Recommend Reliable VOIP ISP?

A while ago, I have received a good advice on this forum to choose VOIP Innovations as my VOIP ISP.

At the time, it was a good advice and it was reasonably priced service with VOIP Innovations.

Today there has been number of changes with this ISP including price changes, support and now new policy of new minimums:

  • The prices have gone up.
  • The support is not able to address specific troubleshooting questions.
  • Their header on some Signaling IPs has missing data causing some calls to disconnect after 30 minutes refresh.

PLEASE RECOMMEND NEW VOIP ISP OR SHARE EXPERIENCE WITH YOUR VOIP ISP YOU CURRENTLY USE!?

As you can see in below email to their current customers, there are new service minimums:

"As VoIP Innovations enters 2020 and beyond, we are making several changes to our offerings and how they are presented to our customers.

Effective for the billing period ending on 3/31/20 , VoIP Innovations will begin instituting a minimum spending requirement of $100/month on all accounts. This is a change that we believe will provide focus to our offerings while allowing VI to better serve our customers."

EDIT: Please recommend reliable and reasonably priced service proven to deliver good service and only charge for what you use without restrictions or minimums.

State your requirements, other than (I assume) spending less than $100/month.

Recommend reliable and reasonably priced service proven to deliver good service and only charge for what you use without restrictions or minimums. Your personal experience with your VOIP ISP is also greatly appreciated…

If all of your DID are US based, I like Skyetel.

I tried to help with this about a year ago, but there was no reply.

Depending on the specific cause, you may have the same issue with a new provider.

Though I don’t use them personally, I agree with @sorvani on Skyetel – their reliability record is outstanding. However, unless you are in one of a few big cities, the CLEC likely has only a single interconnect point with the PSTN and one fiber cut caused by an errant backhoe will put you down. You can avoid this with a toll-free number, which can be routed by multiple carriers, or getting a geographic number e.g. in New York.

Also, if your site does not have redundant power and internet, those outages will likely be more frequent than the provider’s (though in that case, the provider can forward calls to your mobile, etc.)

My DIDs are US based and I live in a large city.
Any other recommendations based on the price rates?
Are these accounts you have with Skyetel are they residential or commercial?

Both. Mostly commercial. I first tested it on my home system though.

Both? Skyetel and what’s the other?
Thanks

You asked if they did residential or commercial. I answered both.

Thank you is there anyone else who can recommend/share VOIP ISP?
This will help to compare to Skyetel.
Thank you

For the minimaL cost of entry, sample all of the pay as you go ones you see here, it will cost you $20 bucks or so and you can choose the one that works best for you wherever you are.

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I would recommend our company. https://www.clearlyip.com/sip-trunking/. We have a bunch of former FreePBX and Sangoma developer who left last year to start our own company and our core team are the original FreePBX developers that sold FreePBX to Sangoma 5 years ago.

If a carrier (CLEC) serving your city offers service without an excessive minimum, that is likely to be more reliable than buying from a provider who buys from a carrier. And if you do have trouble, there won’t be a middleman between you and the carrier hindering getting it fixed.

Look up your exchange at

then click on the entry in the Rate Center column. Scroll through to see all the CLECs serving your area. If you find for example Telnyx or Flowroute, those are good choices because they deal with us small potatoes. Bandwidth might also meet your criteria and they cover many more rate centers.

One possible problem with dealing directly with the carrier is that they may not offer the failover option you want. Typically, the big guys route calls to a SIP URI and if that is down or unreachable, trying an alternate is the only option. Assuming that you don’t have a backup PBX, if you want failover to your mobile or to voicemail, you would need to get that from a third party. You might have a similar issue with their E911 offering.

Look up your number at Interactive Tools | Apeiron to see who the carrier is now. Consider dealing with them directly (if you’re not too small for them), or with a provider who uses them, which will minimize porting issues.

For ultimate reliability, you must use a toll-free number, which gives you the ability to fail over to an alternate carrier. VoIP Innovations is outstanding in this regard, because their TF numbers are ‘live’ with two carriers so failover is real time. Next best, get a provider that is their own resporg (responsible organization); if your carrier goes down, they can reroute you through another in a few minutes. Of course, a TF number will cost more per incoming minute.

How to find that out?
How to choose from the below. Many look like big fish to me.
How to inquire on rates and minimums and where to start?

Here is what the link gives me:
VERIZON NEW YORK INC. (Verizon)

When I click on Rate column I get:
BANDWIDTH.COM CLEC, LLC - NY
[YMAX COMMUNICATIONS CORP. - NY (YMAX (a/k/a MagicJack))
[CELLCO PARTNERSHIP DBA VERIZON (Verizon)
[OMNIPOINT COMMUNICATIONS, INC. (T-Mobile)
[NEW CINGULAR WIRELESS PCS, LLC (AT&T Wireless)
[TIME WARNER CABLE INFO SVCE (N]
[METRO PCS, INC. (Metro PCS)]
[ONVOY, LLC NY (Intelliquent)]
[US LEC COMMUNICATIONS, INC. -
[NEW CINGULAR WIRELESS PCS, LLC (AT&T Wireless)]
[LOCAL ACCESS LLC - NY]
[BROADWING COMMUNICATIONS, LLC (CenturyLink, Inc)
[CABLEVISION LIGHTPATH, INC. -
[PEERLESS NETWORK OF NEW YORK,
[SPRINT SPECTRUM L.P. (Sprint)
[LEVEL 3 COMMUNICATIONS, LLC - (CenturyLink, Inc)
[SPRINT SPECTRUM L.P. (Sprint)
[PAETEC COMMUNICATIONS, INC. - (Windstream Communications)]
[BROADWING COMMUNICATIONS, LLC (CenturyLink, Inc)]
[PEERLESS NETWORK OF NEW YORK, ]
[TELNYX LLC]
[XCHANGE TELECOM CORP. - NY]
[PAETEC COMMUNICATIONS, INC. - (Windstream Communications)
[MCI WORLDCOM COMMUNICATIONS IN (Verizon)
[TC SYSTEMS,INC. - NY]
[BRIGHTLINK COMMUNICATIONS, LLC]
[AMERICAN NETWORK, INC.]
[MAGNA5 LLC - NY]
[AT&T LOCAL (AT&T)]
[VITCOM LLC - NY]
[XO NEW YORK, INC.
[RCN TELECOM SERVICES, INC. - N]
[CTC COMMUNICATIONS CORP. - NY]
[BROADVIEW NETWORKS, INC. - NY (Windstream Communications]
[ADVANTAGE COMMUNICATIONS, INC.]
[AAT PAGING CORPORATION II]
[VOXBEAM TELECOMMUNICATIONS INC]
[WIDE VOICE, LLC - NY
[BRIGHTLINK COMMUNICATIONS, LLC]
[FRACTEL, LLC]

Personally I would go with

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First, eliminate the 4 mobile operators, the cable operators, the ILEC, captive ones like Ymax and Wide Voice, local presence of other ILECs.

You can probably eliminate any of the CLECs that were acquired by ILECs.

I agree with @dicko that Telnyx is a good choice.

You should look at the websites of the others and contact those who look plausible. Typically, if they welcome small accounts, pricing will be posted and signup is available online. Some providers offer a small credit at signup so you can test without making a payment.

Of the ones mentioned, I have an account with Voxbeam, which I use primarily for international calling. I did get three DIDs with them (New York, Boston and London) when they gave them away in a promo. I use those mostly for test and demo purposes, so I wouldn’t have noticed any glitches, but I have not seen any outages in the ~3 years I’ve had them.

They have two pricing plans for incoming and you may find that neither is suitable for your business. One is the classical “virtual PRI”, which for US is $0.25/mo./number + $11.50/mo./channel. There is no charge for incoming calls and the channels are truly unlimited, but this is only a good value if your business is open around the clock and not highly seasonal. Compared to a provider charging say $0.004/min. for incoming, you’d have to average more than 2875 min./mo./channel to come out ahead.

The other plan is unusual; $0.50/mo./number with no charge for the first 10,000 min./mo.; overage is $0.01/min. However, there is also a hard limit of 2 channels per number. If you do less than 10,000 incoming minutes monthly, this may be good for personal or department numbers, but 2 incoming channels is inadequate for the main number of most businesses. Perhaps if your main number is a toll-free (purchased elsewhere), this could be part of the solution.

Voxbeam has no minimum usage requirement, but minimum top-up is $50.

I’ve used Vitelity (now Voyant) and Flowroute. Vitelity has had a few minor outages over the years, some lasting a few hours. I have not had one issue with Flowroute, ever. And since Voyant no longer sells to mom and pops I use Flowroute exclusively now. Never had an issue, they porting team is SUPER efficient.

Am I on the right page?

https://sip.telnyx.com/

Is Voxbeam like Telnyx direct connect or a guy in between?

I am a small business (9 to 5pm) with US DIDs and normally do not make International calls.

I am concerned about minimums and trying to find a reasonably priced VIOP ISP.

I usually prefer Pay as you go plans as long as they are competitive in nature and reasonable.

I am not a seasonal business but my VOIP volume may act like it - I may have high VIOP volume months and some slow ones.

What questions should I ask TELNYX when I speak with them?

Virtually everything is spelled out on their website. Just sign up, you’ll get $5 test credit and you can start making and receiving calls. They use IP authentication so there are no credentials to set up; on their portal, set up a Connection and an Outbound profile, configure your trunk and you can call.

Most pricing details are on the website. Geographic numbers are $1 setup + $1/mo. + $0.40/mo. (optional CNAM lookup) + $0.20/mo. (optional failover forwarding) + $1.50/mo. E911 address (depending on local regulations, multiple phones in the same suite may be able to share one). Outbound calls are $0.007/min. (6 second increments), or choose the tariffed plan which (for your calling pattern) may be less. Incoming is $0.0075/min.

Things not obvious on the site that you may wish to ask: Is USF included in pricing? Is there a payment processing fee for small payments? What taxes are added?

Of course, ask them whatever you need to feel comfortable (their geographic redundancy, reliability record, failover options, etc.)

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