Vox VOIP for Home user - any good?

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m0theo

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Hi

I am looking at a VOIP option to replace my old Telkom copper landline. This is for home use.

The VOX option of R171pm for unlimited landline and cellphone calls seems like a good deal to me based on my household's needs, and the price seems good as well.

Does anyone have this Vox offering? I'm looking for comments on reliability of this service as well. I couldn't find much on the forums.

This would be using a 100mb Octotel line, if that's relevant.

Thanks in advance!
 
I have been using the Vox voip solution from January. To start off the support with vox is near to non existant, in my case worst than telkom for certain things. I have also ported my number which meant I had to deal with the crappy service even more. Their auto RICA failed so many times even while submitting certified copies. The agent dealing with our porting just kinda forgot about us and was always "on lunch".

The voip itself is okay I have used it mainly on ADSL, LTE/3G and some fibre (octotel) and it worked with the usually voip/latency quirks. Better than the FLLA service telkom is shoving down everyones throat. Fibre is obviously the way to go. You can transfer the call to another number, such as your cell number, if the connection is too bad but it shouldnt be the case with fibre. These transfered calls have a hard limit of 2 hours. I use it with softphone apps, MicroSIP, Zoiper and the Vox Vobi app. I have heard having a dedicated phone hooked up to ethernet is the best way to go. The service only went down for maintenence once around the 3am window iirc.

TL;DR the support is bad if you have patience its palatable. but once you dont have to deal with support the service is as reliable as your connection and the price makes it waay worth it than our telkom landline. We havent had to deal with support after everything was setup.
 
JonOpollo said:
I have been using the Vox voip solution from January. To start off the support with vox is near to non existant, in my case worst than telkom for certain things. I have also ported my number which meant I had to deal with the crappy service even more. Their auto RICA failed so many times even while submitting certified copies. The agent dealing with our porting just kinda forgot about us and was always "on lunch".

The voip itself is okay I have used it mainly on ADSL, LTE/3G and some fibre (octotel) and it worked with the usually voip/latency quirks. Better than the FLLA service telkom is shoving down everyones throat. Fibre is obviously the way to go. You can transfer the call to another number, such as your cell number, if the connection is too bad but it shouldnt be the case with fibre. These transfered calls have a hard limit of 2 hours. I use it with softphone apps, MicroSIP, Zoiper and the Vox Vobi app. I have heard having a dedicated phone hooked up to ethernet is the best way to go. The service only went down for maintenence once around the 3am window iirc.

TL;DR the support is bad if you have patience its palatable. but once you dont have to deal with support the service is as reliable as your connection and the price makes it waay worth it than our telkom landline. We havent had to deal with support after everything was setup.
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Thanks for the detailed response. Exactly the type of feedback I was looking for.

Could I ask about the latency quirks you refer to? Is this mostly on the ADSL/3G connections used or when using fibre as well?

Also, do 3rd party VOIP apps like Zoiper work with any provider? For example, if I hypothetically took out Telkom's VOIP offering which doesn't have a dedicated softphone app (unlike Vox Vobi), could I link the Zoiper app to a Telkom VOIP solution?
 
I literally just signed up to Vox yesterday! So far all went smoothly - I have a freshphone account but have had so many problems that I'm looking at porting my number to Vox so all seems ok for the moments - can't be as bad as freshphone who have no support at all. Also was having major issues where I could not connect to their sip server at all. Will see how things go maybe I will wait a bit before porting my number...
 
m0theo said:
Thanks for the detailed response. Exactly the type of feedback I was looking for.

Could I ask about the latency quirks you refer to? Is this mostly on the ADSL/3G connections used or when using fibre as well?

Also, do 3rd party VOIP apps like Zoiper work with any provider? For example, if I hypothetically took out Telkom's VOIP offering which doesn't have a dedicated softphone app (unlike Vox Vobi), could I link the Zoiper app to a Telkom VOIP solution?
Click to expand...
The latency is noticable for me mostly when using wifi which is to be expected, on fibre it is way less jarring than adsl or mobile. It is not as responsive as a normal analogue call but you can get used to it. Think of the latency of a WhatsApp or Discord call. At first you may find yourself speaking over or repeating yourself. Wired connections are more stable minimal jitter or packet loss if any.

I am not sure if the 3rd party apps work with other providers but I am assuming as long as they give you the SIP credentials and server details it should work? Best to ask though.
 
hammell said:
I literally just signed up to Vox yesterday! So far all went smoothly - I have a freshphone account but have had so many problems that I'm looking at porting my number to Vox so all seems ok for the moments - can't be as bad as freshphone who have no support at all. Also was having major issues where I could not connect to their sip server at all. Will see how things go maybe I will wait a bit before porting my number...
Click to expand...
The porting for me took the entire 10 days that they advised (7-10 day window). Had to keep an eye on https://www.porting.co.za/PublicWebsite/ as they didnt really notify me about the completed port. I did however notice that my number was ported but my caller id didn't show the ported number on the receiving end and I had to remind VOX to just activate that. Other than that I have had no issues can receive calls to the same sip account using my 087 and 021 number.

Also their support staff like to give you prices without VAT added so the porting came down to R151,32 once off and the unlimited plan is R172,01 each month.
 
m0theo said:
Hi

I am looking at a VOIP option to replace my old Telkom copper landline. This is for home use.

The VOX option of R171pm for unlimited landline and cellphone calls seems like a good deal to me based on my household's needs, and the price seems good as well.

Does anyone have this Vox offering? I'm looking for comments on reliability of this service as well. I couldn't find much on the forums.

This would be using a 100mb Octotel line, if that's relevant.

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

When Telkom stopped copper services in my area 2 years ago, I also looked at VOIP from many providers. I was put off by the requirement for electricity or back up power to work, and some of the technical glitches that might occur. I don't know if the following would suit you, but I use Cell C's prepaid anynet calling plans, mostly the one for R200 for 15 hours of calls for 30 days. It is only for calls in South Africa, and toll-free numbers are free. To phone overseas, I use WhatsApp.
 
I have been using the Vox VOIP for about 3 years now, and have found it to be completely reliable, works like a charm. I also ported my old Telkom number.

I can't say much about the support, as I have never had a problem, and have not called them (wrt the voip).

I bought additional Gigaset phones from Amazon.de, so have a number of phones connected.

My setup is on FTTH, so as long as the line is up, voip is up.

As I have it all on UPS, it is not affected by Eskom's rolling blackouts.
 
I have been with Vox since 2018 when I went from Telkom to Vuma/Vox. While I had trouble with a refund on the Superfone option, I opted to go with my own handsets(Gigaset).I ported my telkom number over to them, no hassles fortunately. I must say I had no problems with the service regarding downtime.

To be honest, if it wasnt for their VoIP service, I would have moved to another service provider long ago,as I am really struggling with the fibre being slow every second day.
 
greenbean32 said:
I have been with Vox since 2018 when I went from Telkom to Vuma/Vox. While I had trouble with a refund on the Superfone option, I opted to go with my own handsets(Gigaset).I ported my telkom number over to them, no hassles fortunately. I must say I had no problems with the service regarding downtime.

To be honest, if it wasnt for their VoIP service, I would have moved to another service provider long ago,as I am really struggling with the fibre being slow every second day.
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Thanks for the info!

To your last point - why don't you change your ISP provider from Vox to someone else then? My understanding is that you don't have to have the same ISP for your usual internet and VOIP.

In fact I'm looking at Vox for VOIP and Cool Ideas for my ISP (on Octotel).
 
I thought it is an add-on and not standalone. If that is true, then I will definitely be changing Isp's in the near future.
 
greenbean32 said:
I thought it is an add-on and not standalone. If that is true, then I will definitely be changing Isp's in the near future.
Click to expand...
Yeah a friend of mine has Cell C as his fibre ISP and Vox as his VOIP provider, so I'm pretty sure you can keep the Vox VOIP and change your ISP.
 
I've been using it for a few years without trouble, don't need to use their app, I use gs wave as I found it a bit better than vobi.
 
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