Two years of VOIP

I first foray'ed into VOIP land about two years ago.

At the time, I was an unhappy landline customer who objected to forking over over $50/month for a dial tone. So I happily ponied up $18/month for Lingo's VOIP solution. It was spotty at first, and took probably most of a year to settle down, and then they jacked up the price above $20/month. So, after the year's contract was up, I jumped over to SunRocket for a mere $199/year.

Well, that took like five months to convince them that they could port the number and another five months (or so it seemed) for them to actually port it and then continue to mess it up. So, I didn't think much when the red light was blinking on the router - I simply reset it and hoped for it to reload the configuration. Little did I know that the company had decided to shut down a few days earlier.

By and by, the liquidators enlightened us that we had a choice of two preferred providers - Packet 8 and TeleBlend. Since TB was cheaper (buyer beware), I went with TB. I even gave them a credit card to charge (which they did not). Additionally, TB actually continued to service the servers/equipment from SR, so, in my estimation, it was the better choice.

Today, about a week after no inbound calls, I see that an opinion has been rendered that the community should stay away from TB. Great choice, self!!!

Oh, I did sign up with a landline provider when I learned that SR was kaput! Sage Telecom. Only after signing up did I realize that they may not have been the best price point. I called AT&T (horrors) this week, to learn that a plain jane, local, touch tone service, would be $11/month BEFORE TAXES. Wonder what that would be after taxes. Sage was $25 before taxes and about $49 after taxes, so, I'm back to the landline prices. More I learned - AT&T also has a $31+tax monthly service, but they waive installation charges of $38.35 for that, and it takes 5 business days to turn on that service. Of course, I could switch down to the $11+tax monthly service once the $31 monthly service was activated but they did not mention if there would be a service charge to CHANGE SERVICE.

So, the jury's still out.

VOIP - dunno
LandLine - dunno

Me - SOL

Customer Dis-Service, Tech follow-up

Well, more searching on the Internet, and supposedly the 'problem' with the receiver 'seeing' the satellites is that the switch is a 'Pro' version and the receiver cannot work with 'Pro' equipment. One problem I have with this analyis is that I have another receiver which is the same model and it is able to receive a signal connecting to the same cable.

Oh well, more troubleshooting to come...