VoIP

I don't see why not. I use NTL for my broadband and I have recently signed up to BlueFace for phone sevice. You get a local number (Dublin, Galway or Waterford so far) and when the 076 prefix becomes active you'll get an 076 number as well.

So I had the great pleasure of phone Eircom and telling them to close my account!

Cabaal wrote:

Whats the call quality of blueface like? Is their much delay?

I've got a IrishBroadband 1Mb Breeze / Blueface VoIP / Grandstream 486 ATA setup

When dialing there appears to be a bit of delay connecting, but no noticeable delay on the call.

There is nowever a bit of a permanent 'mains hum' type sound.

To be fair I havn't determined if this is due to the telephone handset,
The Grandstream box (which connects my analog phone to the ethernet),
some dodgy wiring in my house,
or is a limitation of the service.

The Grandstream ATA (analog telephone adapter) has lots of settings, so there may be room for improvement there.
Also FYI it acts as a router and DHCP server for my LAN.

Up until recently (and I've only had the setup a short while) the voice quality was fine, apart from some occasional glitchiness, which I could easily live with.

Recently the quality has degraded considerably to the point of being unuseable at times, but this is the fault of my IBB setup rather than blueface.

e.g. download 300Kbps, upload 50Kbps pings up to 50% packet loss

Obviously the phone can't handle this, blueface advised me 128Kbps upload speed for useable operation.

Assuming IBB can fix my speed problem then all should be well again. Am paying for 1Mb up/down speeds, even 1/4 of that should keep the phone happy, surely not a lot to expect ???

IBB are testing 2Mb upgrades at the moment so that may explain their equipment being a bit flaky if they're experimenting with settings.

According to the sbpost most of the ISPs will be offering some kind of VOIP solution in the next few months. In the meantime Skype is a pretty good solution

sikes wrote:

can i keep my present dublin number and is it possible to have more than 1 call going at any time?

Yes you can keep your present Dublin number - you have to request Eircom to port it over to blueface.
[Edit: if you are on one of the Freedom packages, check blueface webiste ]

Multiple calls - Yes, I believe so, but you best check with support@blueface.ie to be sure.

causal

When dialing there appears to be a bit of delay connecting

Are you pressing # at the end of dialling the number?

I have breeze lite 1mb (new equipment), blueface and no expense going to Eircom I have the Sipura (sp?) interface for my dect phone. Works brilliantly. No one calling has noticed the change from Eircom quality wise.

BigMoose wrote:

I have breeze lite 1mb (new equipment), blueface and no expense going to Eircom I have the Sipura (sp?) interface for my dect phone. Works brilliantly. No one calling has noticed the change from Eircom quality wise.

Similar story here, ntl - blueface- grandstream486 - dect quadset. Perfect

I just received mt Final Bill from Eircom - THEY OWE ME €8.49

causal

No I shouldn't think so, iirc there's some law about the length of time that must elapse before a old number is re assigned, so it should still be there for you to use.
I presume you're on FreedomBasic or FreedomPlus, if you're 'pay as you go' you afaik you don't get a number for receiving calls.

Phone blueface (dial 3000 from your handset - free ) and Aaron will email you out a form, which is for you to request that your phone number be ported over to them. You can either sign and return it, or digitally sign and email it back. That's how it worked for me, mind it took a few weeks for the port to go through because eircom dragged their heels.

hth,
causal

[Edit - fixed some typos ]

Cabaal wrote:

The support line was very helpfull and I have to say I;m impressed, so far so good.

Initially I was having trouble logging in my softphone (hardphone was fine - could make/receive calls), next thing the softphone was working fine and I couldn't figure what I'd done to get it working.

Next thing I get a phonecall "Hi, it's blueface here, I saw you were having trouble logging in so I [fixed it]... " :eek: :eek:

How's that for customer service .. they see the problem, fix it, then let you know :cool:

causal

Cabaal wrote:

Any issues anybody come across with using the VoIP hardware over the software based setup?

I had the VoIP hardware (Grandstream486) setup a lot quicker than I did the Softphone (X-Lite).
I totally prefer the hardphone. In my experience with the x-lite softphone (and Skype) you tend to get echo unless you're using a decent headset. Basically I've found the hardware (Grandstream486+normal telephone) gives far better performance than the software (X-lite, Skype).

The 486 also has an RJ11 port that allows you to connect it to your phone line so you can use it for normal pstn calls. Of course a lot of us disconnected our phone lines, so it's not needed.
On that note, if you solely use VoIP for phone calls - if you lose your broadband - you better have a mobile for making emergency calls.

BigMoose wrote:

Only issue I have with Blueface (which I must take up with support - my fault I've not so far not, not theirs!) is that I have trouble calling other VoIP users. I get 401 errors when calling a SIP address at nildram.co.uk.

I'm not sure but possibly blueface have to explicitly allow access to other VoIP networks, check out this page on the blueface website which lists 'Other VoIP Networks' and says " Want another VoIP network here? Send requests to support@blueface.ie"

Cabaal wrote:

for that matter how long has everybody here been using blue face?

3 weeks for me. Blueface only launched in December last year, so no-one has been with them much more than 3 months. They're a young company and I'm happy to be in early and support what they've had the vision/guts to do.


causal

Can I use a foreign VoIP box with Eircom? They havent blocked the communication ports or anything?

Will use it to be able to have people calling me on a local foreign number when im abroad.