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

[astrosfan90]

Originally posted by: georgepa
A good bet at www.giveanything.com would be their link to www.restaurant.com. $25 should be enough to get you and your wife into a nice Dinner for 2 at a decent local restaurant. Hey, beats "The Constipated Gardener" any day.

LOL!

Yeah, this is pretty neat. I was poking around on the rewards part of the site today. Amazon looks like a good bet for me.

 

[laketrout]

Originally posted by: georgepa
laketrout-

Actually, it's 10 points. If you got 10 points in July you have 20 now. One more outage and the credit will give you a $25 "something" at www.giveanything.com or www.amazon.com.

A good bet at www.giveanything.com would be their link to www.restaurant.com. $25 should be enough to get you and your wife into a nice Dinner for 2 at a decent local restaurant. Hey, beats "The Constipated Gardener" any day.

Ahh Yeah, you right you right. My fault. I guess the lady will have to buy her own ticket, but me going in style!

 

[M00T]

Originally posted by: RideFree
VoIP news from the BBC

I'm leaving the Gizmo behind the router for now...

Actually, none of the vulnerabilities discussed there are preventable by keeping your ATA behind a NAT device. All of them are server side problems, aside from call hijacking... which requires a totally idiotic network layout at your ISP.

# audio spam that clogs voicemail boxes with spoken adverts
# voice phishing that tries to con people into handing over confidential details
# caller-ID spoofing which allows conmen to make it look like they are calling from a legitimate number such as a victim's bank
# call hi-jacking that re-directs calls to conmen and criminals

Don't go crying wolf just yet.

 

[georgepa]

Well, for them to spring for another 10 points to get into the bigger prices it requires another big outage. I am all for it ONLY on the day when we are gone all day anyway (say, Oct. 8)


A tip for those who have 25 points to use up: Restaurant.com through SR's reward partner www.giveanything.com gives $25 gift certificates to restaurants within your local area for only $10. BUT with coupon code 38066 (Exp 9/30/05) you can get that price down to $5 per certificate. So, a $25 Restaurant gift certificate is only $5. Check the site out for restaurants in your area:

www.restaurant.com

Some restaurants ask for a minimum of a $35 purchase, with some drinks are not included. Gratuity is always extra. Other restaurants just take these certificates same as cash, no minimums. You can get 5 dining certificates (nominal value $25 each) for ONE referral. IMO best deal going to cash in those referrals for maximum impact. I have taken the wife to some very nice places to eat with these before I got Sunrocket (buying them at $5 a piece,) sometimes I walk out of there after a very good meal just paying a generous tip, nothing else.

 

[RideFree]

Originally posted by: M00T
Don't go crying wolf just yet.

Don't sell the Ruskies short.
Voof!

 

[georgepa]

SunRocket Raises $25 Million

As mentioned earlier in my post in which I offered a synopsis of a conversation I had with a leading Sunrocket engineer, Sunrocket received a major cash infusion via investment. The previous investment from BlueRun Ventures (Nokia) was $9 Million. This new investment is almost three times as large.

According to the unofficial comments of that engineer SR is using this cash infusion to build sorely needed redundancy into the system and hire more Level 3 techs. They already replaced their session border controller vendor and installed new controllers across the board. We will see, but with redundancy finally in place (if true) it should help keep outages to a minimum.

 

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by: ttown

Originally posted by: newbs
does anyone know how much bandwith up and down sr uses per line as I was thinking about getting 2 sr lines.
Thanks

I believe it's about 96kbps in each direction, MAX.
I have "normal" cable (1.6mbps down/~250kbps up) and have tried 2 calls at the same time -- and the calls had no degredation. (probably should test 2 calls, plus file-sharing at the same time...)

However... there is a rumor, which I believe *STRONGLY*, that SR will enable both phone-line ports on the Gizmo in the near future -- thus making "getting 2" quite redundant. (Unknown if my cable connection could handle 4 simultaneous phone conversations)

i read about the enablement of of the 2nd port as well, over at BBR. i don't have the bandwidth for it. i am just happy for it to be working well and have my POTS cancelled

i do need to backfeed it into my house wiring. my wife said the DISH box popped a message about how we have to keep the box plugged to the telephone or else we have to pay $6/mnth extra for DISH.

 

[georgepa]

FoBot-

Do you need help with "whole house wiring"? It is pretty simple: Go to the outside box and disconnect your phone companies' wiring (usually just unplug two connectors.) Once disconnected run a phone wire from the Line 1 port on your gizmo to any wall plug. Presto. Whole house hiring is enabled.

 

[tknodav1]

Just an update on my sunrocket service. Had it about 9 months now.

I was not affected at all really by any of their outages.
I am now able to fax from my sunrocket line
7-digit dialing is working

The service has been great for me, no complaints. Now when they get the '2nd line' jack working and available for use we'll be rocking.

 

[azilaga]

Originally posted by: tknodav1
Just an update on my sunrocket service. Had it about 9 months now.

I was not affected at all really by any of their outages.
I am now able to fax from my sunrocket line
7-digit dialing is working

The service has been great for me, no complaints. Now when they get the '2nd line' jack working and available for use we'll be rocking.

Is faxing through your SR service reliable? I love the features and price of SR, but I'm trying to get my incoming faxes to come in more reliably than they are now. I'd say I'm at about 85% reliability for incoming. I haven't had any problems with outgoing faxes.

 

[georgepa]

azilaga-

I'll PM you setting changes that will pretty much make your faxing 100%.

 

[georgepa]

FoBot-

There is a promotion code you can apply to get your monthly cost reduced to $19.99. I am not sure if you can apply it post-purchase. It is WBFOGQ and also includes the 2 free phones.

The $199 deal is risk-free as it is not a "contract." You can cancel any time and receive a pro-rated refund for the unused portion of the $199.00 while still keeping the phones as a free gift. There is also no cancellation penalty, so, if you want to maximize your savings that would be an easy and riskfree way to do that. The only concern would be the consideration about the provider suddenly going bankrupt. The chance is slim to none, as the recent massive investment infusion by leading investors shows. Even if, you figure that at $88 per month saved and with the free phones and ATA adapter (that one sells on ebay for around $100) it only takes about 2 months of SR solvency for you to get into your "profit zone," your break-even point even if you lost your entire $199 due to a sudden collapse of SR at that point.

 

[DrSarcasm1]

Hey Georgepa...Have you been successful with using an analog modem device such as a ReplayTV or Tivo? My ReplayTV used to work, but since this new firmware release (4.54) came out...I've had nothing but problems.

 

[georgepa]

Dr. Sarcasm-

Hey. Here is an exchange about Tivo success with SR. Let us know if this works for you:

___________________________________
I got my first tvio yesterday after 12 days of waiting since order, and am really excited. Thanks to one of the members of tivocommunity.com who was kind enough to send me tivo during the promotion.

After reading a few mixed posts about their success with voip i was kinda skeptical if my Tivo would work with Sunrocket. I initially hooked it up and used my local area code which is 908 no luck, even though i used the dial prefix ,#019. I had read in some post that a few people had luck with their vonage when they changed the area code to a NJ number as vonage is based in NJ.

This is what i did to make it work

1. Used the dial prefix ,#019
2. Changed area code to 703 (Suncrocket is located in VA)
3. Detect dial tone off
4. I used a number i Arlington

Did the test call and everything went fine after a couple of atempts. Did then first call just after that and it was able to connect without a problem on the first attempt, but i had problems connecting for the second call. I went back and changed the number i now used a number in Little Church and everthing went smoothly, i dont know if the change in the number helped or the fact that it was like 12:30 at night helped.

Iam a happy camper, i was also able to hookup Tivo to my wireless network, i have a Netgear MA111 usb adapter and a Netgear 802.11b wireless router, the signal strength is about 88-90%. Sunrocket rocks have been using it for about 4 months now, no problems at all.

____________________

smj is correct, i just changed the area code in tivo, based on the area code it displays a list of access numbers that you could choose.

The ",#019" without the quotes reduces the speed of the tivo modem to 19600 bps.
__________________________________________________________________

Tivo Series 1 - got it to work with VoIP!
I have tried numerous things (#99 ,#019 ,#319 ,*70)
as the Dial Prefix, but nothing seemed to work. Got "phone in use" or some such error message. I saw numerous postings about buying additional hardware, but didn't have to go down that road.

It was much simpler than that! I had *70 as my Call Waiting prefix. All I had to do was put a comma after *70 and it works perfectly! Apparently, the Qwest wire phone could handle the *70 with no pause before the number, but ATT CallVantage requires the pause.

I had already turned on the Fax/Modem option with ATT Callvantage, but I don't know if that made any difference.

VoIP experience:
SunRocket - works fine, inexpensive, but their voice mail is hell to navigate.
__________________________________________

Just so you know. You should be able to use ,#401 at the setup to use the network card. This was an old trick from the Series 1 days.


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Ok, so I guess you should try bringing the modem speed down to 19.6 by using prefix ,#019. Also try to change the dial area code to a 703 number because that is the area code in VA where Sunrocket is located.

Let us know how it works out.

 

[laketrout]

Originally posted by: georgepa
SR just signed a partner agreement with XO Communications. They have tons of exchanges in Memphis, so SR should become available to you shortly.

Can you tell me more about this? What can XO bring to the table?

 

[georgepa]

Laketrout-

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050912/dcm016.html?.v=24

XO is basically a partner like their current partners Global Crossings and Broadwing Communciations (which had gobbled up Focal Communications.) Outside of Level 3 which has not yet partnered with Sunrocket these are the whales of VOIP termination. In essence these companies handle the transfer of computer voice packets to traditional phone lines. As you know from providers like Skype PC to PC calls are handled entirely on the internet and are free. You have the same thing with providers like Vonage, Packet 8 and the like where Vonage to Vonage calls (in-network) are generally free, as they have no POTS termination, are essentially PC to PC calls. The same will be true once Sunrocket offers a limited-minute plan (say, 500 minutes per month) at a lower price. SR to SR calls will typically remain unlimited because they are actually PC to PC calls. Now, calling to landline is where these "terminators" come into play. They provide VOIP providers with the wholesale minutes to terminate within their networks. They have bought rights to exchanges within certain area codes that allow them to offer "service" within the area code. They also provide services like E-911 and 411 to the VOIP.

Anyway, XO is another such provider. What is important from a Sunrocket customer's point of view that the exchanges XO offers seem to fill in virtually all of the areas Sunrocket had not yet been in (they claim they have about 70% of the US covered at this point.) Thus, Memphis is one of the areas SR will be able to offer through this new partner, also Orlando, Austin, TX and so forth.

Another thing that will most likely come out of this deal are added business class VOIP services, as XO is very active in that area.

http://www.webhostdir.com/news/articles/shownews.asp?id=13145

 

[laketrout]

Well that is fantastic news. I hope that it spreads to my parents area because they have been waiting to get it. Looks like open season for referrals as well

 

[georgepa]

LT-

Where are your parents located?

 

[CChaos]

I was just about to sign up. Anyone want to PM me a referral?

 

[azilaga]

YG referral PM

 

[CChaos]

Got a referral now, thanks guys. Hope all goes well. Oh, the best place I've found for an extra handset seems to be J and R since I have a B&M near me. Newegg isn't bad shipped. Anyone found better? DCX640 is the model.

Thanks again.

 

[RideFree]

Over seven days now without an outage.
Five days without a fatality.

 

[imported_Daylate]

Only down for about three hours today in Tacoma. On hold for two hours with c/s finaly gave up. Frustrating

 

[imported_fatman]

Has Any one successfully done faxing with "internal fax modem + winfax + Sunrocket" ?

Of course, I have broadband connection already...

 

[ttown]

Originally posted by: Daylate
Only down for about three hours today in Tacoma. On hold for two hours with c/s finaly gave up. Frustrating

I live in Tacoma too... but didn't notice any problems during the day.
If you're on "Click" -- they went down (for me) at about 4am. Don't know when they came back up -- but they were up for sure by ~9am.

Anybody else have service downtime? I skimmed bbr, and no widespread complaints....