I wasn’t simply speculating about my phone bill last month. Yesterday I got myself together and went on with the change. I didn’t however take the easy route of buying a packaged deal from a normal “layman’s VoIP company” like Vonage. The true bargain hunter is always looking for a challenge ;-) and so I signed up for an account with one of so called Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) VoIP providers and used my old SunRocket gizmo for the equipment. Below is my experience with the transition.
1. Unlock your SunRocket gizmo
First I had to unlock my old VoIP router so I could provision it to use with the new VoIP provider. You can skip this step if you buy off the shelf VoIP router. The gizmo I had was InnoMedia MTA6328-2re and these are the exact steps that I had to follow to unlock it:
1. Unplug cable from gizmo WAN port (so you are disconnected from Internet).
2. With PC connected to gizmo LAN port, go to http://192.168.251.1 , log in with user and welcome.
3. Open this URL: http://192.168.251.1/restore2.ssi ; after about 15 seconds you should see a message about reset to defaults. Wait another 30 seconds.
4. Close browser window. At this point your gizmo should be in the same state as when SunRocket first shipped it to you.
5. Open a new browser window, go to http://192.168.251.1/Voice_adminPage.htm (do not open gizmo home page first).
6. When prompted for password, use user: admin and password: slapshot
7. Go to IP Network->Provisioning Setting. Uncheck Enable Provisioning. Click Save & Reboot. Click OK to warning.
2. Sign up for CallCentric account
I suggest signing to the Pay Per Call plan first so you can try out the call quality first without spending too much money. The only fee to pay during the sign up is 911 Cost Recovery Fee ($1.50). Other than that the costs are just $0.0198 per minute when you call within the US and you can deposit as little as $5 into your account.
3. Configure your gizmo for CallCentric
When you sign up to CallCentric they will prompt you to go through the setup guide which has instructions for a number of popular routers. I didn’t look at all of them but the instructions they had for InnoMedia were very detailed and had several screenshots. It was really a piece of cake to follow them and get my gizmo up and running.
4. Make a few test calls
Once your gizmo is configured and provisioned with CallCentric, use it for a while to see if you like the service quality. You will not at this point be able to receive incoming calls (you will have to buy a phone number or port your existing number) but you still can test incoming calls with their ClickToDial tool. Another way to test incoming calls is if you know somebody who is already a CallCentric customer (they are giving you an internal 777 number that can only be used within the network).
5. Port your phone number
The last thing I did was buy a real phone number. The “Pay Per Minute” version is just $1.95 per month and $0.015 per minute. As you order the service you have a choice of buying a new number or porting your existing one. If you choose the latter CallCentric will ask you to provide some information about your current provider (name, address, a copy of recent statement) and will submit a LNP request which in my case is estimated to take 2 weeks to process. If you port – the porting fee is $25, if you buy – the new number fee is $3.95.
6. Enjoy your new phone service!
I have not had much time to use the phone yet but I love the service (my LNP request was processed withn hours) and the web interface is one of the best I have seen. In fact I am going to borrow some of the dashboard ideas for my own project. As my phone number gets ported, I will post in the comments my experience with the service quality.
