Summary:
I'm very happy with the service, VT Unlimited, and I recommended it to a very good friend of mine today. The call quality is great now, although it took a while to get there, and I needed to replace my router with a Linksys WRT54G ver6. My old D-Link DI-614+ was not up to the job. Customer support was always eager to help. I mostly used their web interface, and for reduced waiting time on the phone I ordered priority support. I felt the staff was patient, competent, and dedicated. The rate to Austria is way to expensive, which has to be a mistake. However, I can work around that in the meantime by using the second line with www.asterisk2pstn.com (without running my own server) and another cordless handset, so my baby boy can talk to his grandma without watching the clock.
Initial setup and shipping of the box was very fast, and it worked instantly. So days from order to first phone call it only took 3 days, but getting the call quality to the point where my wife was happy enough took the 13 days mentioned above. I want to emphasize though that the problems were on our side with our equipment. ViaTalk service quality is really very good.
When I signed up I got a full second year for free, so all fees and my projected international calls included I'll pay 12.75 a month. This is no longer the case, as of today (8/27) there's only 6 months free for 24 months and 3 months free for 12 months. Still pretty darn cheap. Everything included, books, money spent testing other providers, new router etc., we'll save about $1650 over the next 24 months.
Here's the history of my experience, with all the ups and downs.:
2006-08-03
I was really impressed with the website and the reviews from this site, so I was all set to go to give ViaTalk a try (over Sunrocket). Tech support on the phone confirmed that I could use a third party VoIP router. This took about 15 minutes, call quality was good. Another similar question to email support never got answered, I finally closed it myself after a few days.
Finally I went over all the data again and noticed that the international rates to Austria, where most of my family lives, were 23 cents for *regular* calls (not cell phone calls). The rates with all other providers range between 1.9 - 8 cents. I called customer service again which took about half hour this time and the CSR broke up a few times and was not so easy to understand, but she confirmed that this was probably the right rate, opened a ticket, which was promptly answered the next day, basically just saying "sorry", and that I wouldn't be able to use any calling card to make my international calls.
Update 2006-08-04:I just got word from ViaTalk support, that if I run my own Asterisk server and route all my calls to Austria to a different provider, this *should* work. I would still use Viatalk for an incoming phone number, unlimited US calling, E911, and all the other good features. Of course this means some effort on my part, but I enjoy that kind of stuff and will share the results when it comes to it. Now I need a low cost FXS card/box that works with Asterisk.
Update 2006-08-06:
Support answered (on a Saturday and very quickly!) some more of my questions . I ordered their unlimited package today for $199. I still need to find out what's up with their advertised free second year of service. I could have saved $40 had I bought my own phone adapter elsewhere, but a) it's hard to find a telephone adapter for $40 and b) setting it up might be a hassle and I'd be on my own.
Update 2006-08-09:
Yesterday the account was set up and the adapter was shipped, 47 hours after placing the order (support said it would take between 24 and 48). The web page for changing all the options is really easy to use. I had to call tech support to get the login information for my softphone (xten). I placed a few calls and the quality seemed really good, especially from the computer. The only limiting factor seems to be our handsets.
I also signed up for priority support, at least for the initial period. It's $1.95 a month and that's worth waiting less in the queue. There's also a $2.95 charge for changing the outgoing caller id.
Overall so far I have a very good impression of the company. They do what they say they do, let's hope they keep it up. Now I'm waiting for the adapter to arrive and my number to get ported.
Update 2006-08-10:
Linksys PAP2 adapter arrived (even before the USPS tracking was ever activated). Installation was not worth mentioning, just plug it in. I made a few test calls and the call quality was excellent, with minimal delay.
Update 2006-08-18:
We had some call quality issues. Support suggested to forward some ports, but our DI-614+ router doesn't have enough ports to forward for ViaTalk. Short of getting a new router they suggested to put the PAP2 adapter into the DMZ. This seemed to have done the trick, we've had no more serious call quality issues, just sometimes a slight echo or a quiet clicking that we can live with.
Until our number gets ported I forwarded our PSTN home number to the temporary ViaTalk number, which worked great for a week. Today I started to get a "disconnected" message when I called home, but the number wasn't ported yet. Support is hopefully looking into this.
This morning there were at least 5 minutes when the service was not available, no dialtone, vtnoc.net could not be reached. Since ViaTalk implemented dynamic failover this won't happen any more.
Except for the international rate issue this has been a great experience so far. Customer support is very responsive. With priority support the wait time on the phone is less than 10 minutes, via email it is sometimes right away, usually though 1-2 hours, i.e. when I submit the request, after dinner I can have the response.
Update 2006-08-20:
Support sends email that call forwarding *to* VT should work again - and it does. Yesterday there was a period of about 20 minutes when all calls were white noise and almost nothing else, then it got better by itself. Support is investigating why. We also had a call were conversation was possible, but there was a distracting noise. Tuesday is our cut off for the 14 day period where we'd get out money back, but so far we don't intend to return it.
I also figured out a configuration with Asterisk to asterisk2pstn.com and found a good cordless for $50 that would work without Asterisk and let me make calls to Austria for 1.5 cents (21.5 cents savings). I'd rather have it simpler, but it's good that VT lets me do that, not all companies would.
Update 2006-08-21:
Support tells me that the (very infrequent) noise problems are most likely router interference issues. So I moved the cordless base away from the router, we'll see if that'll do the trick. It might make sense since I found out that the phone uses 2.4GHz from handset to base, 5.8GHz only the other way.
A Viatalk decisionmaker promises me to look into the Austria rate issue, since "it does seem a bit high".
At the end of the 14 day period there were some issues, but support is working very hard to resolve them. I feel comfortable enough with the service not to cancel and get my money back. I just didn't want a repeat of our Skype disaster experience.
Update 2006-08-24:
The great majority of calls is good, but there are a number of calls where participants can't hear each other at times or where there is background noise. Support pins it on the router or the ISP. We connect the PAP2 directly to the cable modem and have several hours worth of excellent calls. So I buy a Linksys WRT54G ver6 (support says ver5 is bad) router at Walmart and hook it up. Works like a charm, except I can't designate static IPs like I could with my DI-614+. So I get the current dynamic IP and put that into the DMZ, change the lease time to a week and hope that support will help me set up a static IP with the PAP2 (my attempt at that ended with loss of dial tone). Hopefully the call quality problems are gone now.
I wish that ViaTalk would offer or endorse "wireless router x.y.z" for working with their service. I did get some guidance, but it took a lot of research. Oh well, all's well that ends well.
My last support request for setting up a static IP went unanswered for 18 hours so far, which is out of character for them. Must be a busy day, when I tried on the phone, even with priority support, I was 10th in line.
I called support again, went shopping while on hold, came back and had the service rep set me up for static IP in 5 minutes. I think this is the last thing I'll need them for. The quality with the new router is excellent and seems to be steady. I can't think of any other issues.
Update 2006-08-26:
Yesterday my number got ported, way ahead of schedule. The transition was almost instantaneously (only in limbo for about 2 hours). Today I unplugged my old service provider from my phone box outside my house and connected the ViaTalk adapter to my inside wiring (i.e. just plug a cable into any jack in the house). Now we have ViaTalk service on all the phone jacks in the house.
I even sent a fax today. It took a while at 9600 baud, but it arrived!
Update 2006-08-27:
Today I used their beta server configuration feature. I could pick the server that is closest to me (New Jersey), and selected dynamic failover routing, in case the service goes down (only once so far unscheduled for 5 minutes that I could notice). I'm also thinking about a UPS battery backup for the PAP2 and the cable modem.
Update 2006-08-28:
For at least 45 minutes today I couldn't receive incoming calls, they all went to my cell phone. My network was fine, adapter seemed connected, power cycled adapter and router, no change. Outgoing calls were fine. Support said they didn't know exactly what was going on but surmised heavy traffic between their switch and the ISP. During that call the issue mysteriously resolved itself.I did a smokeping test (available on http://www.broadbandreports.com) and found that there were some gaps, so today's incoming call failure might indeed have been an external network issue and not ViaTalk specific. I'll do some more monitoring and maybe take it up with my ISP.
Update 2006-08-29:
I managed to make a call to down under with the same calling card as before and it worked. This might have been an issue with the old faulty router. Mid conversation I switched to VT directly, where the call actually had a bit more echo, but otherwise pretty much the same.