July 2nd, 2008, 13 Comments »
Maybe it’s just been a bad week, but VOIP feels like a rare Concorde-esque backward step in technology. In the past week, I’ve had three separate conversations (all, coincidentally, with software startups) interrupted by lousy phone service. In each case, the person I was speaking to blamed their dodgy VOIP service.
We were reasonably happy with Skype (and SkypeOut) when living in Morocco and Malta (the Maltanet VOIP service was awful). Yet, counterintuitively, it’s been much more unreliable when making calls from BC. Maybe a busier network is to blame?
On the other hand, Shaw has provided the most reliable VOIP service I’ve ever used.
In short, making a phone call used to 100% reliable. Thanks to VOIP, we’re down to about 85%. What gives?
13 Comments »
November 19th, 2007, No Comments »
Before we left for Malta, I wrote about my difficulties getting our international telephony strategy sorted out. We never really did get it 100% right. We’re using SkypeOut for outgoing calls and that works great. On the incoming side, we just have brief, expensive calls on our cell phones.
Troy, however, has got it figured out. He just spent a week in Paris, and wrote about his telephony successes. If you’re interested, read the whole post. Here’s how he finishes:
But that very small issue aside, it means that with a laptop, skype, Gatherplace (for screen sharing), Simulscribe, a good DSL connection, and a Vonage adapter - have equipment, will travel.
I hear that Puerto Vallarta has good DSL… Or maybe Costa Rica….
Simulscribe looks like a good option, and provides what I was going to use Vonage for: forwarding voicemail messages to email. The voice-to-text conversion is an added bonus. I’ve signed up for the service to see how it works. I’ll report back.
UPDATE: Dave from Simulscribe is one smart social media monitoring cookie. He contacted me and hooked me up with a Vancouver number so that my calls don’t have to be forwarded to a US one. Plus, he gave me a 30-day free trial, and offered the same to you, my dear readers. Here’s the sign-up if you want to try it out. That looks kind of like an affiliate link, but I don’t get anything but good karma.
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July 2nd, 2007, 12 Comments »
This is a message for the folks at GrandCentral. I sent them an email, but I’ll bet they get a lot of email, so I figured I’d try a different route. The rest of you can move along.
Hi Grandcentralites,
I’m living in Malta for six months, but my wife and I are still using our Canadian cell phones. We’ve been waiting for GrandCentral’s service to come to Canada so that it can solve a couple of telephony problems for us, and save us some money.
I tried to access your service, but your site detected that I’m not in North America and gave me the cold shoulder. Can I get a hall pass to sign up for the service? I have a Canadian address and everything. Thanks, muchly.
Thanks to Sean for tipping me off that GrandCentral has come to the Great White North.
12 Comments »
April 17th, 2007, 5 Comments »
You know, it’s striking how quickly a company can antagonize me. I called Vonage tonight, eager to sign up for their basic package, as part of our ongoing international phoning strategy.
All I wanted was a basic package, so that I could have their voicemail-to-email service. People call our mobile numbers in Vancouver, and the call gets forwarded to our Vonage number. They leave a voice mail message, and the message gets emailed to me. Simple, right?
Unfortunately, they won’t let me sign up for any Vonage service without also giving me some hardware. Some of the hardware is free, but I don’t want any of it. Vonage confirmed that I don’t need it for my particular problem.
Perversely, I want to cut them a deal, but they won’t take it. I want less from them (that is, no hardware), but I’m willing to pay the full price for the service. I spoke to two different agents, and neither could help me. I asked to talk to a manager, they put me on hold, and I got bounced to some French language telephone blackhole.
Adieu, Vonage, I hardly knew you. Bonjour Primus. I’ll call them tomorrow morning to see if they won’t send me hardware.
5 Comments »
