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Moving my phone service to CallCentric

Published July 10th, 2009 in Money Saving Tips. 2 Comments

innomedia 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.

Do I really need $24.99/mo home phone service?

Published June 9th, 2009 in Money Saving Tools. 5 Comments

I just looked up my phone bill and realized that the $24.99 unlimited service plan I have is not adequate for me any more given all the recent advancements in wireless data communication and subsequent increased cell phone use. I get my service via 8x8 (former Packet8), a VOIP telephony company that picked up many of the SunRocket’s customers (myself included) after the company went bankrupt in 2007.

Even back then $24.99 wasn’t such a bargain and now considering this is what Vonage (a heavy lifer in VOIP world) charges for unlimited service, one can surely find a better deal, especially if they are willing to give up the ‘unlimited’ part of it. At least this is the kind of assumption I made before I went on my bounty hunt last week. A couple of days later and I am happy to report that my assumption was correct and so far it looks like I will be switching my service.

Why $24.99/mo is an overkill

First of all, I use my cell phone more than I use my home phone these days. My home number is sort of a legacy I am carrying with me. At one point I even considered abandoning my phone number altogether but it turned out no so easy to do. Too many people and businesses have it and to make things worse some businesses still require a registered home number for verification purposes and so terminating it would be a disaster. Either way I am not ready yet to take on the challenge.
Second, companies like Vonage and Packet8 take you by convenience. They will send a pre-configured phone adapter and absorb the equipment expense just to get you on the hook. If you have a bit of a DIY skill you can save yourself some $$ by taking the initial hit (and by exploring some less known providers). Can you do it? If you ever configured a wireless router yourself and you felt comfortable doing so then the answer is ‘yes’ because the skill set required from you is not much different.

What I am going to do about it

Here is my plan so far and I know it works because one of my friends went this route.

Buy a VOIP Ethernet adapter (e.g. this Linksys 2102) and sign up for a Pay Per Call account at CallCentric. There is no setup or monthly fee (except $1.50 charge for 911 service). All I will be paying is 1.98 cent per minute for US domestic calls and very competitive international rates (9.35 cent per minute to Ukraine). This will give me plenty of time to test the service quality before I make the final step.
Transfer my current phone number to CallCentric and will start receiving phone calls as well ($1.95 per month extra if you use Pay per Minute plan). Comparing this to what I currently have, $24.99 will last me over 1000 minutes per month and if I talk less (which is the exactly my case) then I will save $$.

What do you think? Will this work? Any details I am missing? Any alternative providers to consider? There is an open question I need to clarify - will two VOIP adapters (the new for CallCentric and the old I have from 8x8) work on the same network while I test the service.

Cheap international calling with JustVOIP

Published November 13th, 2008 in Money Saving Tools. 5 Comments

It is hard to find a bargain in the communication industry. The growth of internet and VOIP is bringing tons of options at our hands. Yet, today I found that at the rate of 13 cents per minute I am overpaying twice when I call my parents in Ukraine with WDT (my current provider). So much for being a pro- bargain hunter! ;-)

If I were to stumble upon JustVOIP in my web browsing I would move on. The website design looks cheap and important pieces (like About page) are missing. I did not however. It was my friend who recommended the service to me today claiming he has been using it for some time and is happy with the quality. So I jumped right in.

To begin with, rates to Europe are really low. Many countries are on the free list (below) meaning it doesn’t cost anything to call if you use the computer for your part of the call. Rates to other countries are very competitive too. (Ukraine was €0.05 + call initiation charge of €0.05). Here are the free countries:

Argentina	Hungary	Portugal
Australia	Ireland	Puerto Rico (+mobile)
Austria	Italy	Romania
Belgium	Japan	Russian Federation
Brazil	Latvia	Singapore
Bulgaria	Luxembourg	Slovak Republic
Canada	Malaysia	Slovenia
Chile	Mexico [guadalajara]	South Korea
Colombia	Mexico [mexico City]	Spain
Cyprus	Mexico [monterrey]	Sweden
Czech Republic	Monaco	Switzerland
Denmark	Netherlands	Taiwan
Estonia	New Zealand	Thailand
France	Norway	United Kingdom
Germany	Panama	United States (+mobile)
Greece	Peru	Venezuela
Hong Kong (+mobile)	Poland

You need to install software to create an account. The program runs on Windows and is similar to Skype. You can use it for calling but you don’t have to. If you prefer the old-fashioned way of calling like I do then you can do it by initiating a phone-to-phone call from the web-page. Login to your account, enter where you are calling from and where you want to call to and JustVOIP will call both numbers and connect the call together.

In addition JustVOIP offers a US based call-in number that can act as a gateway for international calling but it didn’t work well when I tried it. I heard the prompt but dialing the number didn’t connect me to the party I intended to call.

After you create an account you can buy credits €10 a piece and enjoy the savings. Don’t buy credits if free service is all you plan to use. Ether way if you give it a try - please leave a comment and let everyone know how it has worked out for you.

Relevant reading:

t-Mobile + GrandCentral = unlimited free calls

Published November 16th, 2007 in Money Saving Tips. 46 Comments

I won’t claim I invented this hack. It has been discussed a couple of times on bargain forums but I believe it is not getting the attention it deserves.

My cell phone has long become my primary way of communication and while I do believe we are slowly getting to the point when a phone will become just a VoIP platform and wireless providers will just sell data service so we all can enjoy unlimited voice calls and mobile internet (think WiMax), I also think we are far from being there and this hack brings me one step closer to this goal. Let’s see what combining GrandCentral and t-Mobile in order to get unlimited calls from/to your cell phone is really worth.

How does it work?

First ingredient you need is myFaves which is a t-Mobile feature that allows you to add up to 5 numbers to your “myFaves” list and make free unlimited calls to/from these numbers. If you don’t already have it, it costs extra $10 a month to enable it with your regular service. Alltel has a similar thing called “My Circle” and I believe it is free with any plan over $59.99

Second ingredient is GrandCentral, a service owned by Google which gives you a free local phone number to use as a relay to the other numbers you have. It is a very useful service on its own (I blogged about it last year) but for the purpose of implementing this hack you really only need a subset of the functionality it provides.

Steps to implement the hack

Inbound calling

Sign up for an account at GrandCentral. You will need an invitation for that. I have several that I can give to the first people who reply to this post.
Add the phone number you get from GrandCentral to your myFaves list (or My Circle if you use Alltel).
Configure GrandCentral to redirect all calls to your cell phone number.
Change GrandCentral Caller ID settings to “Display my GrandCentral number”. Now every time you get a call to your GrandCentral number it will be treated by t-Mobile as if you received a call from GrandCentral and counted against the pull of unlimited myFaves minutes.

Outbound calling

There are really two ways you can implement unlimited outbound calling. First is to ask your friends call your GrandCentral number and leave a short message. Once you have them all, you can listen to them by calling your GrandCentral number. One of the options GrandCentral offers as you are listening to a message is to return the call. So when you want to call one of your friends, simply call your GrandCentral number, skip to your friend’s voice mail message and then select “Return the call” option from the phone keypad.

This will work well if you have relatively few friends and becomes really inconvenient if the list of your friends grows.

The alternative way is to use Yak4Ever which is a free service (read about it here) that lets you register up to 10 numbers and call them for free. If this is the way you want to go then you will have to add Yak4Ever number to your myFaves list as well.

I have not had much experience with Yak4Ever but it did seem to have worked the last time I used them and the voice quality was decent.

Update: Just as I wrote this, Yak4ever shut down the service, but you can still use GrandCentral for your free outbound calls as described above.

What are the benefits & drawbacks?

The main benefit is that you can have unlimited calls to and from your cell phone, something that is easily worth over $100 a month. The benefit however comes at a cost. First, you will have to ask everyone to use your new phone number (the one you obtain from GrandCentral). Second, you lose Caller ID functionality. GrandCentral will announce to you who is calling but I find it less convenient than seeing the person’s name and photo (yeah, I have a picture assigned to each of my friends).

For outgoing calls the inconvenience is in the extra steps you need to make to setup the call by either returning the voice message or by dialing Yak4Ever number and selecting the appropriate entry from your list of registered numbers.

Conclusion

So is it worth the hassle or not? For me it is. I still can assign 4 of my remaining myFaves numbers to my close friends and family, but I did reserve one for GrandCentral. I plan to use it with certain people who I don’t call very often but when I do my conversations tend to take a while. Think about your far-away relatives or anyone else who you sync up with on a periodic basis.

Tell me what you think about it. Are you planning to use this hack or is it just a waste of time? One thing I keep wondering about is how long is it before Google plugs this back door. Or will it?

Source: discussions at FatWallet and SlickDeals forums

Past polls — results and comments

Published February 6th, 2007 in Interesting / Other. 0 Comments

I ran a few polls over the past two months and I thought it would be a good idea to list them all and do some analysis of the results. So here they are.

How ready are you financially to a family disaster?

This poll was in the article which I wrote shortly after learning about the Kim’s family tragedy. The results look very disturbing. If you are not that one who answered “I have done more than this” then I insist that you check out the list I compiled back in December and make sure you cover every item.

How many newspapers do you pay for?

I was kind of surprised this poll would stir so much interest. It collected 137 votes and from the answers I can say just one thing, YOU READ A LOT!

Shame on me since my answer was item 1. I just seem to read no newspapers any more. Ever since I started blogging my source of news became online publications, mostly other blogs which I discover via

Tailrank for mainstream news;
Digg for tech buzz;
Pfblogs for personal finance;
Del.icio.us for everything hot.

And by the way, the blog post running this poll was about how you can read the cover page of almost any US newspaper without actually subscribing to it.

Which of these free VOIP services do you use regularly?

The article running this poll was about free VOIP telephony services. It was not surprise for me that Skype came out the winner. It is one of the first and it is the most popular VOIP service.

Among other alternatives you suggested Vonage, Vitelity, and VoipCheap. They all are cheap and IP but they are not free (with the exception of VoipCheap which offers free international calling to some countries).

I plan to cover more VOIP services in the future. Subscribe to my full RSS feed so you don’t miss it out! (I just had to say that ;-))

Which book comparison engine do you like?

The blog post that ran this poll was my attempt to compare available options as far as comparing book prices is concerned. You seem to like Ugenie the most. However I believe Ugenie is just the one who got more publicity thanks to support from TechCrunch and other popular blogs. BooksPrice and CompareBook are very strong competitors and I would check them both next time you go shopping. You might be surprised by what you find.

Among alternatives you suggested Fetchbook which is one of the older/traditional websites and doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that the younger type are offering.

Do you carry a credit card balance?

I was honestly hoping to see better results for this one. By carrying a balance you give away a lot of cash to banks. The only reason why you ever want to load your credit card is if you have an emergency. That is the real emergency, like the one I was referring to in the first poll on this page. If you think differently you need to see a psychiatrist. (Oops, I better close comments to this post. ;-) )

By the way, the blog post running this poll was about an online tool that helps you make a decision, should you apply for a new card and transfer your balance (and save as you do so) or not. Don’t forget to cut your old card once you do the transfer to avoid the temptation of loading it up again.

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