Tag voip

Τέλος Εποχής για το VoIP στην HOL.

Λίγο πριν τους Ολυμπιακούς της Αθήνας, με το ADSL να γράφει μόνον έναν χρόνο ζωής στην χώρα μας, η Hellas On Line έκανε το αδιανόητο: πρόσφερε, μέσω του προγράμματος evoice, την δυνατότητα απόκτησης αριθμού αθηνών (213xxxxxxx) χωρίς πάγιο τέλος, βασισμένο σε SIP και με ιδιαίτερα ανταγωνιστικές χρεώσεις για αστικούς και υπεραστικούς προορισμούς. Γνώρισα την υπηρεσία […]

Dynamic IP friendly SPAs.

At last, Linksys just upgraded their SPA (formely Sipura) 942/962 series phone firmware. Among many other bugfixes, the new firmware fixes a number of longstanding and extremely annoying SIP registration bugs (CSCsm28353, CSCsk69012) that afflicted dynamic IP ADSL users whose external (routable) IP address gets changed frequently and necessitated a relatively long process to make the phone behave properly. Kudos to Linksys for fixing this, albeit quite late.

CounterPath

Earlier this month I wrote about eyeBeam on the Mac. Besides that it truly sucks --- it's probably the worst money I've ever spent on software, I am now convinced that this is the least courteous, customer-centric company I've had any dealing with in my life. A visit to their support forum quickly shows how their representative, Mr. Derek Jacobs, responds to customer feedback, problem reports and requests. Mr Jacobs is perhaps the worst customer liaison on a corporate forum, hotline or other form of communication I've come across. He is discourteous, arrogant, ignorant as to the company's products deficiencies, overzealous in his moderation of seemingly inappropriate posts and --- last but not least --- refusing to actually read, comprehend, convey and report on customer posts and the respective development effort. I am curious whether the company's apparent engineering and customer support deficiency is the result of Mr. Jacobs' inability to effectively liaise between customers and engineering, or whether the whole company is bent on pissing people off with subpar products and poor customer support. In any case, it is a shame CounterPath is probably the largest SIP softphone developer globally and the available options in this market are extremely limited. Despite this, my recommendation, whatever your needs may be, is to stay well clear of their products. Such companies are not worthy of your custom. Update: Hours after posting this I was contacted by CounterPath and was offered assistance with their products. I am happy to see that at least they are willing to make an effort --- albeit an insufficient one --- to engage with their customers' problems. Hopefully it will be followed by a respective update of the company's currently dysfunctional products.

Gizmo Project Woes Redux

Last month I wrote about my woes with the Gizmo Project, up until then one of my VoIP providers of choice. Days after the post was published I was contacted by one of the company’s engineers/support employee who apologised for the PayPal payment issues the company was facing and wanted to find out more about […]

Gizmo5, and Gizmo Project's Paypal issues.

Just recently Gizmo Project announced its Gizmo5 beta, a service that allows users of mobile phones to place calls for very low rates through a MIDP Gizmo client. A data connection is required just for setting up the call. In other words, the idea is that you pick a contact (or dial the number you […]

Internet ramblings, revisited.

I have written about my opinion on the role of internet service providers and their network providers. With everyone having a blog in Europe concerned with the Jyllands-Posten crisis, I’ll beg to differ, refrain from providing a fragmented opinion piece (covering this issue in one weblog entry, or five for that matter, is not really […]