Voip Deals Blog

Well, its 2010, high speed internet connection at home is no more a novelty. If you have any type of high speed internet at home are you using it to the fullest. Have you switched to a Voip company yet, if not, why? What may be the rational behind an expensive regular phone service!

Whatever your call need is, switching to a voip company will save you a lot. Lets first look at some of the concerns.

911 service- Are you keeping your regular phone company for the 911 service. Most voip phone services offer E911 service, which is similar to the 911 service offered by cell phone providers. With a E911 service you need to provide your home address upfront. The first time you sign up, the voip phone service asks for your home address and uses that as the E911 address. But if you move afterwards, you will need to update your address with your phone company.

Caller Id, Call Waiting - Most voip services offer Caller Id/Call Waiting/3Way Calling. In fact most voip services offer more features for free than regular phone companies.

VoiceMail - Most voip phone services offer Voicemail, also voice mail to email, which is an extra feature most regular phone services lack.

Now Let’s Look At the Cost Savings Voip Services Offer

I urge you to look at your current Phone Bill, and then compare it to what it will cost you if you were to switch to a voip phone service provider.

If you need unlimited calls to US & Canada – If you switch to PhonePower, an unlimited plan will cost you around $14.95 to $18.95 per month depending on a contract length.

For a limited plan – If you were to switch to Phone.com you get 250 minutes of outgoing calls and unlimited incoming calls. Any additional minutes will be 3.9¢ per each extra minute.

Based on the above cost information, check how much you will be able to save with a switch to a voip phone service provider. I am sure in almost all cases there will be a substantial amount of savings. And if there is, don’t hesitate and make the switch. Some voip providers also offer free trials. So you can keep your regular phone company when you are trying out a voip service and if not fully satisfied cancel it.

What  is Voice Broadcasting?

Voice broadcasting, also called voice blasting, is a service that sends out automated voice messages to multiple phone numbers or answering machines. Its works similar to email broadcasting or fax broadcasting. Like email or fax broadcasting, you create a recorded voice message, and then using a voice broadcasting service, you deliver the voice message to a list of phone numbers.

In addition to the basic voice broadcasting, a sophisticated voice broadcasting system will have interactive features like press a number to connect to a live person, one question or multiple questions phone surveys.

Who Uses Voice Broadcasting?

Many services need to use a voice broadcasting system to reach a group of users simultaneously within a short period of time. Its much more cheaper and faster than having a person or a group person make the calls and leave messages manually.

Typical users are

1. Schools that need to alert parents about school closure
2. Cities, communities to alert emergency notifications
3. Political campaigns reaching out to the voters
4. NGOs sending out donation requests
5. Religious organizations contacting their members
6. Sports groups sending messages about upcoming events
7. Businesses calling customers with overdue balance

What is CallFire?

CallFire is a hosted voice broadcasting service which offers basic to advanced voice broadcasting services.

Services included are sending a pre-recorded telephone call to a list of phone numbers, press #1 campaigns, easy single poll campaigns or multiple question survey. You can target both answering machines or live persons.

Callfire will send 50 broadcasts per minute. Speed can be increased upon request.

The system is entirely online and software based. To begin you upload a mp3 of your voice message or call a number to record a message. Then you set up your call list and other aspects of the campaigns online. You can run multiple campaigns with different call volumes simultaneously.

How Much Does it Cost?

CallFire voice broadcasts cost 3.5¢ per minute per call. Its 100% pay-as-you-go, No signup fees, No contracts.

Is there Free Trial?

Yes, CallFire offers a 100 minute Free Trial for you try out the service.

Let’sTalk.com Exclusive Online Offer
Receive a $100 Visa Gift Card to use anywhere when you purchase a new AT&T cell phone and plan through LetsTalk.com

Valid from 2/22 to 3/2/10.

Almost all phones are currently free. This is an online exclusive only available at LetsTalk.com

I use PhonePower for my home phone service and my phone service was down for a day which I didn’t realized for a day being a weekend.

So on Monday when I realized my phone service down, the first thing I did was to go the PhonePower site and fire up a chat session with their tech support. The wait was short and a tech started working on my issue immediately.

He asked me do a few things, like rebooting the phonepower adapter using a code that I dialed using my phone. That didn’t work.

Then he had me physically power down the phonepower adapter by pulling the plug out  and plugging it back in after waiting for 20 seconds. This forces the adapter to a hard reboot and help resolve issues. Unfortunately that didn’t work either and phone was still dead.

Then he said he will try one more thing from his end and if that doesn’t work, he will have to escalate the issue to the next level of tech support. He spent a few minutes on his side and then asked me restart the adapter again by powering it down and powering it back up.

Voila, that seemed to fix the issue and my phone was back up and running. I made a few outgoing calls to my cell phone and to my wife’s cell phone and a few incoming calls from my cell phone and all the calls went through.

The experience with the PhonePower tech support was was good. The tech support was friendly, patient and  knowledgeable.

And I also give the PhonePower phone service five stars. I have had very few issues with them and no complaints so far. Whenever I have had issues, like this one, they have been promptly resolved.

What is SkypeIn:

SkypeIn is a phone number offered by Skype so as to be able receive calls. The SkypeIn service is different from its SkypeOut service in the way that SkpyeOut is a pc-to-phone calling service using the Skype software.  SkypeIn, on the other hand is just a phone number so as to enable a Skype user to receive incoming calls. Without a SkypeIn service you don’t have a phone number which someone dial to reach you.

SkypeIn Pros:

1. Inexpensive
2. Monthly or Yearly Subscription
3. Can have upto 10 SkypeIn numbers associated to one Skype account (Good for businesses with clients in many different countries)

SkypeIn Cost:

A SkypeIn number costs $18 for 3 months, or $60 for 12 month. Remember its just a number and not calling plan.

If you need a calling plan, Skype offers 3 plans(a bit confusing). If you live in the US/Canada the Skype unlimited US and Canada calling plan at $2.95/month will give unlimted calling in US and Canada.

If you need a calling plan where you will need to call outside of your country of residence , you will need a Skype Unlimited Country Plan at $6.95/month.

If you need to call multiple countries outside of your country of residence , you will need the Skype Unlimited World Plan at  $12.95/month.

SkypeIn Deal:

15% discount on Yearly plan

If you have Skype Calling plan (discussed above) then your SkypeIn number will be 50% Off regular price.

SkypeIn Availability:

SkypeIn local numbers are available in 20 countries. And you can get a local number in any of the 20 countries. It doesn’t matter where you live. You can choose a local number in any country where either your friends, family or your business clients reside. Choosing a number local to others will help them(your family or business clientele) will let them call you by making local calls and avoid international calling cost.

Nextiva Fax a leader in internet email fax service from small and medium scale businesses has a 30% off offer on their annual plan. The monthly payment plan costs around $9.95/month. But if you sign up for the yearly plan at $83.40/year (or $6.95/month) you get a 30% discount.

with Nextiva Email Fax you get 500 pages of faxes per month. Your entire fax solution is online, which means you send and receive faxes through email and you have access to all your faxes from anywhere.

Nextiva fax also has multiple payment options to cater to businesses of all sizes. You can read our Nextiva Fax Review here and take advantage of the 30% off offer.

If you are voip user, write a honest and informative review about your voip service provider in our voip users forum for a chance to win a Logitech wireless mouse. No purchase necessary. All you need is to be voip phone service user and write a review.

You must sign up with a valid email address, reviews must be original and not copied from anywhere, must not contain any derogatory remarks. Reviews can be positive or negative but must be civil. Reviews must be posted in our voip users forum.

Packet8 voip service was down for a better part of the day on 01/12, including their two websites, packet8.com and 8×8.com. The service came back up at 4:30 pm pacific. Company sources say the outage was caused by some internet elements beyond their control.

After the service went down, packet8 employees were also cut off from their phone service and had to use their personal cell phone to communicate with frustrated users. During the outage, customers went online services like twitter for updates and alerting other users.

Packet8 had experienced a similar outage a year ago. At that time it was DNS issue with their domain registrar.

The company has said that they are taking steps to prevent such outages in future.

If you already have a high speed internet connection at home there is no reason why you shouldn’t save a bunch by switching to voip. In addition to cheaper home phone service, many voip phone service providers offer additional features for free that saves you extra. Here are the top 5 ways a voip service will save you money

1. Unlimited Calls for a flat fee

Most Voip providers offer unlimited US & Canada calling plans at a very affordable price compared to regular phone companies.

2. Free Faxing
   

Though not all voip providers offers faxing capability. But some do, like Phonepower. With PhonePower, you can send outbound faxes by hooking up a regular fax machine to the voip adapter. And that’s not all. PhonePower you can also receive inbound faxes with their fax enabled voicemail. And its free.


3. Free Additional Line

With some providers, you can have an additional virtual line for free. This is like having two phone numbers. The way it works, you hook up two phones to the voip adapter, and you can make and receive calls from both the phones at the same time. And this feature is also free.

4. Local Number Anywhere

If you have friends and family in City A and you live in City B, you can get a City A local number, which could also be your main phone number. That way all the calls your friends and family make to you, are local for them. So voip doesn’t only save you money, it can also save your friends and family money.

5. International Calls – Cheap or Free

There is a rush now by the voip providers to offer free or cheap international calls. Vonage offers free calls to over 40 countries. Phonepower offers 60 minutes of free calling to 80 countries. Lingo offers free calls to 100 countries.

Phonepower voip service is one of the few voip providers to offer free faxing capability with their regular phone service plans. If you have a fax machine you can send faxes using PhonePower, just hook the fax machine to the phonepower voip adapter. With its ‘fax enabled voicemail service’, you receive incoming faxes.

And more importantly ITS FREE.

Though PhonePower doesn’t promote this feature well enough on their website, the faxing feature is there to be used. All its voip plans have the faxing feature enabled. And its free unlike other Voip providers who doesn’t offer free faxing with their phone service but sell a separate faxing plan in addition to the phone service.

Let’s look at both inbound and outbound faxing using PhonePower phone servcie.

Outbound Faxing:

1. Cost: Free with the Phone Service
2. All you need is a fax machine
3. Troubleshooting Tips: If you are having difficulty sending faxes, try sending one page at at a time instead of sending a bunch of pages together.

Inbound Faxing:

1. Cost: Free with the Phone Service.
2. How it Works: Since its a free service, the way inbound faxing works is kind of archaic though. If you are expecting incoming faxes and when the phone rings don’t pick up the phone and let it go to the PhonePower voicemail. PhonePower will retrieve the fax and will send it to your email. But you must have the PhonePower voicemail enabled.

Remember, the faxing feature that PhonePower offers is not a business fax solution. Its meant for low volume home users users who don’t send/receive a lot of faxes. There are many online fax providers, like RingCentral, who offer cheap and excellent faxing solutions for small businesses. PhonePower fax for its phone subscribers is an just an extra feature which is very handy when you need to send or receive small number faxes. Please note that many other voip providers don’t offer this service for free.