AT&T to discontinue CallVantage voip service [Telecom]

I didn't like Vonage either, but I've been reasonably happy with Lingo, the voip service from Primus Telecommunications, a largish international long distance telco.

If interested, write me directly and I'll send you a coupon.

Regards, John Levine, snipped-for-privacy@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be,

ex-Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.

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Is Vonage still losing money, or have they shown a profit yet?

Does Lingo require a separate router like Vonage does, or will it work with a PC directly. Will Lingo operate directly with Asterisk?

Bill "I will not share my lobster!" said Tom, shellfishly

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

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IIRC, AT&T was going to send out individual notifications as part of a rolling shutdown between now and fall. You might keep in mind that all it takes to run a VOIP service is a 386 computer, a phone line or two and some open source software. Meaning that anyone can run a VOIP service out of their garage. If you want to stick with VOIP, I'd only consider established companies like Packet8 or Vonage.

In my experience, call quality issues from any company are usually related to bandwidth constraints and jitter on the underlying connection and not with the VOIP service.

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Isn't that a bit like blaming poor line quality on old cable and dirty splices?

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

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Vonage is certainly more expensive than the new comers, but let's give them credit where it's due - they pretty much are the folk who pushed this whole technology out there to the public.

So I'll give them a bit more of a look than I would the others.

That being said, the economics of most VOIP companies are very, very, shaky, and are based on _huge_ dept loads. Oh, and their business model can colapse very quickly with some regulatory changes.

I personally would recommend two services. The first is Skype, which is "free" to any other Skype account and pretty cheap to a PSTN number. They've got a rate card, with plenty of options at

The second is available to folk who already have a t-Mobile cellular account. They'll provide you with a special router which accepts a SIM card, and that'll give you a psuedo-landline jack out the back of it (which you can hook up to a landline phone, or a wireless unit, or others stuff). Cost is $10/month plus taxes and fees, which winds up totalling about $15 month. Again, this is only applicable if you've already got a t-Mobile cellular account.

I'm mentioning the latter one because t-Mobile is a valid fullscale telco, thus the VOIP portion isn't likely to disappear without notice.

Disclosure: I'm a t-mobile user and shareholder.

Oh, one related point. It's pretty important to have a router that has a "quality of service" option for the VOIP packets. Otherwise anything else going on at the same time, such as your e-mail or web browsing, could easily cause you grief. (The QOS isn't perfect, but it makes a big difference).

A better analogy is to blame poor VOIP quality on your "inside wiring" and bad telephone sets.

I have had Vonage since its inception and also have a very high speed ISP. In the first couple of years there were some echo issues, but those have long since disappeared.

I really like having my primary number in DC although I am in California. I also have one virtual number that is local. When you factor in Vonage's package of features and its giant free calling area (includes part of Europe) no one else comes close.

It's like Vonage, they send you a TA that is locked to their service, or you can get a TA integrated into a router. To answer someone else's question, Primus is bankrupt but they seem to have plenty of cash so I think they're unlikely to go away any time soon.

The only two-way service I know of that lets you provide your own SIP device is Broadvoice. Dunno what their financial situation is, but they have been around for a while.

The options for small-scale SIP are frustratingly limited. For outbound, I can recommend the service from a German company called Betamax who sell through sites like voip-discount.com. Their rates are quite low, 10 euros credit gets you 120 days of free calls to most of the developed world, and you use the credit for the few calls (mobiles mostly) that aren't free. Voice quality is good, no call features like three-way, you do that with Asterisk. I use Voxbone for inbound calls, but they don't accept small customers any more and have a 500 line minimum.

R's, John

And it helps to have an ISP offering high speeds without a phone line. DSL users, in particular, are caught in a classic Catch-22: once you're on t-Mobile's Phone@Home plan, you no longer need your phone; but without your phone, you no longer have the DSL you need for the hi-speed internet connection Phone@Home requires :-) .

Yeah, there'e "dry" DSL -- if offered at a reasonable rate (but for me dry DSL would cost the same per month as my local loop + DSL is costing); and there's my cable ISP -- at just a little more than the previous. So: not for me, thanks anyway.

Cheers, -- tlvp

[PS: You the Danny Burstein who used to write a column for "The Processor"?]

You may want to check out Onesuite.com pay as you go VoIP service. It's $2.95 monthly for the service that includes free incoming calls and a phone number. If you want to use your previous number then porting is free. Outgoing rate is 2.5 cents to a US number and 1.9 cents to Canadian numbers.