Voipo Review
My Personal Voipo Review
About a month before writing this I heard about VOIPO, a voice over IP phone service, for the first time. It didn’t take me long to realize that this was the company I was looking for.
The latest in the string of telephone services buyouts, placed my service in the hands of AT&T. Prior to that it was SBC. Before SBC we had Ameritech. Prior to Ameritech it was Wisconsin Bell. I lost all love of phone companies with Ameritech, whose customer service was appalling. Since SBC and AT&T simply took over where Ameritech left off, I never developed much goodwill toward them either.
Use Your Regular Phone Over the Internet with VOIPO
Now there are other options. Instead of just having telephone service, AT&T wanted me to switch to U-verse so that they not only had the phone service but TV and internet service too. At the same time, my cable company is pushing me to switch to their all-in-one package so that they can get my phone service.
What about those of us who don’t want to bundle our services with a single provider? I previously considered moving away from AT&T phone service to a competitive carrier, but with all the features bundled in, I would end up spending more money to do that. I am interested in saving money, not spending more!
OK, Here’s Where the Voipo Review Really Starts
Well, then I found VOIPO. It runs your telephones over your internet connection. If you want to you can keep your existing phone number. I’ve had my number for years, so that was important to me. They sent me a little device that plugged in between my cable modem and internet router. I plugged my wireless phone base into the Voipo unit and, voila, I have phone service!
After I ordered Voipo I had to provide an authorization form so that they could wrestle my phone number away from AT&T. It only took about a week for that. The small piece of hardware arrived before AT&T gave up the number. It’s easy to test though. When the Voipo hardware arrived, they included a temporary phone number so that I could use it before my number transferred.
If you want to have a second number on the line it’s only another $36 per year at the time I’m writing this. Those numbers can be in different cities, really cool if you have a summer home and a winter home! But, here’s another great feature, you could just take your Voipo hardware with you and plug it into your internet connection somewhere else and it would still work, giving you the same phone number in a different place. That makes your land-line almost as portable as your cell-phone.
I noticed there were two phone jacks on the Voipo hardware. Upon investigation I found that if you plug in two telephones, another call could come in while the first line is in use. Or another person could make an outgoing call. This is all over a single line, without paying for a second number. My wife and daughter could each yack on the phone all night long, on a single line, without hearing each other, or bothering my internet usage.
Review of Voipo Call Quality
To be complete this Voipo review must say something about call quality. Most of the time I experience call quality comparable to a land line. This means to me that it is much better than mobile phone quality. I’ve never had dropouts. I do hear some clicking every once in a while, more often over the dial-tone than over conversation however. I think the call volume is a bit higher than what I was use to with our AT&T service.
I am a big fan of Skype too. I have Skype on my computer and it’s perfect for certain applications. But it requires me to be at my computer. Since I have a wireless phone base plugged into Voipo, I have total freedom. I can make and receive calls just like normal.
At one point I bought a wireless Skype phone that could communicate through a wireless router. It was a neat idea, but was still rather limited. The biggest drawback with the Skype phone was the long delay, kind of like a cellphone, maybe worse. And, by the time you add the ability to call anyone in the U.S. and add voicemail, you end up with a price tag nearly the same as Voipo, without all the many benefits of Voipo.
Here’s Where the Voipo Review Comes to an End
The Voipo service comes with many features you’d expect with premium service such as Caller ID, Call Waiting, 3-Way Calling, Voicemail, Online Call History (incoming and outgoing), Call Forwarding, and FREE nearly-unlimited long distance. You can even have your voicemails emailed to you. How cool is that!
All those features are in the base price, and you get a 30-day guarantee. With all that you might expect to pay a ton. I paid $185, including all fees and taxes, for 2 years of service. That’s $7.70 per month. With the basic phone service I had with AT&T I paid about $30 per month with no features. Now I get so much more and a 75% discount. And that doesn’t even count the fact that I will spend exactly $0 on long distance.
I hope you have enjoyed this Voipo review. Now go try it for yourself by clicking the banner below.
