[Charlug] voip reccomendations

[Sean Hogston]

On Thu, 2007-02-01 at 09:57 -0500, Lucas Keipper wrote:

> Justin,
> I am looking into VoIP providers for an asterisk system in Charlotte.
> Have you used TelaSip as a business SIP provider?  That's the company
> the article you linked to recommended.  I am trying to decipher the
> offerings out there and most providers have good connections in
> certain regions and bad in others.  What has your experience in the
> Charlotte area been?  I don't see anything on their web page about
> what kind of service they can promise, ie guaranteed latency, jitter,
> packet loss ratings.  Are there any companies other than TelaSip worth
> looking into for this region?  I am pretty excited about getting this
> Asterisk box set up, but I don't want to get burned on the provider
> end.  
> 
> Anyone else who wants to chime in feel free.
> 

I have been with TeleSIP for over a year now. I use them for home and
home business so i actually bought 2 lines from them. I have been happy
with them. And it seems like any issues I have had during that time have
been on my end. They can be a little rough to get ahold of if you need
support but I have not had any real critical issue that I couldnt get
resolved with email to them.

I will tell you that you should never rely on a single provider for VOIP
service and that if this is a business then you really need to consider
keeping at least one POTS line. I had a POTS line hooked back up to my
house simply for the 911 and times when my internet goes down, although
neither are very often.  

Here is my current setup:
TrixBox VMware image from NerdVittles
Dell Optiplex Core2 Duo
3Gig ram, Trixbox image gets 512m
Spa-3000 for one FXS and one FXO
AAstera 4line VOIP phone with 2 wireless handsets.
Linksys 941 2 line voip desk phone
Uniden POTS flip phone plugged into the spa-3000
Soft clients on Linux and windows.
Remote VOIP phone in FL connected to my Asterisk server for LD calls.
 Currently running service from 7 different providers:
    Telesip- main gateway and local Clt numbers
    Voxee- outgoing backup 
    Voipjet- outgoing backup
    Stanaphone
    Voipdiscount
    Freedigits
    FreeWorldDialup
I also have a couple others that i get international inbound numbers
from like London, germany and austria.

Getting all these setup is the easy part, getting the routing right can
be difficult. Basically Telasip is my main provider for in and out bound
US calls. If the call cannot connect to telasip then it goes to voxee
then voipjet then stanaphone.

For outbound international it goes to voxee then voipjet then telesip.

Voxee and Voipjet are comercial carriers and not really for end users.
You have to keep a balance in your account to even connect a call
through them. It is pretty low though I think $10 or something like
that. They have really good rates though. I paid 1.2c a minute to Paris
last time I made a call there.

You should check out the articles at nerdvittles.com as they get alot of
the tricks worked out in a system. Also if you dont want to use the
vmware image you can setup a standalone box then follow one of the
articles to use their script and get it all working like the vmware
install. Mine has all the weather reports music on hold and all the
other tricks they have done.

Hope this helps.
Sean


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