July
3
2007
A Happy VoIP Customer
I put off switching from my ILEC to a competitive provider for way too long, especially now that it’s easy to find a competing provider, thanks to VoIP offerings. I’d been through switches with CLECs before, and can tell horror-stories about number porting. I never really split out my long-distance, just always left that with whoever provided the dial tone. I have a friend who seemed to spend way too much time getting set up with Vonage, but had heard good things about Primus — the rates compared well, and I decided to give them a go. But first, I’d put them to the test.
I entered a sales inquiry and asked some nonstandard questions, like whether or not I could use a softphone, whether I could supply my own gateway device, and if so what models were supportd, as well as what NXX they would provision from if I asked them to supply a new or additional number, given the NPA of 204. Having something of a technical background, I really wanted to know how they would deal with a customer that had more than a cursory knowledge of their product. Some companies don’t know how to deal with too much technical information at the helpdesk level, which bugs me. The ISP I was engaged with has people in the support department who appreciate knowledgeable customers — but that’s not always the case. For example, I found that my home ISP doesn’t handle it well, so if I want to confirm what SMTP server to use, I can’t phone and ask that, I have to ask, “How do I send email?” after which I ignore the entire response except the tidbit I want as the standard response is parroted off to me. Only after you get escalated can you even consider using the term “ping” or “traceroute.”
In the case of Primus, a response to my inquiry predictably delayed a day or two, but arrived from someone in the sales department answering part of the question. She also cc’d me on an email to the support department, giving me the number to call them directly and inviting me to do so as she told them which part of the question they should answer. I got an email response from the support technicians as well, providing what they were instructed. I never did find out the answer to the NXX question, but I don’t need a new number and now I know that if I want one, I need to call and ask it in simplified form. The support department sent me a link to an exceptionally thorough compilation of “unpublished” documentation, which provided background and additional information on my question, including reported workarounds for the softphone (to which the answer was no, not yet, and Linux-what?). The answer on the gateway wasn’t 100% consistent with what the website says, but it was close and provided the missing information that the website doesn’t offer. In addition to discovering what the support team was like prior to signing up (and I’m happy with them), this exercise gave me a glimpse into the inner working of the company and told me what Primus really needs to do to perform better… but that’s for another post.
Information in hand, I completed the web form to sign up on a Friday. Once complete, the message reported that I would receive my gateway device within 7-10 days. It arrived Monday by courier. Tuesday there was an automated confirming telephone call, Wednesday there was a confirming email, and we were advised that the phone number would be cut over the next day. Thursday afternoon I dialed my home number from my cell phone and got a fast-busy, so I actually hooked up the device and got a dial tone. (There was still dial tone for outgoing calls from my outgoing phone company). Excellent. Test-call to the wife on her cell phone… voice quality is as good or better than via the old carrier, but the sound level on the earpiece is a bit louder than before. No matter, that’ll be a plus in some situations. I logged into the web portal, saw the record of each call, and set up a few extras using a simple interface. I haven’t set up the voicemail yet, but will do that after disconnecting the answering machine we still use. Later that evening I realized I had a torrent download running the whole time… not sure if that speaks well of my ISP, my new VoIP provider, the configuration I’m using, or a combination of all of the above (most likely).
Final verdict is that I’m very happy with the service so far… and it’s literally half the price of my old one. I had one small issue which didn’t cause me any trouble, but would generate a helpdesk call from many users and is an area Primus could do a little better on.
To set up the VoIP gateway, the instructions show it as the first device after your DSL/Cable modem and provides a note about stateful or non-stateful firewalls if you really have to put it inside a firewall. I connected my desk phone and plugged the DLink gateway into my LinkSys WRT54G which is modified to run Linux. Logging into the router, I enabled QoS and set SIP as the first priority, and noted that I can assign priority to a certain port if that didn’t work. A half-minute later, the status/alarm light changed from flashing red to solid green, and that was it. At that point, I skipped all of the steps they show for logging into the router/phone gateway, and still haven’t done so.
All painless so far, but here’s where Primus fell down on the setup instructions — they provided easy steps to hook up a single phone, but I want every extension in the house using it, and no such instructions were given. The simple solution is actually to just plug the gateway’s “phone” jack into any phone jack in the house, and it’ll back-feed every extension. I needed a coupler to do that plus my desk phone, but that was easily resolved. What results then is a “could not complete your call” message from the old phone company repeating when you lift the receiver — this is essentially because although the number has been ported over to the new provider, the old one hasn’t disconnected yet and is still feeding a dialtone, just not routing inbound calls. I approached the demarc — the point where the phone service enters the house near the electrical panel for distribution throughout the home — with a pair of pliers in hand, and that, shall we say, was that. All systems working well: good-bye, MTS.
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