problems globally. Every VOIP provider should have IMO at least one back up facility in a geographically distant location. I will not give a 100% reliability rating to anyone who I know or feel does not have that. |
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