I do not believe the directory is relevant any longer. Many of the business I have spoken to that have placed actual ads instead of just white page listings, did not obtain a significant number of leads through it. Regardless, should you decide to advertise in these directories, they are mainly handled by third party companies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_pages
Yellow pages listings and their efficacy is not a subject I was addressing.
In the U.S. the relevance of having a white pages listing in your ILEC’s phone book is one of establishing authenticity and is certainly not related to lead generation as white pages and the local 1411/411 information services require the caller to know the name of the party or business.
If you port a number away from your local phone company to most VoIP providers, your listing will disappear from the white pages and 1411/411 unless your VoIP provider is close enough to or is the CLEC accepting your port. In most cases the VoIP provider is too many levels removed from the CLEC.
What kind of business is it if one can’t get an automobile dealer or doctor’s ofice from 411?
The ILEC’s white pages is the baseline for all directory services, including those offered by cell phone companies, as it is the most complete database of phone numbers for a given area.
This single feature continues to be the most prominent differentiator between an ILEC/CLEC VoIP offering and the vast majority of small VoIP vendors.
Yellow pages listings AND white page listings AND their efficacy IS the subject I was addressing
Go to SuperPages.com and listyourself.net and register your business for a free listing. You will find the “FREE Listing” link on the left nav on the home page.
http://www.universalbusinesslisting.org
You can contact Verizon Wireless at 1-800 722-0577 and ask for a “foreign listing” - you don’t actually have to have a Verizon number to get into their wireless 411 directory. There is a one-time $9 fee and a $1.12 monthly charge.
Finally you can open up the book you want to be listed in and sometimes there are forms there to submit yourself. The more numebrs they collect the more valuable they think their book is and often there is no charge for this.
“The only current limitation is that a single account is limited to a single location at this time, from an E911 perspective”
Let’s say I have 5 clients at 5 different locations and I have a FreePBX trunk account with 10 channels. Can I register the trunk at each location without issue? e911 is no concern to me as I always wire in a POTS line for this purpose.
cjkeeme,
It is not meant for that, and I don’t recall what the Terms and Conditions officially allow you to do.
However, technically, if you have any DIDs, then that will not work. Each time you make a call, you are effectively ‘re-registering’ (that is part of the authentication process when making an outbound call). The registration process tells us where you are and thus where to send inbound calls to. So if do what you describe, it will result in confusing all your inbound traffic which will start being directed randomly to different servers.
It has been more than a month now since this product has been advertised. Still no complete information has been updated on the site. No terms and conditions have been posted. Ie How many channels and how many unlimited minutes one gets (unlimited gets thrown around a lot) Or is it pay per minute ? Does this include CNAME? The support number is just a recording, so why is it there? To give a false sense of support? Once users are paid users can they get phone based support from bandwidth.com? Are these independant products or can they be combined? 10 dids shared on an unlimited trunk ? Thank you
kieranmullen3,
is there a reason to be so negative: “The support number is just a recording, so why there? To give a false sense of support? …” That is a pretty sinister statement for someone who has not used the product and has no knowledge at all of the support that our customers are getting. Feel free to ask, I believe you will find that it is outstanding.
The support is email only, it is stated in the Terms and Conditions that are available as both a click through and pdf download if you go through the checkout process but before any credit card information is provided. I hope there is a lot of information provided, it is long enough to keep anyone occupied reading it for a while. (Got to keep the lawyers employed in our economy…)
And no, the support number is not there for any sinister reason at all. It is there because prior to having that message, in absence of any number provided, customers were finding numbers such as the paid support services number or the Bandwidth number. This simply resulted in those customers being frustrated to have wasted their time trying to talk with someone who could be of no help which none of us enjoy. So the number very much serves a purpose and was put there to address a very real need.
The service does include CNAM. The service is built on the Bandwidth network so you get all of the quality of that network but the service is not the same, they are independent. You can have as many DIDs as you want once you get at least one trunk. You will get one channel per trunk.
Nothing against you. I send everyone on broadbandreports.com through the ringer too. It just seems it is not displayed in a user friendly format. Also T7C’s are usually located with a direct link at the bottom of the page.
I called the phone number and the message is just a looped message that says to send an email. So what purpose does it serve? I am not questioning how you provide support just your presentation. I have several services which are email only.
Finally how can the services presented be independent when you just said “
you get one simultaneous channel per trunk and you need at least one trunk to purchase DIDs” If one item “needs” another it is dependent, not independent.
Perhaps you and I are talking about two different items? I am speaking of the items which you have pricing for and you are talking about the quality and service correct?
Thank you!
KM
My answer was in response to that. Maybe I mis-interpreted your question as I read it as if you were asking if the services were independent or part of Bandwidth.com.
A trunk or SIP channel carries a call. A DID is simply an identifying number that is associated with an inbound call. The two can not be independent. (Though a call does not have to have a DID associated with it - though all ours do).
Hi I know the difference between a did,trunk & channel. However MOST of all the other carriers out there give you X channels with your 1 did for Z price and then from there you can add on X channels or Y dids for z price. I have had over the years broadvoice, vitelity, voicepulse (besides gizmoproject.com vonage, sunrocket, magicjack and skype but they really dont count)
As I understand it now would cost me $100.96 per month to replace my current voicepulse.com 4 channel 1 did service @ $11 per month that I have had for about 3 years.
Thank you
KM
If you can get 4 simultaneous channels of unlimited inbound/outbound call service for $11/month fixed price then I suggest you keep that service.
To the best of my knowledge though, I do not think there are services out there that will give you 4 unlimited inbound/outbound trunks plus a DID for a flat rate of $11/month, CNAM and E911 included. If there are, then you may want to make contingency plans for when such a carrier goes out of business 
In any event, I respectfully ask that you do not take this thread off topic or hijack it un-necessarily. Feel free to ask questions about the service that is blogged about here. If you want to do a case study on offerings by other carriers then feel free to start a new thread in the forums.
Our goal is not to be the cut rate cheapest carrier out there. I’ve seen too many of those come and go. Our purpose is to provide an outstanding product at a very fair price that can be supported in a high quality manner, can grow to include features important to our customer base, and can support the continued growth and strength of the FreePBX project. I am not aware of other carriers supporting FreePBX like this product does (with the exception of Bandwidth.com who contributes immensely).
voicepulse.com cnam & e911 yes outgoing no.
See now we are getting somewhere as a result of this cat. I did not know it included unlimited outbound. This is the only place where unlimited outbound calling appears. It also is not included on the sales page either.
Essential stuff to have on there.
The service is up and running fine. It looks like it was rectified per the discussion with support. So far it doesn’t look like there were any issues but we are still checking to make sure
I am still receiving inbound calls via voipo - I tried forwarding the voipo number to my temporary freepbx number, but apparently the latency then sucked, so I turned that off (no idea why this was behaving so badly.) I did set my outbound config to use the freepbx trunk(s) by preference, spoofing my home (voipo) number and so far, it seems to be working very well - the calls have been high quality. Then again, the underlying provider seems to be the same, so I am not surprised. My only (minor) negative: you really need to get a ticket system in place sometime; I opened a ticket wrt not seeing inbound CNAM, and while the support person was very prompt and polite (and the issue was quickly resolved), it was a little disconcerting to not have any way to know what is going on or see any status about trouble tickets.
I understand your request wrt to trouble tickets. Then again, I’ve worked with plenty of companies who have ticket systems and found it very useful to watch tectonic plates moving:)
I’m glad you got quick response on your issue, which ultimately is what matters:)
Ticketing is on the list, but new features and capabilities are higher priority right now.
I did say this was only minor I have been happy with the audio quality…
danswartz - Vitelity offers it on all their products even on their $3.98 per month 4000 minute included 2 channel did. (nerdvittles.com ongoing special) they have a $10 one time setup charge for it.
i wouldn’t switch for that - it isn’t about the price. mainly, i really like the idea of the sip control module
Dan,
it is very possible, there are many providers that use Bandwdith.com (including some pretty big ones) for some/all of their service and numbers.
The delay in populating the CNAM database is not an issue with Bandwidth.com. It is possible to get service with Bandwidth.com with outbound CNAM (and in fact many Bandwdith customers have it). The issue is simply a resource issue getting our portal connected in to access the Bandwidth DIDs that can have the national databases populated. (not all DIDs are created equal…)