sipgate experience

ollyshaw

Hi,

I have been looking over the threads and have decided to have a look at sipgate as a replacement to my bt line.

Can I ask if any moneysavers have had direct experience with sipgate and can answer some/all of these questions:

1) What is the service like, this weekend I could not credit my account for some reason? Is this a sign of bad things to come?

2) What is the reliability like? Much downtime?

3) Has anyone set up the HandyTone486 or any other adapter, behind an exisitng router?

4) have you managed to use 1899 or similar via sipgate?

Sorry if these have been answered before, but some of the threads seem a bit theoretical and I am looking for direct experience.

Many thanks,

Olly

ridgeback

1) What is the service like, this weekend I could not credit my account for some reason? Is this a sign of bad things to come?.....
The service from them is fine... I have been with them for over a year. I have set uo to credit my account when it dips below £5, it happens automatically, and never fails. I spend about £10 every 2 months... that includes usingf their excellebt SMS service too.

2) What is the reliability like? Much downtime?
No downtime ever really. I have NTL broadband, the only time I have downtime is when I have downtime from NTL (obviously!). I use a Netgear 2 port router, it had firmware issues where it would drop off, this was fixed by an automatic firmware update.

3) Has anyone set up the HandyTone486 or any other adapter, behind an exisitng router?
I have an existing linksys wireless router, i turned the DHCP server off on the LinkSys and all my IP addresses are sorted by my Netgear VOIP adaptor.

4) have you managed to use 1899 or similar via sipgate?
You cannot route calls though some numbers they know about...e.g. 1899, some you can.. it's all about which ones they have blocked. you cannot also dial premium rate and emergency numbers.

As for call quality.. I was on NTL 1mb broadband, and when the kids were using webcams on MSN, it made the call quality terrible. I have recently been upgraded to 2 mb, and the quality is far better.. I do get occaisional complaints from my friends that when they call my number, it says the number does not exist???.. even when I know my phone is online.

Tony.

ollyshaw

Thanks for the reply ridbback.

Have you fully dumped you BT/NTL line now then?

Olly

ridgeback

I dumped my BT phone line ages ago..... I get free minutes on my mobile, and could not see the point of paying line rental when I only ever used BT for non-geographical calls (0845 & 0870). Now the sipgate replaces all that!

Plus, having kids usually meant a big phone bill surprise at the end of a quater..... now, real-time billing and a green flashing light on my netgear tells me when the kids are costing me money !! they get a few minutes, then earache from me!

scope

I would consider voip.co.uk instead.. Their £1.99 package for UK calls makes it ideal if you find you start to make some UK phone calls.. With Sipgate you only have a Pay as you go option (which also voip.co.uk has), or 1000 minutes a month (around £8, which cant be rolled over).

I have used voip.co.uk for a couple of months (I dropped my NTL land line to go VoIP only) and have not had any problems. If you get yourself an ATA (Im using a linksys PAP2) you can combine the 2 lines and make use of providers like voipdiscount.com for free outgoing calls (need 10 euro credit) Europe/America/Australia/etc phonecalls.

I have used VoIP for outgoing calls for over a year and saved LOTS..

Keep in mind unless you get broadband from NTL/Telewest/etc you might find you have to have a phoneline anyway, to get ADSL.

ollyshaw

Thansks scope, voip.co.uk looks good too, seems a little higher than sipgate for mobiles and South Africa, but great for UK.

I am glad that some of you guys have found it good enough to ditch your BT/ntl line.

Olly

rbulph

I've had sipgate for some months, and can only say it's been a disaster. When I phoned people they would frequently complain that I was so quiet as to be almost inaudible, so I had to shout into the headset. Now the situation has got worse and they can't hear me at all, so the service is unusable. I don't enjoy phoning people up for them to get a dead line. Their support service is quick to respond, but I find the help they offer to be incomprehensible, e.g. I was asked to

"please forward following ports in your Router/Firewall:

Port 5060 / UDP

Port 8000 - 8011 / UDP

Port 10000 /UDP "

without any explanation of what this meant or how to go about it. All I want to do is make phone calls over the Internet and I'm not that worried about what it costs as long as it's reasonable. If I could ditch my existing landline that would be fantastic, but I'm not anywhere near being able to do that at the moment with sipgate. I'm now trying FreeCall which, on my first use at least, seems to work well.