Thursday, February 17, 2005
AT&T's CallVantage VoIP Service - Review
I ordered VOIP service from AT&T a little over a week ago. I was previously with Sage Telecom, on one of their x-number of minutes per month flat rate plans. Unfortunately, Sage hasn't held their end of the bargain - the plan I supposedly signed up for has been broken repeatedly by Sage, and I've been overcharged three months in a row. This, on top of horrid customer service drove me to find another carrier. If you're currently using Sage Telecom, you know what I'm talking about. Quit torturing yourself and bail out while you can.
Being a geek, VOIP seemed like a logical choice. AT&T had a deal where the first month was free, and the monthly rate thereafter is about $30/mo. Officially the plan is "CallVantage for Broadband" - marketing speak for VOIP. Not the best deal on the block (Vonage is slightly cheaper, at last check ~$25/mo.), but Vonage is largely an unknown quantity to me, so I went with AT&T. We'll see how AT&T's customer service holds up now that they've been swallowed alive by SBC. If AT&T/SBC whatever doesn't hold up, it's off to another carrier. And so the cycle continues.
For the record, if Comcast could get their act together and offer a reasonably priced, flat-rate cable modem + VOIP package, I would have selected Comcast for the whole package. As much as a dislike Comcast's anti-trust fodder packaging of their cable TV service with their broadband internet service (and the price gouging you suffer if you select just the broadband service w/o TV), their customer service is superb, their technical support group is easily accessible and helpful, their billing policies are reasonable (in that they don't turn you off if you haven't paid in 30 days), and the service overall has had very few points of failure. One point of concern is that if my cable service does flake out, w/o a cell phone I'll be in a bit of a jam getting ahold of Comcast to get everything turned back on. All of my commuication eggs are in one broadband basket.
Over the weekend I received a box from FedEx. I'm just getting to it tonight. Inside of the FedEx box is another box, with the label "Telephone Adapter - Individual Box" on the side. On top of the box is a note - "Please Activate /Immediately/" in large, demanding black letters with a red background. Please activate immediately, so we can begin billing you as soon as possible. Thanks for the reminder, Ma Bell.
Inside the box is an invoice, an envelope containing:
Fortunately, it appears that AT&T has taken into consideration each portion of my setup at home - cable modem, router - and provided friendly, colorful diagrams and installation guides to assist in the setup.
The term "TA" appears repeatedly throughout the literature - apparently, this stands for "Telephone Adapter", or the D-Link VoIP Gateway. Interesting how AT&T's marketing machine strives to minimize use of the term "VoIP" in their literature.
Tonight I went through the 6-step guide to installing the VoIP adapter and transferring the phone line. There is a huge amount of noise around my PC now - between the cable modem, router, VoIP D-Link, and my aging PC fan it is beginning to sound very strange in my office.
After doing the hardware installation, you have to log onto AT&T's website to register the D-Link with their service. ZoneAlarm doesn't run up the red flag during this process, which is a tad alarming. The light on the front of the D-Link turns green after about a minute of processing, meaning that, in theory, if all went well, I'm now the proud user of VoIP.
My phone just beeped. Odd.
I picked up, turned it on, and got a dial tone. Cool.
It's late, so I try calling work number.
"Your call cannot be completed as dialed... beep beep beep beep"
OK. No big deal. AT&T's website says it might take 30 minutes or so. And the beeping is part of the setup. It would help if I actually read the instructions before reacting, but to do that would be to deny that I have a Y chromosome.
Alright, I'm downright amazed right now. The service came with free voicemail. No big deal, plenty of telephone services include free voicemail. Here's the kicker - I can check my voicemail online - I get an audio of the message, time it was left, number that they called in on, a button to direct dial, the name of the person, the ability to forward the message, and a quick link to add the person to an address book. Plus, I can have an email alert sent to me and 9 additional addresses when I get a message. I've saved a bookmark to the site in Firefox, and setup a keyword to get to it - "voip". Nice. Very nice.
Only one problem, however. My wife hates voicemail, and really, really wants to keep using our answering machine. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that AT&T's Callvantage service allows me to simply disable the voicemail service. So, the hackish solution is to set the voicemail to activate after 10 rings, but the answering machine to activate after 3 or 4 - basically guaranteeing that the answering machine will get to the call before the voicemail does. Hopefully this works - otherwise, the better half will simply have to learn to use the online voicemail service.
Instant call logs. I can see up to the minute who has made incoming and outgoing calls. Technology convergence is such a wonderful thing, isn't it? VoIP not only utilize's the internet's backbone for delivering phone service, but allows companies like AT&T to treat voice messages as if they were emails. I remember back in the late 90's working for a company that had (what was then) state of the art technology for managing phone calls like emails. Now, for about $30/mo. for VoIP and $50/mo. for broadband, I can have the same service at home.
It will be interesting to see what kind of packaged services the new SBC/AT&T company will bring to market. A combo DSL/VoIP w/ a low rate would have me switched over from cable in a heartbeat. Sorry, Comcast - lower your rates!
AT&T obviously hasn't tested their site using Firefox - attempting to search creates all sorts of problems.
OK. I'm done for the night. We'll find out in the morning if the VoIP service works, I guess. So far though, no real issues. Good work, AT&T.
Being a geek, VOIP seemed like a logical choice. AT&T had a deal where the first month was free, and the monthly rate thereafter is about $30/mo. Officially the plan is "CallVantage for Broadband" - marketing speak for VOIP. Not the best deal on the block (Vonage is slightly cheaper, at last check ~$25/mo.), but Vonage is largely an unknown quantity to me, so I went with AT&T. We'll see how AT&T's customer service holds up now that they've been swallowed alive by SBC. If AT&T/SBC whatever doesn't hold up, it's off to another carrier. And so the cycle continues.
For the record, if Comcast could get their act together and offer a reasonably priced, flat-rate cable modem + VOIP package, I would have selected Comcast for the whole package. As much as a dislike Comcast's anti-trust fodder packaging of their cable TV service with their broadband internet service (and the price gouging you suffer if you select just the broadband service w/o TV), their customer service is superb, their technical support group is easily accessible and helpful, their billing policies are reasonable (in that they don't turn you off if you haven't paid in 30 days), and the service overall has had very few points of failure. One point of concern is that if my cable service does flake out, w/o a cell phone I'll be in a bit of a jam getting ahold of Comcast to get everything turned back on. All of my commuication eggs are in one broadband basket.
Over the weekend I received a box from FedEx. I'm just getting to it tonight. Inside of the FedEx box is another box, with the label "Telephone Adapter - Individual Box" on the side. On top of the box is a note - "Please Activate /Immediately/" in large, demanding black letters with a red background. Please activate immediately, so we can begin billing you as soon as possible. Thanks for the reminder, Ma Bell.
Inside the box is an invoice, an envelope containing:
- An 11 page service subscriber agreement (this will be an interesting read) - including information about the screwy 911 call instructions for VOIP users;
- A shiny welcome letter with support phone and website info;
- A quick reference guide to placing calls and using the supporting website;
- A 29 page Telephone Adapter Install Guide
- Two fold-out charts, for connecting to either a DSL or Cable modem (the latter will be the one I'll reference, being a Comcast subscriber)
- A Home Wiring Do-It-Yourself Guide
- Three, identical copies of the Alternative Setup for TA Behind the Router diagram. Yes, three. All identical. Odd.
- A rather beefy looking power adapter, made in Taiwan
- A blue, 2 foot cat-5 cable
- Another phone cable, looks to be about 10 feet in length
- A D-Link VoIP Gateway, model DVG-1120M. Looks like a hub with phone outputs.
Fortunately, it appears that AT&T has taken into consideration each portion of my setup at home - cable modem, router - and provided friendly, colorful diagrams and installation guides to assist in the setup.
The term "TA" appears repeatedly throughout the literature - apparently, this stands for "Telephone Adapter", or the D-Link VoIP Gateway. Interesting how AT&T's marketing machine strives to minimize use of the term "VoIP" in their literature.
Tonight I went through the 6-step guide to installing the VoIP adapter and transferring the phone line. There is a huge amount of noise around my PC now - between the cable modem, router, VoIP D-Link, and my aging PC fan it is beginning to sound very strange in my office.
After doing the hardware installation, you have to log onto AT&T's website to register the D-Link with their service. ZoneAlarm doesn't run up the red flag during this process, which is a tad alarming. The light on the front of the D-Link turns green after about a minute of processing, meaning that, in theory, if all went well, I'm now the proud user of VoIP.
My phone just beeped. Odd.
I picked up, turned it on, and got a dial tone. Cool.
It's late, so I try calling work number.
"Your call cannot be completed as dialed... beep beep beep beep"
OK. No big deal. AT&T's website says it might take 30 minutes or so. And the beeping is part of the setup. It would help if I actually read the instructions before reacting, but to do that would be to deny that I have a Y chromosome.
Alright, I'm downright amazed right now. The service came with free voicemail. No big deal, plenty of telephone services include free voicemail. Here's the kicker - I can check my voicemail online - I get an audio of the message, time it was left, number that they called in on, a button to direct dial, the name of the person, the ability to forward the message, and a quick link to add the person to an address book. Plus, I can have an email alert sent to me and 9 additional addresses when I get a message. I've saved a bookmark to the site in Firefox, and setup a keyword to get to it - "voip". Nice. Very nice.
Only one problem, however. My wife hates voicemail, and really, really wants to keep using our answering machine. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that AT&T's Callvantage service allows me to simply disable the voicemail service. So, the hackish solution is to set the voicemail to activate after 10 rings, but the answering machine to activate after 3 or 4 - basically guaranteeing that the answering machine will get to the call before the voicemail does. Hopefully this works - otherwise, the better half will simply have to learn to use the online voicemail service.
Instant call logs. I can see up to the minute who has made incoming and outgoing calls. Technology convergence is such a wonderful thing, isn't it? VoIP not only utilize's the internet's backbone for delivering phone service, but allows companies like AT&T to treat voice messages as if they were emails. I remember back in the late 90's working for a company that had (what was then) state of the art technology for managing phone calls like emails. Now, for about $30/mo. for VoIP and $50/mo. for broadband, I can have the same service at home.
It will be interesting to see what kind of packaged services the new SBC/AT&T company will bring to market. A combo DSL/VoIP w/ a low rate would have me switched over from cable in a heartbeat. Sorry, Comcast - lower your rates!
AT&T obviously hasn't tested their site using Firefox - attempting to search creates all sorts of problems.
OK. I'm done for the night. We'll find out in the morning if the VoIP service works, I guess. So far though, no real issues. Good work, AT&T.
