Review by Mediocrates 
UPDATED: 167 days ago
member for 191 days, 167 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Raleigh,Wake,NC
 $28 per month (12 month contract)
 "Cheaper than POTS"
 "Too many to list"
 "Call in an airstrike"
| Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings well below consensus)
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I was an MCI Neighborhood customer for years until April 30 2008. My wife declared she was sick of paying $75/month for a line. So we moved the home line to CV based on my own previous experience with CV for a business line at the home. We had two TA's one Centillium for the old line and a new D-Link DVG-5102S for the new line.
It's been nothing but problems since May 1. The calls have been crossing over/misrouting to the wrong number. Outbound calls often fail to connect. Inbound calls are randomly being routed to the Safe Number for no reason. The line constantly broadcasts a voice mail dial tone regardless of whether there are messages or not. Call quality is poor, choppy. The TA often reports it's been powered down even when it's not which blocks outbound calls with that annoying 911 alert message.
AT&T is sending me another TA for this line. I have my doubts and am seriously planning on moving back to MCI WHATEVER THE COST. I'm sure ATT will charge me an extra $50 to early out and MCI will charge me all sorts of start up charges plus the service costs 3x more than ATT. I don't care. ATT is that bad.
The most bizarre thing of all is that as I said, I already have this service on another line and it's worked acceptably well. Not wonderfully but it's acceptable. My company pays those bills so I'm not exposed to the billing nonsense.
Moreover my first bill was twice as high as I was lead to believe. They waived the first month bill and charged me 'shipping' for the first TA but they also charged a 'startup' charge and another charge which I can only describe as a 'request for startup'. Plus there are $3 dollars in incidental charges which may or may not taxes. They are probably junk fees.
So in the final analysis, it's junk. Straight up junk. If it were free it wouldn't be worth it. Seriously. There is nothing on planet earth cheap enough to make me listen to a houseful of family members screaming at me for forcing this on them. Every day I hear grumbling and complaining about what junk this is. And at this point, it doesn't matter what the problem is, even if they call someone's cell phone and the other end drops out, CV had been so bad so far that it gets blamed.
If that wasn't bad enough now ATT tells me that there's no way they can port the phone number they got from MCI back to MCI - well they can, sort of, but only for Long Distance. Apparently I am trapped forever in CV for local (only) service. I don't even know how that would work - use two different phones for the same # depending on whether it's long distance or local? That sounds insane.
The problem with porting the number back to MCI seems to be MCI's problem.
I have replaced my router and tweaked the ports, assigned a static IP and dumped it in the DMZ and it may or may not be functioning well now. I DO know the complaints have lessened. So perhaps there is hope on the horizon.
6/20/2008:
My home line was cancelled today. I have moved that homeline to Vonage. My business line, paid by my employer, is still AT&T CV.
Followup comments:  Fisamo
Premium
join:2004-02-20
Apex, NC
 ·AT&T CallVantage
edit:
May 27th, @04:13PM
| Problems with ATTCV... Sorry to hear of your difficulties with the service. I've had it since Oct 2004, and I'm still a very satisfied customer. That said, I have never operated two SIP devices provisioned by ATT behind one public IP address. **PERHAPS** they can fix your issue if they can set one of your accounts to use a different default SIP port (e.g. 5061 instead of 5060) for Line 1 on one of the ATAs.
Regarding porting your home number away... You should be able to port it wherever you want. You have to request the port to be done by the provider you're moving your number to, and don't ask ATT about it. You can confirm that the number's out of ATT's system after the port is complete. (In other words, it's up to MCI to be able (or not) to port your number back, not ATT.)
::Edit::
I just saw your post in the forum indicating that MCI advised you they can't port. If you're completely soured on VoIP for your home line, your best bet is to port back to "BellSouth" (now, ironically, AT&T). Once that line is up and running, you should be able to port back to MCI, as long as MCI is still taking new customers for its local services in this area.
:: /Edit ::
BTW, you will not be charged a disconnect fee if you return your ATA within two weeks.
PS: If this experience has not completely soured you on VoIP, you might consider a different provider, such as Vonage, Voicepulse, etc., or even TWC Digital Phone. If you're working with multiple providers, it might be better. Another factor to consider: If your ISP is cable, your neighborhood might be oversold, and you may not be able to practically support two lines.
Best wishes in getting your service up and running to your satisfaction (whichever provider you choose). There's nothing worse than a WAF (or FAF--wife/family Approval Factor) in the toilet.  | |
| | pluskey
Premium
join:2003-07-09
Columbia, MD
 ·Verizon FIOS
·AT&T CallVantage
| Happy customer, but some suggestons for you I have been a CallVantage 2-line customer for almost 2 years now, and have been completely satisfied. That said, you clearly are not, so I offer some suggestions which may help you.
First - inferring from your original post and some responses, it seems like you have two Telephone Adapters behind your router serviced by one public IP on the WAN side. That may be a problem, since they would fight for resources. Unless you need 3 or 4 lines, the problem may be solved by talking to a Callvantage human, explain the situation, and have them route (provision) the two lines in question to one TA, lines 1 and 2 respectively. I don't know if this is available, since it seems like your company is paying for one account and you are paying for the other, which may mean you have separate billing accounts which may confuse the situation.
Here is one big point in favor of Callvantage, you can talk to a human, and they usually speak English. They also seem, in my experience, to be able to do more than apologize - they actually can help. That is not always available with other VOIP providers.
If you need 3-4 lines, I know Callvantage offers that solution under their business VOIP offering. Maybe they can work out something for you using the business TA with your personal line, giving you two business lines and provisioning your personal line on the TA line 3 or 4. Again, a call to a human would be in order.
If the above situation is not as described, next I would ask what your internet connection is like (DSL, Cable), speed, etc. If you have the cheapest available DSL, you may not have enough upload bandwidth to support more than one line. General rules of thumb I have read say that you should have 90Kb upload speed per line, which is probably very conservative and leaves you ample upload bandwidth for computer use.
If you have cable internet, you may experience latency related problems, which usually appear as choppy voice quality. Since you don't describe this as a problem, I don't think it is an issue at this time.
So there it is, free advice, worth every penny. | |
|  | Mediocrates
join:2008-05-27
Raleigh, NC | Re: Happy customer, but some suggestons for you If by 'human' you mean machine, yeah. | |
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