My wife is European, and I went to university over there, so we make a lot of international calls. We tried calling cards for a long time, but when home VOIP service appeared on the scene ee switched to Vonage in 2002 or 2003. We used Vonage for several years and were generally happy with it. It cut our phone bill from ~$120 on Qwest to ~$45 on Vonage. But then Vonage had a large number of outtages back in roughly 2005 and my wife and I grew frustrated with the phone not working. We tried Lingo, Packet8, Skype, and generally didn't like either the call quality or reliability on any of them. We switched to AT&T CallVantage back in 2005-2006 and stayed with them ever since. But last month, AT&T sent us a letter saying that they are cancelling our service.
I looked at Ooma, Vonage, Comcast and Qwest VOIP, but after reading a bunch of posts over at DSLReports, I decided on CallCentric.
CallCentric is a BYOB (Bring your own [VOIP] Box) provider, so you need to have a VOIP box to use. But after all the carriers we used over the years, I literally have a stack of VOIP boxes. I used my personal favorite which is a Linksys PAP2 box that I got from Vonage years ago, unlocked it by changing the firmware, and signed up with CallCentric.
I followed the instructions on the website to set up the PAP2 box for the service, and they ported my number and everything has been very smooth. The service works well so far - although time will tell if the reliability and call quality are consistent.
The service plan that I signed up for is $1.95/month and then pay-as-we-go. It includes voicemail, E911, caller ID, and unlimited free calls to other CallCentric users. It's $0.02/min to call US numbers, and pretty much all the countries we normally call are $0.02/min as well (the UK, Ireland, Poland, Germany). If we end up spending more than 1000 minutes per month calling people, we can sign up for an unlimited US plan for $20/month, or an unlimited US+EU plan for $30/month.
So far I'm pleased. Calls sound clear, the price is great, customer support has been very efficient, and it just works. I like the whole BYOB concept - rather than get some cheap VOIP box that may or may not work like I want it to, I can bring a good high-quality VOIP box that has the features that I want and that I have full and complete control over. Besides, the last thing our house needs is another VOIP box to add to the pile we already have.
I looked at Ooma, Vonage, Comcast and Qwest VOIP, but after reading a bunch of posts over at DSLReports, I decided on CallCentric.
CallCentric is a BYOB (Bring your own [VOIP] Box) provider, so you need to have a VOIP box to use. But after all the carriers we used over the years, I literally have a stack of VOIP boxes. I used my personal favorite which is a Linksys PAP2 box that I got from Vonage years ago, unlocked it by changing the firmware, and signed up with CallCentric.
I followed the instructions on the website to set up the PAP2 box for the service, and they ported my number and everything has been very smooth. The service works well so far - although time will tell if the reliability and call quality are consistent.
The service plan that I signed up for is $1.95/month and then pay-as-we-go. It includes voicemail, E911, caller ID, and unlimited free calls to other CallCentric users. It's $0.02/min to call US numbers, and pretty much all the countries we normally call are $0.02/min as well (the UK, Ireland, Poland, Germany). If we end up spending more than 1000 minutes per month calling people, we can sign up for an unlimited US plan for $20/month, or an unlimited US+EU plan for $30/month.
So far I'm pleased. Calls sound clear, the price is great, customer support has been very efficient, and it just works. I like the whole BYOB concept - rather than get some cheap VOIP box that may or may not work like I want it to, I can bring a good high-quality VOIP box that has the features that I want and that I have full and complete control over. Besides, the last thing our house needs is another VOIP box to add to the pile we already have.
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