NTL/Chorus to offer VOIP soon?

dubadubdub

One of the Sunday papers (The Business Post I think) had an article about VOIP and it mentioned that NTL and Chorus have said they would be offering a VOIP service soon. Has anyone heard anything else about this? I have a vague recollection that this was rumoured months ago.

Blaster99

It's one of these things that NTL has been talking about for years, along with a bunch of other things. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won't.

paulm17781

They will be releasing it in January 2005. I can't wait. :rolleyes:

TimTim

So they'll release something which isn't likely to burst into flames then?

Freddie59

TimTim wrote:

So they'll release something which isn't likely to burst into flames then?

???????

Might set the market on fire alright.........................

SkepticOne

Freddie59 wrote:

???????

Might set the market on fire alright.........................

A few years back NTL withdrew from a phone service over cable claiming that the equipment was a fire risk.

TempestSabre

I had to stop using my NTL with Blueface. Was too unreliable.

dubadubdub

TempestSabre wrote:

I had to stop using my NTL with Blueface. Was too unreliable.

I had the same kind of experience but I'm back giving it another go. But the fact that Blueface has been down for most of today for 'upgrades' doesn't have me rushing to cancel the eircom line! Maybe the 'upgrade' will improve the service:rolleyes:

msmx5

TempestSabre wrote:

I had to stop using my NTL with Blueface. Was too unreliable.

I've been using Blueface over NTL since last December, I had intermittant problems and experienced some bad voice quality on the uplink, especially in the first quarter of this year but since around April and untill yesterday its been rock solid.

I carried out a bit of troubleshooting at the start of the year and it was obvious that the voice quality problems were down to packet loss over NTL. This has much improved and call quality has improved dramatically - now my NTL connection is good enough to hold up 2 simultaneous calls and moderate downloading (with QoS enabled). I know the NTL uplink has increased from 100kbps to 200kbps over this period but it is the packet loss and improved latency that has contributed mostly to the perceived improvement in service in my opinion.

If it wasn't for the outage which began yesterday I'd have suggested you give the blueface/NTL combo a chance again.

TempestSabre

There was a background of problems with my NTL before I tried Blueface. I had gone through the hoops for about a year previously, getting that sorted.

So when I had problems with Blueface I tried all sorts of things. I upped the the 2mb and its increased upload did help, but it just wasn't consistent. Tried all sorts of settings, and Blueface couldn't find a problem. The best calls were just ok qualitywise, but I'd say 40-50% of calls I had problems with. Usually my number was constantly busy/unavailable, or theres was echo on the line or it was distorted. Seemed to be worse in the evenings and weekend. I put it down to contention in the area, and poor latency. The problem was the inconsistency of the NTL connection. Online gaming has always been poor on my NTL because of the latency and lag.

In the end it just wasn't reliable enough and was just a pain. If I have to spend so much time trying to trouble shoot it, and increase my NTL to make it work, then its not worth it. I'm back on UTV phone package which works perfectly and obviously if I want I can use Skype which works better than VOIP on a poor connection. The Eircom line rental is still the main cost on the phone line, which is a scandal. Especially since it fails the ASDL test itself. I shouldn't have to pay for a poor quality line at the same rate.

My main problem with this, is that it shouldn't be up to me to troubleshoot any of this stuff. But theres no mechanisms within Eircom or NTL to deal with problems in a professional and competent way. You have to fight tooth and nail to get any sort of support from them.

The infrastructure on my area D.15 is obviously stuffed. Who ever put it in should be made fix it, or penalised for doing such a poor job. We'll suffer because of it for years.

JNive

http://www.lgi.com/ireland.html

dubadubdub

So from the link above it seems like they will be. This could be good news so long as they allow for number porting and if they manage to get the cost and call quality right. Got to be better than Blueface - doesn't it?

msmx5

dubadubdub wrote:

So from the link above it seems like they will be. This could be good news so long as they allow for number porting and if they manage to get the cost and call quality right. Got to be better than Blueface - doesn't it?

FYI..

I think Blueface use NTL as their provider of geographic numbers... I recall having to fill in NTL as the provider I was porting my number to when completing the Blueface porting application.

PS Whats wrong with Blueface?? OK they have had some outages over the last two weeks but overall their service is relaible, cost effective and fully featured.

dubadubdub

msmx5 wrote:

Whats wrong with Blueface?? OK they have had some outages over the last two weeks but overall their service is relaible, cost effective and fully featured.

I agree that their service is cost effective and fully featured but personally I have been very disappointed in the quality of the calls, not all of the time but most of the time. Perhaps a service that is run by the BB provider will offer higher call quality.

JNive

they now appear to have servers located in the smart ip range ( check the ip of their sip test server ont he tester application - 84.203.144.70 - IE - Allocation for Smart Telecom customer: Blueface(112) )

Freddie59

dubadubdub wrote:

I agree that their service is cost effective and fully featured but personally I have been very disappointed in the quality of the calls, not all of the time but most of the time. Perhaps a service that is run by the BB provider will offer higher call quality.

I've had Blueface since December 2005. Absolutely terrific service and superb customer service backup. Take a bow lads!:D

TimTim

msmx5 wrote:

FYI..

I think Blueface use NTL as their provider of geographic numbers... I recall having to fill in NTL as the provider I was porting my number to when completing the Blueface porting application.

PS Whats wrong with Blueface?? OK they have had some outages over the last two weeks but overall their service is relaible, cost effective and fully featured.

Don't think so, they have their own allocation from ComReg you can search it from here and they have some 076 numbers from Smart.

TempestSabre

msmx5 wrote:

...
PS Whats wrong with Blueface?? OK they have had some outages over the last two weeks but overall their service is relaible, cost effective and fully featured.

Its dependent on the quality of your boardband connection. And if you have poor support on your broadband, you've no way of fixing any problems with blueface. That was my experience.

GerardKeating

TimTim wrote:

Don't think so, they have their own allocation from ComReg you can search it from here and they have some 076 numbers from Smart.

they use NTL for outside the 01 area, and their own allocation within the 01 area, or at least they did last year.

Blaster99

They need to use NTL to do the porting.