Review by chas3 
UPDATED: 1 days ago
member for 3.7 years, 491 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Dallastown,York,PA
 $14 per month (12 month contract)
 about 6 days
 "good tech help, good call quality, great value"
 "your router can make or break your experience, see update 12/27"
 "get it.. company is stable unlike the big guy."
| Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
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Only had the adapter one day so far, but going good so far. Will update when I have more talk time, but here's my experience so far....
Researched various providers for a few days during which I contacted VT a couple times by email (ticket) and once by phone. First email ticket was answered in just 4 minutes on a Sunday night. Second ticket took 4 hours. I did mark these as low priority. My phone call was answered in about 2 minutes. The responses were intelligent and the person on the phone could give real answers.
I signed up for the service Friday morning 12/8 for the $199/year + free year, with activation/shipping total bill about $239. [update: On 12/16 I got billed for E911 fee and reg fee $2.50 addition/month.] I wasn't ready to trust to port my number yet, so I asked for a new number. They don't offer new numbers in my area, so I signed up for a number out of my area for now. I will be able to port my number for free later, then that will give me "local" service in my city. (note for VT...I initially wrote you off because your site said you don't offer service in my area, which is not true if I port my number.)
Now I waited, apparently its taking a couple days to process orders because the free year is keeping them busy. On Monday 12/11 a friend wanted to sign up for viatalk and asked me for a referral. I didn't have my account processed yet, so I submitted a low priority ticket to ask if I could get my customer number to do a referral. Within 35 minutes I was completely setup and had a tracking number and did my referral.
Now, I did notice a bug in the link for the tracking number, so I went direct to USPS to track. Not VT's fault, but USPS does not seem to tell you that they even received the package until it is delivered.
While I was waiting, I logged into the account and setup a softphone to play with a little. I setup the xten x-lite phone a made a few test calls. Pretty good calls, but I was using beta software which had a mic gain problem.
Received adapter Thursday 12/12. Plugged it in and nothing happened. Found out I had a bad port on my belkin f5d7230-4 router. Switched to a different port and lights came on but not the phone. Browsed to the PAP2 and found it was never configured. No problem, around midnight, I called tech support waited 3 minutes. Knowledgeable tech stepped me through the setup in a couple minutes and suddenly I had dialtone.
I made some calls for a day now and so far so good. One call this evening had slight echo for the first few seconds, but then it disappeared.
I have v3.1.9 in my PAP2T and there is a V5 available. Need to determine what has changed and if it is worth flashing. The tech said it will work fine with the standard firmware. Linksys does not say what the firmware changes.
ratings: The website (4) is a bit weak, but adequate. More extensive descriptions of features would be nice. Perhaps all the features put into a pdf in a manual format would be helpful.
Installation (5) even though I had to configure my pap2, it was easy and my having a bad router port is not their fault.
Quality (4) I did have a brief echo, but it corrected itself unlike other voip calling cards and softphones I've used. I expect to bump it up after a little more testing.
Reliability (4) Just trying to stay realistic that voip may never be perfect, but expect to bump it up after more testing.
Tech Support (5) I have been amazed at the top notch help.
Value (5) Price, features are great.
update 12/18: increasing quality and reliability...while i am not saying it will be perfect, it has been great over the last few days. Had an issue with my cordless phone not ringing. Submitted a ticket and it was fixed by changing to trapezoid ringing.
update 12/20: changed PAP2T firmware to 5.1.1 and now the original ring voltages work. Found outgoing voice breaking up during an extreme condition of doing a dslreports speedtest during a call. Clearly a router issue (not VT) and looking for a better router to eliminate this possibility. Started a separate thread to figure out what to get.
update 12/27: Flashed my Belkin with dd-wrt firmware. The software QoS helped some with outgoing voice during speed tests, but bricked my router during a setting tweak. So I temporarily used a dlink DI-524 router that made viatalk completely unusable. Dlink would drop connections or reboot every few minutes. Used the dlink while waiting for a Zyxel X-550 router to be delivered ($30 after rebates-rebate until 12/31). Installed and configured Zyxel X-550, giving Viatalk adapter ip address a #1 priority. Ran dslreports speed tests during a phone call to my POTS. Only brief blips of breakup on the voice during the upload test. Blips so minor that it did not interfere with understanding words. As a double check, gave my pc top priority and then disabled QoS. Both cases, outgoing voice quality had long durations of silence during upload test. Restored viatalk to top priority and all is great!!! A little more testing time and I dump the POTS.
update 12/29: faxed form to port my phone number. Bummer...fax had to retry several times to go through. Kept getting communication errors. Even got errors when turning off error correction. I was faxing thru VT line. Usable, but annoying. Sent faxes to other locations was much easier.
Voice calls sounding good and staying connected---since replacing the router.
update 1/11/07: I didn't have proper info on the port form and had to re-fax it last week. Got confirmation email saying port is processing and checked on the POTS website and found POTS scheduled disconnect for 1/24 
Quality has remained great. I bumped up the website rating, since they more than make up for any weak website info by being able to ask questions quickly and directly with VT. Also, the CEO gives feedback on this forum and VT's own forum. If you have a quality issue, VT is quick to find a solution as evidenced on the forums. VT has so many features, I keep learning how to take more and more advantage of them.
Faxing is still a bit weak. I have sent some 14400 baud faxes successfully, with error correction on. But, still have to expect retries. I just got a 5$ DSL filter to see if that helps.
update 2/1/07: Porting my number completed last week. There were a few hours on the day of the port where my number was in transition and could not get calls on the porting number. Guess that is to be expected. Anyway, since then, service has been great. Think we had one call where the audio didn't start for a few seconds at the beginning of a call, and think we had made a call to a cell phone and didn't here the ring tone. Tried to duplicate these things, but worked each time. I have read that these are fixable by sending a ticket, but waiting to see if I can duplicate.
Just starting to discover how to use all the features. I really like the custom caller-id so I can put names with cell phone numbers.
Faxing going ok, but still inconsistent. The DSL filter I bought was broken, so didn't get to try that. I turned on FAX ECAN on the pap2t, which seemed to help. Also, forcing fax to 9600 helps some, although I sometimes think that since it takes longer to transfer, there is a larger possibility of taking a hit.
Have used the service for hundreds of perfect calling minutes including calls to Africa. Don't notice any delay.
Setting up distinctive ring to ring in morse code to identify the caller.
update 2/9/07: Used VT for over 1300 minutes now and going great.
Faxing now working very well. Changes needed were updated PAP2T firmware, setting FAX DISABLE ECAN to yes, lowering the in and out gain to -6dm, telling the fax to do 9600 baud. I did a bunch of test faxes at 9600.
I have the VT voice mail send an SMS to my cell phone when there is a message. That way I can see who left the message and decide if I need to retrieve it.
Update 2/28/07: Now over 2100 minutes of usage and still great. Normally can't tell a difference from POTS.
Update 4/18/07: Have used over 4600 minutes on Viatalk and still great. I use the softphone on my PC when away from home and that works well also.
Update 5/17/07: Still going great. I stand behind the statement, that your router makes or breaks your experience. I upgrade firmware on the router and didn't have all the settings right, and experienced a partial lockup in the router that blocked my internet and phone use. Anyway, I fixed the setting and rebooted the router and all is well.
Update 7/16/2007 Now over 10,000 minutes of use since sign-up and still impressed. A call today went to voice mail when it shouldn't have, but that doesn't happen often. Now, the offer to signup is even better now that they give you 2 lines. I don't have that option.
8/8/07 Even with all the sunrocket folks signing up with Viatalk, everything still working great. see »c3.mine.nu/bsafehome.html
8/30/07 been having some trouble the last couple weeks. When making an outgoing call, sometimes the first dial attempt doesn't go through. 2nd dialing usually goes thru. Looking at the forums, it might be related to the sunrocket surge. Anyway, I called tech support, they told me to try several things. That didn't help, so I called back. They changed something at their end and while too soon to be sure, I think it might be fixed. I bumped down reliability a notch. But, I am confident that things will be good as the sunrocket surge smooths out.
11/07/07 been going good. I've been on the beta server for a while now. I've bounced over to standard servers occasionally when the beta was being worked on which is the nature of beta's.
12/3/07 Have made/received about 17,985 minutes of calls in the past year. Last several months I've been on their beta server and switched back to a normal server because of some troubles a couple days ago. Overall calls are great.
12/27/07 Been a full year, still have the free year to go yet. Having two phone lines has been really neat. While not perfect, faxing has been going well, a couple pages per week.
6/27/08 going good. Just used VT to call home from France/Ireland for free.  I renewed for another 1.5 years (special during memorial day), so I'm set until June 2010. I updated the monthly cost to indicate the renewal price, including the monthly "gov't" fees.
Followup comments:  kieranmullen
Premium
join:2005-12-12
Portland, OR | Strang rating If they had problems how can you rate them 100% on everything? | |
|  | chas3
join:2004-12-03
Dallastown, PA | Re: Strang rating see below. | |
| guppy_fish
Premium
join:2003-12-09
Lakeland, FL | just another fanboy Typical fanboy, admits issues, rates 100% across the board  | |
| | chas3
join:2004-12-03
Dallastown, PA
 ·ViaTalk
 ·Comcast
| Re: just another fanboy I've got to choose between 80% or 100%, no options inbetween, so my choice is closer to 100.
No, Viatalk is not perfection, but they're incredible compared to my troubles with vonage. And, considering financial health, what is the difference between Vonage, Sunrocket, and Viatalk? Both vonage & Sunrocket are living in deep debt, loosing money. Sunrocket sank. Viatalk is not living on venture capital. And, they are local with local tech support.
I kept the good and bad in the review. Some of the bad I brought on myself (bad router). I was tweaking and playing with settings trying to get extras that most don't care about. Viatalk allows me/anyone into the admin settings so I have features turned on that were not necessarily intended by VT.
This week, comcast messed up my modem settings and I could not get a connection. So, I couldn't call comcast repair because my phone wouldn't work. Do I blame this on VT and lower their rating. ....No...I get on the laptop, search wireless, connect to a neighbor's wireless, use the Viatalk softphone (that is free), call comcast thru my laptop, thru VT, and work through the comcast problem. Now, that is extra value. Where is the 120% rating for that???
...And, normally, if the kids are on the regular viatalk phone, I can make calls through my laptop on viatalk at the same time for free. (no extra free for this feature!)
Yep, I guess I am a fan of viatalk. | |
| josh28
join:2007-11-11 | New Number in Philadelphia Area I'm a Boston-area ViaTalk user who is moving to Cheltenham, PA in January. Were you able to get a local PA number when you ported your old number?
I, too, was told that ViaTalk is not issuing new numbers in that area.
Thanks. | |
| | chas3
join:2004-12-03
Dallastown, PA
·ViaTalk
·Comcast
edit:
November 11th, @11:07PM
| Re: New Number in Philadelphia Area They couldn't issue me a viatalk number in my area, but they were able to port my verizon pots number for me. Some smaller telephone companies do not offer porting of the local numbers to any VOIP, but verizon does (old GTE area). Neighbors can still call me for free.
You can take your current number with you, but your new neighbors will have to call you long distance. Check if viatalk offers numbers in your new city (I don't recognize the name). If they don't, you would have to sign up for local pots service, then port it. Which would cost you an install just to get a local #. Or, if GrandCentral.com offers a local # in your new area, you could forward it to your old VT #.
Edit...just noticed the topic is Philadelphia area. I think VT has local #s in many Phila areas. They might charge a small fee to change numbers?? Or, you could add the phila number if you want to keep the boston for folks there to be able to call you for free from boston. | |
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