Desperately looking for new SIP Provider

[GoneWithTheWindows]

Hi All,

So we have had endless issues with our current SIP provider.
Looking for suggestions on who you guys are using.

We have tried ICT Globe, Broadlink, iConnect.

We need the following.

- Good call quality
- Decent rates
- Cross connects at terraco
- They must have super good uptime!

TIA!

 

[Went_For_Beer]

pm sent

 

[Mal1ce]

Looked at Switch Telecom?

 

[Craig-C]

Anyone tried MTN Business?

 

[dillydog]

Hello I am sure that we can help, drop me a message if you haven't come right...

 

[mister]

+1 for SwitchTel

 

[chrisc]

Looking for an alternative to Telkom landline for my home

Telkom's billing dept is a shambles. Had the same number since 1972 and all has been well. Since April 2018, I get billed for an unknown company's Yellow Pages Advert. So far R77 000,00. I refuse to pay the extra service and have been told Telkom will cut my service. Billing dept cannot (or will not) sort it out. Over 100 phone calls so far. Telkom store truly useless, rude and unhelpful

Have a fairly large house and would need several handsets. Don't know if these are wired together, or wireless

Enquired with VOX Telecom who told me to accept their package or go without. Cannot find out how their service connects to my fibre router and whether I can keep my existing ISP

My current ISP does not offer any voice services

Any pointers or suggestions please?

 

[Monka]

Looking for an alternative to Telkom landline for my home

Telkom's billing dept is a shambles. Had the same number since 1972 and all has been well. Since April 2018, I get billed for an unknown company's Yellow Pages Advert. So far R77 000,00. I refuse to pay the extra service and have been told Telkom will cut my service. Billing dept cannot (or will not) sort it out. Over 100 phone calls so far. Telkom store truly useless, rude and unhelpful

Have a fairly large house and would need several handsets. Don't know if these are wired together, or wireless

Enquired with VOX Telecom who told me to accept their package or go without. Cannot find out how their service connects to my fibre router and whether I can keep my existing ISP

My current ISP does not offer any voice services

Any pointers or suggestions please?

Vox is your best bet. Please PM me

 

[mister]

Looking for an alternative to Telkom landline for my home

Telkom's billing dept is a shambles. Had the same number since 1972 and all has been well. Since April 2018, I get billed for an unknown company's Yellow Pages Advert. So far R77 000,00. I refuse to pay the extra service and have been told Telkom will cut my service. Billing dept cannot (or will not) sort it out. Over 100 phone calls so far. Telkom store truly useless, rude and unhelpful

Have a fairly large house and would need several handsets. Don't know if these are wired together, or wireless

Enquired with VOX Telecom who told me to accept their package or go without. Cannot find out how their service connects to my fibre router and whether I can keep my existing ISP

My current ISP does not offer any voice services

Any pointers or suggestions please?

port to Switchtel or Freshphone (if you want free)

If you use an ATA you can connect your existing analogue handsets to the voip account using your existing telkom wiring.

 

[philaniH]

Looking for an alternative to Telkom landline for my home

Telkom's billing dept is a shambles. Had the same number since 1972 and all has been well. Since April 2018, I get billed for an unknown company's Yellow Pages Advert. So far R77 000,00. I refuse to pay the extra service and have been told Telkom will cut my service. Billing dept cannot (or will not) sort it out. Over 100 phone calls so far. Telkom store truly useless, rude and unhelpful

Have a fairly large house and would need several handsets. Don't know if these are wired together, or wireless

Enquired with VOX Telecom who told me to accept their package or go without. Cannot find out how their service connects to my fibre router and whether I can keep my existing ISP

My current ISP does not offer any voice services

Any pointers or suggestions please?

You can PM me, its going to be a wanatel service.

 

[argh]

Looking for an alternative to Telkom landline for my home

Telkom's billing dept is a shambles. Had the same number since 1972 and all has been well. Since April 2018, I get billed for an unknown company's Yellow Pages Advert. So far R77 000,00. I refuse to pay the extra service and have been told Telkom will cut my service. Billing dept cannot (or will not) sort it out. Over 100 phone calls so far. Telkom store truly useless, rude and unhelpful

Have a fairly large house and would need several handsets. Don't know if these are wired together, or wireless

Enquired with VOX Telecom who told me to accept their package or go without. Cannot find out how their service connects to my fibre router and whether I can keep my existing ISP

My current ISP does not offer any voice services

Any pointers or suggestions please?

There are 2 options for voice if you do not have a Telkom landline: the mobile/cellphone network or VOIP (over the internet). Over time everybody will be forced to discontinue their landlines, because Telkom is rapidly ending copper-based services throughout South Africa.

I recently joined this forum to learn what others are doing about this, and post what I was doing. There is a lot of information on this forum. At the top of any forum page, right-hand side, choose the lower search icon with the word "Search" next to it. Do a search on 'VOIP", and also do a search on "Telkom copper" (quotation marks are just to indicate the search terms to use, and do not have to be included in typing your search).

Vox told me that you can plug a VOIP phone into an ethernet plug at the back of any ADSL, LTE, or fibre router You need at least 4Mbps line speed. If you use a cordless type VOIP phone rather than the one that looks like a fixed handset, you can have several cordless handsets linked to the base plugged into the back of the router. VOIP using your router will only work when their is power. For times with no electricity, you will need back-up power. However, as an addition to or as an alternative to the handsets, you can have an app on your smartphone(s) that use the VOIP service. If you buy a special adapter, you may be able to use a landline phone plugged into the phone jack at the back of a router.

 

[bobcpt]

Looking for an alternative to Telkom landline for my home

Telkom's billing dept is a shambles. Had the same number since 1972 and all has been well. Since April 2018, I get billed for an unknown company's Yellow Pages Advert. So far R77 000,00. I refuse to pay the extra service and have been told Telkom will cut my service. Billing dept cannot (or will not) sort it out. Over 100 phone calls so far. Telkom store truly useless, rude and unhelpful

Have a fairly large house and would need several handsets. Don't know if these are wired together, or wireless

Enquired with VOX Telecom who told me to accept their package or go without. Cannot find out how their service connects to my fibre router and whether I can keep my existing ISP

My current ISP does not offer any voice services

Any pointers or suggestions please?

A voip service runs on top of your existing internet connection. There is no need to change your isp.

You will need to use either a voip capable router, a sip ata (analogue telephone adapter) device or voip capable handset which connects to your router using a network cable. Once connected, you login to device's web based user interface and configure it with your voip username and password.

If you use a voip capable router (e.g. Huawei B315) or sip ata adapter, you will be able to connect any existing analogue phone/cordless base station to it. Most cordless/dect phones allow you to register multiple handsets with a single base station, so there is no need to run wires inside the house.

The last option would be to invest in a voip capable cordless phone system like a Gigaset or Yealink. Generally they support more advanced features such as multiple in and outbound voip calls and high definition voice.

 

[Mlindim01]

Looking for an alternative to Telkom landline for my home

Telkom's billing dept is a shambles. Had the same number since 1972 and all has been well. Since April 2018, I get billed for an unknown company's Yellow Pages Advert. So far R77 000,00. I refuse to pay the extra service and have been told Telkom will cut my service. Billing dept cannot (or will not) sort it out. Over 100 phone calls so far. Telkom store truly useless, rude and unhelpful

Have a fairly large house and would need several handsets. Don't know if these are wired together, or wireless

Enquired with VOX Telecom who told me to accept their package or go without. Cannot find out how their service connects to my fibre router and whether I can keep my existing ISP

My current ISP does not offer any voice services

Any pointers or suggestions please?

This is an awesome problem and the options are endless. Raspberry Pi with Freepbx, old PC box with FreePBX. On Raspberry you can comfortably run 4 extension. The Desktop FreePBX was unparalleled as I was able to setup my own intercom system, free call recording for inbound and outbound. Other options is full cloud hosted FreePBX which gives you the ability to access these services from any where globally. If you have a budget go for full video calling functionality on same setup, video door bell that ring on your cell phone regardless where you are. I great to for checking in on the kids without them dialing your phone. Our infrastructure can achieve this and best part OPEN SOURCE so cost are extremely low. You can chose a phone number, port and all the usual services norms. Regards Mel MComm Technologies 010 140 1490.

 

[Thor]

This is an awesome problem and the option are endless. Raspberry Pi with Freepbx, old PC box with FreePBX. On Raspberry you can comfortably run 4 extension. The Desktop FreePBX was unparalleled as I was able to setup my own intercom system, free call recording for inbound and outbound. Other options is full cloud hosted FreePBX which gives you the ability to access these services from any where globally. If you have a budget go for full video calling functionality on same setup, video door bell that ring on your cell phone regardless where you are. I great to for checking in on the kids without them dialing your phone. Our infrastructure can achieve this and best part OPEN SOURCE so cost are extremely low. You can chose a phone number, port and all the usual services norms. Regards Mel MComm Technologies 010 140 1490.

Explain this to me - I understand the FreePBX part but if I wanted to do this myself (Sommer just small home office with 3 staff) how would the actual call work IE will I need a telkom landline and a converter to feed it into the PI?

 

[Mlindim01]

Explain this to me - I understand the FreePBX part but if I wanted to do this myself (Sommer just small home office with 3 staff) how would the actual call work IE will I need a telkom landline and a converter to feed it into the PI?

You would need to get an ATA (eg. Grandstream HT814 FXS and FXO) device which will convert your analog Telkom line to digital and set it up as an extension and trunk. The rest is purely configuration. Calls come in through your Telkom line and are made through the same line. Limitation are you have only 1 line. If you get a SIP trunk however things start to make sense. (Multiple inbound and out bound lines) You will need either fibre, microwave link or LTE connection to achieve this. The headache comes with getting configuration correct otherwise this is worth the learning curve.

 

[Thor]

You would need to get an ATA (eg. Grandstream HT814 FXS and FXO) device which will convert your analog Telkom line to digital and set it up as an extension and trunk. The rest is purely configuration. Calls come in through your Telkom line and are made through the same line. Limitation are you have only 1 line. If you get a SIP trunk however things start to make sense. (Multiple inbound and out bound lines) You will need either fibre, microwave link or LTE connection to achieve this. The headache comes with getting configuration correct otherwise this is worth the learning curve.

Alright so SIP == Virtual Number company like say Euphoria (which has their own switches to telkom etc). Does the SIP replace the physical telkom landline?

 

[inkos]

Would an ATA work with your house alarm and monitoring company?

 

[Mlindim01]

Correct, no need for Telkom line all you need is an internet connection to link you to services. Things in VoIP work a little different. The SIP trunk is a line to make calls and is independent. The telephone number you have is more a tag that is attached to the trunk so calls can be received. This mean you can add as many tags (numbers) as you like to your trunk. Now, because the line is actually internet packets, in theory there should be no limit to the amount of call you can make or receive. Only limit is hardware limitation or service provider set limit. I suggest a trunk that is not linked to any services. e.g. Axxess or MWeb. Only issue I have seen is limited expertise around the support consultants, porting numbers etc. VoIP call rates extremely low as there is lots of completion, so shop around. Don't take services outside SA as this causes latency, that annoying delay on international calls. Quick test is to download Grandstream wave on playstore and set it up your trunk there first. you need three pieces of info (server/IP address, username and password) and build from there. When we built our first system in 2015 we dropped our business call costs from R4500 to +- R800. We had 3 sales professionals on the phones daily. There are a few tricks to getting this right so keep tweaking.

 

[Mlindim01]

Would an ATA work with your house alarm and monitoring company?

Security companies use radio/gsm network signals so this would not be possible. If your are looking to remotely access your home alarm system from your cellphone, you would have to look at something like a Hyyp radio which comes with mobile app. You can disarm or arm your alarm on the go. Great for things like garden services where you can open your gate, disarm the outside of the house from the office.

 

[DeSLAM]

Would an ATA work with your house alarm and monitoring company?

An ATA will work if your alarm still uses an old analogue modem to dial to the monitoring centre.


If your alarm uses GSM. Then the question doesn't apply at all, as the alarm uses a GSM modem with a SIM card over a Cellphone provider network to dial out. Essentially GSM modem alarms use a "cellphone" module to dial out.

With an alarm that has an analogue modem....

What you basically have to do is wire your home's main telephone cable (where it comes into your house) to the FSX port of the ATA. If the ATA is set-up correctly -the alarm's analogue modem will dial out via the ATA, just like any telephone device connected to your home's telephone cable network would.

Just remember to put your ATA, and your Fibre router on a battery backup as well. Just like your alarm is.

And if you switch to a VOIP provider don't leave your homes phone cables connected to Telkom. Link it only to your VOIP gateway like the ATA.