VOIP SunRocket Internet Phone Service $199 for 15months = $13.27/month

[Jlensbo]

Originally posted by: leonc
Well, my forwarding is down once again. This time, the "do not forward, Gizmo reset " procedure didn't work. SR may be inexpensive, but it is very trouble prone and their customer service and tech service are the absolute worst. God help you if you call the 800 number and have to deal with the idiots in Bangalore that offer no help whatsoever.

"Bangalore"??? I've never received an "offshore" source when I've called SunRocket support! I hope that this isn't a "wave of the future"!

 

[Jlensbo]

Originally posted by: azoomee
I continue testing the SR -- still a little skiddish about giving up my Verizon. Wife recently asked her family how it sounded on the other side of the phone.

They indicated a few times that when she called, and they answered -- they would say hello a few times before she actually heard them.... at this point, not sure if this is a big issue or not, as it hasn't happened on other calls.

Anyone else with this issue -- possible resolution?

*********************************************************************

I've sorta had the same problem... it's not with SunRocket - it's with the wife! Maybe ours are related?

 

[astrosfan90]

Originally posted by: georgepa
astrofan-

Welcome to the 22nd century.

I know, I know. I kept putting it off and putting it off, finally had to drop by the store to pick a few things up and decided I might as well go ahead and take the plunge. Have to admit, since I'm not great with that sorta stuff, I had to take a deep breath before disconnecting it all and my SunRocket box, but I managed to figure it out.

 

[laketrout]

Originally posted by: georgepa
This thread has become somewhat of a hangout place for some, sort of like a continuous blog. Would be a shame to abandon it at this point, IMO.

I concur. Its nice to know exactly where to go if you need help or feel like catching up.

On a side note, I had to make a call to Amsterdam this weekend to help out a friend and yet again am reminded about how nice, yet understated, the $3 free international allowance. I don't call that much so that was plenty to get me through that call and probably a follow up in about a week instead of paying to call through my cell or old land line. Good stuff.

 

[georgepa]

True, laketrout. We keep forgetting at times the utter, forlorn darkness we escaped from.

I used to pay $100 per month for phone service, a drain on the budget. For international calls we used calling cards, for LD calls within the US we had an inexpensive LD provider (ZoneLD.) Most of the cost was due to local service plus intrastate calls (wife's parents live about 45 minutes away but in an incredibly expensive zone, so we had to spring for an extra $25 a month just to extend the calling area that far north,) voicemail, Caller ID, 3-way and call-waiting. Add the inconvenient calling cards and we spent a good $120 per month. Now it is $16.58 per month, soon to be $15.30 per month, for ALL those same calls plus more, as we now make more calls than before, don't have to watch our LD Dollar. I can also stay on the phone longer with my overseas family. I use advanced features today that I could not even dream of before VOIP.

Besides, Verizion was terrible to deal with. Our battles with them over billing errors and bogus charges were described earlier in this thread. Call quality was always terrible, I couldn't even use my landline to make decent dial-up connections with AOL or another ISP because my line "rated a 40 out of a possible 200" in line quality.

It is not Sunrocket, per se. Basically the emergence of VOIP technology made it possible to ditch those clowns, get better overall quality, crisper calls, more features, unlimited calling, at a mere fraction of their price. And, no monthly bills. Pay $199 one time and forget about that bill for 12 or 13 or 15 months.

 

[astrosfan90]

Originally posted by: georgepa

Besides, Verizion was terrible to deal with. Our battles with them over billing errors and bogus charges were described earlier in this thread. Call quality was always terrible, I couldn't even use my landline to make decent dial-up connections with AOL or another ISP because my line "rated a 40 out of a possible 200" in line quality.

It is not Sunrocket, per se. Basically the emergence of VOIP technology made it possible to ditch those clowns, get better overall quality, crisper calls, more features, unlimited calling, at a mere fraction of their price. And, no monthly bills. Pay $199 one time and forget about that bill for 12 or 13 or 15 months.

Heh, no kidding. I bet we could write a book from this thread about all the BS that other phone companies have put people through with billing errors, overcharging, giving people the runaround, etc.

And to some extent I'd argue that it is SunRocket, per se. No one else offers a deal quite that cheap, and from what I hear none of the other options have quite the same level of quality all around as SR.

Then again, I'm biased--I'm happy with a phone company for the first time in my adult life.

 

[swapna]

Hi,
I wanted to know how much data transfer will be done in a one minute phone call using sunrocket.
In other words how much bandwith will be used..bcos I am planning to take this sunrocket phone with me to my home country but there we have limit on internet data transfer.Only 150 mb per day is allowed.
And also what is the minimum speed reqd. for a quality phone call... Is 256kbps enough or do we need more than that.
So pls let me know and help me out.

 

[astrosfan90]

Originally posted by: swapna
Hi,
I wanted to know how much data transfer will be done in a one minute phone call using sunrocket.
In other words how much bandwith will be used..bcos I am planning to take this sunrocket phone with me to my home country but there we have limit on internet data transfer.Only 150 mb per day is allowed.
And also what is the minimum speed reqd. for a quality phone call... Is 256kbps enough or do we need more than that.
So pls let me know and help me out.

Yikes, only 150mb per day? Where do you live?

It's an interesting question, not really sure on the answer off the top of my head but I can look into it. Would you be using SunRocket to call family outside of the country?

 

[batter]

Originally posted by: laketrout

Originally posted by: georgepa
This thread has become somewhat of a hangout place for some, sort of like a continuous blog. Would be a shame to abandon it at this point, IMO.

I concur. Its nice to know exactly where to go if you need help or feel like catching up.

On a side note, I had to make a call to Amsterdam this weekend to help out a friend and yet again am reminded about how nice, yet understated, the $3 free international allowance. I don't call that much so that was plenty to get me through that call and probably a follow up in about a week instead of paying to call through my cell or old land line. Good stuff.

And even more of a side note: I am considering using sunrocket and my family lives in the Netherlands (around Amsterdam). How was the quality ?

 

[laketrout]

Quality was fantastic. The person I called didn't even realize I was on VOIP until I told them at the end of the call. I called Britain a few times (a few weeks ago) which sounded good but calling amsterdam was even more impressive. You should check to see if its a sunspot as well.

 

[georgepa]

batter-

As Laketrout said, Netherland calls are fantastic. My mom is from over there. I have cousins in Amsterdam and an aunt and uncle in Bussum (27 miles outside of Amsterdam,) so when my mom visited we called all of them, using SRs $3 call allowance and then low per-minute cost. Quality was incredible, literally "pin-drop" stuff.

swapna-

256kbps is plenty. SRs codec uses about 90kbps. during a phone call. So, you figure: 90kbps equals 900kb for 10 seconds, ~ 12 seconds for 1 MB. 12 seconds X 150MB = 1800 seconds or a good 30 minutes. Not much but enough to stay in touch on a daily basis.

 

[stockjock]

I have a question for you guys...will SR send me some kind of email letting me know they are finally porting over my old phone number? its been over a month now and I haven't seen anything about my number being moved.

Thanks

 

[georgepa]

stockjock-

I received a phone call and an email when it was all done. Before that, though, you will have a day when both of your phones will ring when someone calls your to-be-ported #. So, if your SR phone starts ringing when someone calls your old # you know you are almost there. A day later the old line goes dead, and it's done.

If you want to be up-to-date: Call your old provider and ask. They should show that your number is to be ported away from them and should have an exact port date showing as well.

 

[stockjock]

As usual...you guys have all the answers! thanks Georgepa

 

[swapna]

Thanks georgepa..for the info.

astro.. it is one of the plan in INDIA..for that stupid connection we have to pay 10 US $ and unfortunately no plan above 256mbps is avialable..

 

[KoolAidKid]

I would love to jump on this. Unfortunately, I am not sure if they can port my home phone number over. I am in a weird situation with SR: my small town has three prefixes associated with it. According to SR's availability web page, service is not available in my prefix, but is available in the other two.

I called SR and they can give me service, but there is some confusion about whether I can port over my home number or not. According to a sales rep the only requirements for a portable number are 1) you don't have DSL, and 2) you don't have TiVo or another phone-home appliance. According to them, I should be able to port it. The web site, however, states that the number you are transferring must be in a SunRocket service area.

Not really sure about whom to believe. I am guessing that the web site is probably correct. Do any of you have any experience with a situation similar to this?

 

[georgepa]

Hey koolaidkid-

What prefixes are we talking? I could look it up for you.

 

[SoulAssassin]

Anyone else unable to redeem points for Amazon g/c's? Says they are currently unavailable which is odd since it's not a physical thing. Anyone know how long they've been unavailable or an idea of when they'll be back? Finally got the points I need for two addt'l handsets and now I can't friggin get them.

 

[g8wayrebel]

Originally posted by: KoolAidKid
I would love to jump on this. Unfortunately, I am not sure if they can port my home phone number over. I am in a weird situation with SR: my small town has three prefixes associated with it. According to SR's availability web page, service is not available in my prefix, but is available in the other two.

I called SR and they can give me service, but there is some confusion about whether I can port over my home number or not. According to a sales rep the only requirements for a portable number are 1) you don't have DSL, and 2) you don't have TiVo or another phone-home appliance. According to them, I should be able to port it. The web site, however, states that the number you are transferring must be in a SunRocket service area.

Not really sure about whom to believe. I am guessing that the web site is probably correct. Do any of you have any experience with a situation similar to this?

I have seen several posts on how to make this system work for TIVO , Dish and DirectTV. I haven't switched my DTV to this line yet , but am going to so I can have the caller ID come up. One of the keys that has been expressed by all is that you need to use *70 (I think that is the kill code) to disable call waiting while it calls for updates. You can in fact have DSL and use sunrocket. It wouldn't be cost effective because the Bells charge more for having internet and not the phone service , but it is possible. I know someone who lives out in the country and has done that very thing for reasons of service. He has no desire to have a local number , but wanted an other than local number for people to call him from somewhere in Oregon without being toll for them. He needs the ISP and no other is available , so he has DSL without local phone service.. They charge him over $60 a month for the DSL service , but at least he can stay in touch and has internet.
That is about what I was paying for my SWBell phone b4 SR , so I guess it isn't so bad when you think about it.

 

[chazzzer]

Originally posted by: georgepa

swapna-

256kbps is plenty. SRs codec uses about 90kbps. during a phone call. So, you figure: 90kbps equals 900kb for 10 seconds, ~ 12 seconds for 1 MB. 12 seconds X 150MB = 1800 seconds or a good 30 minutes. Not much but enough to stay in touch on a daily basis.

You're confusing bits with bytes. If the codec is 90kilobits/sec then in 12 seconds you have 1 megabit. Multiply times 8 to get megabytes, so figure four hours of talk time to equal 150MB. Or, to be more accurate: 90Kb = 11.25KB, 150MB/11.25KB = 13,333 seconds = 222 minutes = 3.7 hours.

This isn't taking into account the IP & VoIP packet headers and such. If you are sending the 90kbps as 60 1500-byte packets/second then the IP packet header overhead (28 bytes) is less than 2%, but if you are sending it as 1304 69-byte packets/second (I read somewhere that 69 bytes was the default packet size for the Gizmo) then the IP header overhead is almost 29%. And that's not counting the several bytes of VoIP header information...all told about a third of your sent data would be headers. So, you might only get 2.5 hours instead of 3.7. It's also possible that the packet headers are taken into account when they quote the 90kbps rate.

Another important question would be whether the 150MB/day limit includes upstream as well as downstream. If so, divide by two.

 

[georgepa]

You're right. Good correction. That works a lot better for him anyway.

 

[astrosfan90]

Originally posted by: chazzzer

Originally posted by: georgepa

swapna-

256kbps is plenty. SRs codec uses about 90kbps. during a phone call. So, you figure: 90kbps equals 900kb for 10 seconds, ~ 12 seconds for 1 MB. 12 seconds X 150MB = 1800 seconds or a good 30 minutes. Not much but enough to stay in touch on a daily basis.

You're confusing bits with bytes. If the codec is 90kilobits/sec then in 12 seconds you have 1 megabit. Multiply times 8 to get megabytes, so figure four hours of talk time to equal 150MB. Or, to be more accurate: 90Kb = 11.25KB, 150MB/11.25KB = 13,333 seconds = 222 minutes = 3.7 hours.

This isn't taking into account the IP & VoIP packet headers and such. If you are sending the 90kbps as 60 1500-byte packets/second then the IP packet header overhead (28 bytes) is less than 2%, but if you are sending it as 1304 69-byte packets/second (I read somewhere that 69 bytes was the default packet size for the Gizmo) then the IP header overhead is almost 29%. And that's not counting the several bytes of VoIP header information...all told about a third of your sent data would be headers. So, you might only get 2.5 hours instead of 3.7. It's also possible that the packet headers are taken into account when they quote the 90kbps rate.

Another important question would be whether the 150MB/day limit includes upstream as well as downstream. If so, divide by two.

And this is why I didn't answer his question. That made my head spin, I think I need coffee.

Sounds like it's a little more reasonable for him though, so he can probably use his SunRocket to call family or whatever and still have some space left for other things.

 

[georgepa]

soulassassin-

True about amazon.com gift cards availability. If you haven't bought the add'l handset yet, check out this phone:

DCT750 handset - compatible with DCT640 series phone system - $22.85


Looks kind of nice, different and works with the DCT-64x Uniden phone system you already have. Not bad for $22.85. There are probably some merchants at www.giveanything.com that carry that one or the DCT640 handset, so you can use your points that way.

 

[RideFree]

Yech! Has S/R taken everything of value off their rewards list?
American Express - gone!
Amazon GC - gone!

I guess you could still get a couple of phones.

I want to be able to apply my rewards to my next year's invoice!

 

[astrosfan90]

Originally posted by: RideFree
Yech! Has S/R taken everything of value off their rewards list?
American Express - gone!
Amazon GC - gone!

I guess you could still get a couple of phones.

I want to be able to apply my rewards to my next year's invoice!

That seems strange RideFree--I just logged in to double check and I still have the Amazon gift certificate listed on mine. You sure?