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devmd01
Mar 7, 2006

Elektronik
Supersonik
In my case I want an ATA adapter because I want to re-use existing phone wire that already exists and I have a super basic corded phone to use with it. If I got some fancy cordless phone, I’d have to sort out electrical for where I want to put it. We’ll never use it for our primary phone, it will exist specifically for emergencies when our kids are old enough to stay at home by themselves.

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Volguus
Mar 3, 2009
Yesterday got my new Grandstream HT802 device and set it up (how can Amazon expect me to pay for prime when they do free shipping in 5-ish days, which is more than enough?). My VOIP provider supports it and they even have a PDF with settings instructions. Problem was, on their portal the device would show as unreachable and calls to my phone would get forwarded to the alternate number (my cell).
So today I went to support. Described my problem, the guy was all "yup, i know the issue", and wanted me to launch a support session for him to configure the thing himself. Kida weird, but fine. All that was needed was to add STUN transversal to make a hole in the NAT. Fine, whatever. I asked them then to update their instructions PDF as I could have done that myself and the answer was (paraphrasing): "We can't. 100% of our users would not do it right anyway, they can't follow simple step by step instructions".

Haha, well, that's a new one. Never encountered this from a support person, but ok. But, at least for now, the device seems to work, so whatever.

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD
Jul 7, 2012

What voip service are you using? Voip.ms support is very inconsistent. The first guy I explained my issue to was basically like "this is your fault, we are a telephony provider and your internet sucks." The second guy fixed the problem with a small settings tweak to my SPA504G.

Volguus
Mar 3, 2009

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:

What voip service are you using? Voip.ms support is very inconsistent. The first guy I explained my issue to was basically like "this is your fault, we are a telephony provider and your internet sucks." The second guy fixed the problem with a small settings tweak to my SPA504G.

https://www.voipmuch.com/

As long as I don't have to deal with support, they're fine. Never had to deal with support till now. I'm not a "people person" (to put it mildly), and never had to do support, but even I know that calling your customers morons to their face (even if true) is not really a good business approach.

SlowBloke
Aug 14, 2017

Volguus posted:

https://www.voipmuch.com/

As long as I don't have to deal with support, they're fine. Never had to deal with support till now. I'm not a "people person" (to put it mildly), and never had to do support, but even I know that calling your customers morons to their face (even if true) is not really a good business approach.

Most ATA setup is loving voodoo magic and the stun issue is due to ISP fuckery(the grandstream is one of the few ata that have a decent ipv6 stack so eventually you might not have to do stun anymore), being in the tech shoes i would be filled with contempt too.

There is a provisioning system called tr069 which would negate all this mess, it's weird that the provider doesn't simply have you point the ata to their servers and autoprovision everything.

Volguus
Mar 3, 2009

SlowBloke posted:

Most ATA setup is loving voodoo magic and the stun issue is due to ISP fuckery(the grandstream is one of the few ata that have a decent ipv6 stack so eventually you might not have to do stun anymore), being in the tech shoes i would be filled with contempt too.

There is a provisioning system called tr069 which would negate all this mess, it's weird that the provider doesn't simply have you point the ata to their servers and autoprovision everything.

Sure. But just update the drat instructions man. Who knows, one in a thousand may get it right and won't have to bug you.

devmd01
Mar 7, 2006

Elektronik
Supersonik
Just bought a DID with e911 service through voip.ms and used a polycom/obihai200 for my sip ATA. Super easy to set up with tls, grabbed a sweet number that includes my address #.

devmd01 fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Sep 12, 2020

Stealthgerbil
Dec 16, 2004


Try out freepbx with telnyx for your SIP provider and yealink phones.

corgski
Feb 6, 2007

Silly goose, you're here forever.

Jumping on this, what's a good VOIP telephony provider that has the same basic feature set as google voice? I've been using google voice for my personal and work number for years and first they broke sprint integration which sucked but was managable and now they've broken incoming calls on iOS unless they're routed through your carrier which is a problem because my carrier number got upwards of 20 spam calls a day before I blocked incoming calls on that line.

I have 2 numbers I'd want to port out and the features I'm after are:

  • Working iOS app that doesn't rely on forwarding calls to my carrier number
  • SMS, MMS, group MMS support
  • Voicemail transcription
  • Unlimited nationwide calling
  • Ideally, some form of spam call filtering

So far I've found Dialpad which offers all these features for $15/mo per line and JMP which is much cheaper but extremely hacky and missing a bunch of features out of the box. Are there any other providers I should be looking at?

corgski fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Mar 16, 2021

Ultimate Mango
Jan 18, 2005

I still have Vonage. I am dumb. What should I have instead?

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

What if Hitler invented the BMW i3 Subcompact Electric car?

ChiralCondensate posted:

I bought the Obihai OBi200 and use it with google voice. I don't detect any lag, and I'm fairly sensitive to it on cell phones/etc. I need to set up e911 service for it but I've been procrastinating.

Albinator posted:

voip.ms is pretty great if you want cheap and a ton of configuration options. If you get an analogue telephone adapter you can hook your old phones up.


KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:

What voip service are you using? Voip.ms support is very inconsistent. The first guy I explained my issue to was basically like "this is your fault, we are a telephony provider and your internet sucks." The second guy fixed the problem with a small settings tweak to my SPA504G.

Late to this...

I have both Obihai and VoIP.ms, more specifically an Obi2182, an Obi1022 and an Obi202 VoIP adaptor.

Polycom owns Obihai, they are they are solid products, however the stock is absolutely inconsistent, I don't know if they are updating units, I don't think they are getting out of the business, it's supplier issues, but pricing and availability fluctuates wildly, like new product will go from $60 to $260 overnight.

VoIP.ms, they are DIRT CHEAP, I have a fax line just for the hell of it, I bought an extra line just to sign up to Trump phone lists to troll them when I was bored. HOWEVER, the two together are a loving nightmare to configure if you don't know what you are doing, if you are new to this, expect to invest hours. But once you have done it, it's bulletproof, I haven't had a single issue ever.

Oh, also work set me to WFH with a Mitel VoIP phone, what a pile of poo poo taking up room on my desk.

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD
Jul 7, 2012

So voip.ms has been down completely for nearly a day. Apparently they got hit by a big DDoS and aren't doing a great job of recovering from it. Really hope I'm not missing any calls...

Armauk
Jun 23, 2021


I'm totally new to VOIP, and I'm interested in establishing a landline. voip.ms, despite the recent DDoS attack, works with my budget, but I'm not sure in the hardware/software to actually make calls. Is there a separate piece of software I can use to make calls with my computer microphone? Or, do I need an actual phone that's hooked up to an internet connection?

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD
Jul 7, 2012

Armauk posted:

I'm totally new to VOIP, and I'm interested in establishing a landline. voip.ms, despite the recent DDoS attack, works with my budget, but I'm not sure in the hardware/software to actually make calls. Is there a separate piece of software I can use to make calls with my computer microphone? Or, do I need an actual phone that's hooked up to an internet connection?
Absolutely, this is called a "softphone," it's one of the best applications of it.

Armauk
Jun 23, 2021


KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:

Absolutely, this is called a "softphone," it's one of the best applications of it.

Thanks. Do you recommendations on Softphone software?

Stealthgerbil
Dec 16, 2004


We have hundreds of phones deployed on a lot of phone systems using freepbx 15 + telnyx for the SIP trunk. It works pretty great. We are using yealink and grandstream phones mostly but it works with pretty much any SIP phone.

K8.0
Feb 26, 2004

Her Majesty's 56th Regiment of Foot

I know someone spending >$400/yr on a phone line that has no use other than being a phone they can't accidentally mute or forget to charge. Would this or something like it be the cheapest thing that number could be ported to while retaining the always ring aspect of a conventional landline?

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


Assuming they have an internet service with a router you want an ATA. Something like an OBI300 gives you a phone jack and you plug your existing phone in and get a dial tone.

Partycat
Oct 25, 2004

Echoing from earlier in the thread, whatever Grandstream ATA is reasonably easy to configure and they're quite reliable.
I use les.net . I'm not sure exactly how much support you would get as a consumer customer , but they offer reasonable features and compatibility.
Costs me $2.99/month for the account, and $1.49 a month for a DID, plus usage.

I didn't have to do anything specific for the ATA to register to their service, and have not had an issue with them that they haven't emailed about.
I could probably write up step-by-step what I did to set it up if that would help anyone. It's reasonably simple if you don't mind configuring something.

Xaris
Jul 25, 2006

Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry
My company currently is still using old AT&T phone lines and AT&T is now charging us $700/month for the privilege of 4 phone lines and an 888-888-xxxx number. My bosses really want to get away from how stupidly expensive it is (and AT&T is horrendous) and do VOIP but would like to keep the 888-888-xxxx forwarding number since it's on all our logos/business cards/etc. This is a very small company, only about 4-5 users max. They're looking at GoTo VOIP offerings but weren't sure. What sort of reliable options do we have that can take ownership of an 888- forwarding number and relatively easy to setup 4-5 VOIP phones in the office? Not necessarily looking for cheapest price ever, it's okay if we have to pay a premium for something reliable and easy as it surely will come way under the $700/mo price tag we have now.

Partycat
Oct 25, 2004

I don’t know if AT&T would be required to release the toll free number, if they are the RespOrg. They may and could but I don’t know if they are required to. That’s worth a review if you don’t own the number.

For $700 a month 2/3 of that bill has to be usage? IIRC if you’re paying message rates on a business line you’re paying for the toll free minutes and the call incoming to your local number at the same time.

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD
Jul 7, 2012

The voip.ms twitter is a masterclass in mealymouthed excuses. Their service has been down for nearly a week, lol.

https://twitter.com/voipms/status/1438649114858860546
https://twitter.com/voipms/status/1438932466346209286
https://twitter.com/voipms/status/1439009468520583169
https://twitter.com/voipms/status/1439313855314792449
https://twitter.com/voipms/status/1439779970893635584
https://twitter.com/voipms/status/1439951637355896841
https://twitter.com/voipms/status/1440168469622771712
https://twitter.com/voipms/status/1440343318878031881

Heran Bago
Aug 18, 2006



Please help, VOIP thread.

I went too long without using my Google voice so they took it away. I need that phone number for some security stuff.

I can reclaim the number with Google voice, but I need a US phone # to do it. I don't have a US phone number anymore, but I maintain a US address and payment methods.

I would be willing to pay to keep this number. Can anyone suggest an alternative to Google voice?
Either I would want that old number with the new service, or I would use the new service to rescue that number on Google Voice.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


Can you get yourself a Twilio account and get a US number that way, to turn your Google Voice back on?

SamDabbers
May 26, 2003



Also look at VoIP.ms and Callcentric for a cheap US DID you can use with GV.

Heran Bago
Aug 18, 2006



By the time I posted that, it was already too late to reclaim my google voice number. :( I'm willing to just move off google voice completely at this point for a US number that can do SMS.

The biggest obstacle is PayPal, which won't let me use a number outside the US nor Voip. I read that skype and google voice are the best bets. I paid into Skype for a number like a Boomer, but PayPal recognizes it as a Voip. I would try using that to get a new google voice number, but no matter what area code or city I guess it will not find any available phone numbers to use.

I tried signing up for Google Fi, but it doesn't seem to be eSIM-compatible with my phone. They can send a SIM to my US address, but gently caress that.



Anyone have advice, or a Voip service that works with Paypal?

e: PayPal never actually needs to verify my existing phone #. I have 2FA on and just kind of hope it never has to verify the phone #.

Heran Bago fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Oct 11, 2023

Mr.Radar
Nov 5, 2005

You guys aren't going to believe this, but that guy is our games teacher.
Most of those verification services only work with "real" cellular numbers even if your VOIP line supports SMS. Try Tello which gives you a real cellular number for $5/mo (select no data + 100 minutes) and can be activated as an eSIM outside the US on wifi with wifi calling support to send and receive calls and texts.

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Heran Bago
Aug 18, 2006



Thanks for the advice on Tello. Certainly a better deal than Skype. I'm considering traveling back to the US and asking in a bunch of cell provider stores if I can start a new account carrying over the old number. I guess I want to sim swap myself but not sure how that'll go, or how legal that is.

I'm getting calls on my Skype number now asking if I'm a mini mart or if I'm selling drugs. gently caress.

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