Voicestick i2Bridge & forwarding - how well does it work
 

I just signed up for Voicestick after hearing about them on these forums (you guys really are a mine of information - thanks).

My plan is to use the service occasionally to make some calls (they seem cheaper than Skype & VOIP cheap for international calls) whilst at home but also when I travel to USA next year.

My idea was to get a Prepaid T-Mobile SIM and use Voicestick as a callthrough to call back to UK/Estonia. Can anyone who has a Voicestick account and has done a similar thing tell me how well the whole thing works, or would I be better off buying a calling card?

Any other hints/tips/tricks would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

If you go back and read the threads on Voicestick, you will see that there is some issue using the I2Bridge where under some circumstances you get billed for 6 min on an unanswered call. That's all I can think of.

What triggers the 6 min. is when one makes a bridge call and you hang up after 5 or so rings. You hang up, but the bridge (asterisk box) takes 1 or 2 more seconds more to end the call and in this period the cell phone answers to voice mail.

The 6 min. now is from the cell phones message and then the lenght of time for the voice mail recording to stop.

Not sure if there is going to be a cure for this as it is a cell issue.

Bruce Nicklin

I make use of the Voicestick forwarding feature and haven't had any major problems. I mostly used to fwd to a local country SIM -- I do forward to my UM SIM when no other choice but that gets expensive.

How come I don't have this problem with other carriers?

It is a shame because voicestick seems to be a good thing...

As opposed to using voicestick, my calls can be forwarded from my home landline using verizon & AT&T and this absolutely never happens....the only problem with AT&T a one minute call to a UK mobile is 30¢/minute...with voicestick it's 16¢ and recently the connection via voicestick has become very very good and the caller hears a message please wait while we connect your call.

I just find it hard to believe this is a problem that can't be resolved.

You need to take into consideration what the bridge is doing. It is placing a new call which means that the call is place after the billing computer system.

We think we might have a solution, but it is going to be a costly add on inside of the system.

Not going to happen in the next days or weeks but it is being looked at. Also I should point out it only happens with certain carriers, not all cell phones.

We do offer credit when anyone emails us. Hope we do see a long term fix. The bridge is getting much more popular these days.


Bruce

Thank you Bruce...I do think your service can be very very good and I can reiterate there has never been any problem with crediting the account when this happens so thank you for doing the best you can to rectify the problem (although you do understand that it is irksome at times).

Unfortunately this is still a problem. Has happened at least 5 times within the last month. I Just did a test call to the UK that never connected. I was dinged for 120 minutes (2 hours)! Sometimes it's 60 minutes and other times it's 120 minutes.

What this usually does is put my account balance in Negative. Essentially deactivating the forwarding and the phone temporarily. At least until I contact voicestick. This problem makes the forwarding almost unusable! Since I will not know when this happens, I just will not be receiving any calls. The caller will also hear a message that the phone is inactive. Heck! The first call can potentially wipe out the entire credit and any other calls just won't go through.

Has anyone here used Kall8 to forward to international numbers, and how reliable is it?

Gents, I am a bit confused. Would appreciate if someone would clarify. Appears to me that the complaint is about I2Bridge. That is a different matter than GLOBAL CALL FORWARDING, true or false? My plan was to forward some inbound calls to my German SIM during my upcoming vacation. Will I have billing/connect issues using that option or not? Thanks, Stan

Yes. the problem also happens with the global call forwarding feature which most of the complaints is about. There is probably another thread about the global forwarding issue but it's the some problem. That's the only feature I use. But, almost every call that hits VM has this issue. I even turned off VM on my IOM sim. Still got billed for 60 mins on each of the 4 test calls I made. Of course, I did get refunded. But, the problem is when I am in Jamaica or so, I do not want to have to call my voicestick number to see if it's still working.

Snaimon, you may want to do some test calls. Almost everyone here that has used the global calling feature has experienced this.

Here are some threads that mention the problem with global call forwarding.

http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/show...ght=voicestick

http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/show...ght=voicestick

Thanks.

Elsewhere (recent CBW-UM thread) it was suggested that one could forward a VOIP (home) phone to Onesuite and use their speed-dial (rapid-dial is their term) to call the +423 663 #.

I did try successfully to forward calls from VOICESTICK to a Onesuite # but did no further experimentation. I was billed for a one minute call by VOICESTICK, which is reasonable.

HOWEVER, I take it the problem with voice mail would persist even for this kind of connection. VOICESTICK would not recognize END OF CALL and stay connected to the USA Onesuite # for 6 or 60 or 120 minutes. At 1 cent per minute that is not as bad as the original rates, but still a pain in the arse to fix up. Or is it worth experimenting?

Stan

End Of Call Issue - looks to be fixed!
 

Based on the test calls I have made over the last couple of days, it looks like they have finally fixed this issue with their recent update. The end of call is now recognized immediately when VM is reached. Also, one does not get billed as soon as the phone rings as before. Looks like billing starts after the 1st minute the calls connects or hits VM. BTW, the caller's ID is also passed. It used to always pass the DID number.

I did this tests by forwarding to my IOM sim and UM (+423) sim. Voicestick does not connect to the UM+ sim (Says invalid number or so). If anyone else can perform some tests and report back that will also help.

Also, tried to use the I2Bridge to dial international numbers, but does not seem to be working at the moment.

does anyone understand Voicestick's prices? It shows so many prices for a certain destination, for instance:

Country Global Plan Unlimited VS 400 Next2Nothing
Estonia FREE 0.0145 0.0174 0.0174
Estonia - Mobile/SS 0.1980 0.2200 0.2640 0.2640
Estonia - Mobile/SS 0.1980 0.2200 0.2640 0.2640
Estonia - Mobile/SS 0.0131 0.0145 0.0174 0.0174
Estonia - Mobile/SS 0.0131 0.0145 0.0174 0.0174
Estonia - Mobile/SS 0.0131 0.0145 0.0174 0.0174

is it $0.26 or is it $0.0174 for calling a mobile on Next2Nothing?

United Kingdom has 4 different prices to the generic "Mobile" number and different prices for the different carriers there. Anyhow know how to figure out how much a call is?

I think you can enter the actual number one one screen and it does tell you the rate for that number and you are quite right...calls to my T Mobile UK sim card were listed at 8¢/minute, Orange 13¢/minute and the Isle of Man 31¢/minute....

The Estonian mobile rates are very expensive as are Icelandic mobile (wonder why)...

yea its a little weird. I did find that page where I can put a # in like you said, only problem with that is, I am searching for a SIM card to buy so I can use voicestick to forward to myself so I wouldn't be able to know my # until I buy the SIM card.

With the recent annoucement of Voicestick beginning to charge monthly fees, I guess it doesn't matter since I have to look for a cheap/free alternative now lol

Just thought I would drop a note. I am back at voicestick.com

When my contract ran out last year I decided to not stay on as VP.

The CEO just made me an offer I can not refuse.

So if anyone needs any thing, or a special credit or account, just let me know, my email is bnicklin AT i2telecom.com

Bruce Nicklin

Good for you Bruce.

Do you guys still charge a monthly fee? I think that monthly fee kind of drove some people (myself included) away, since there are similar options that do not charge any monthly fee at all, or a very minimal fee.

USA Inbound
 

voicestick is very expensive for forwarding, you also get charged for inbound calls. have a look at justvoip.com (from betamax) this site seems to have the best rates and stays at the rate.

you can also have a USA (Washington state) number with free forwarding on to any VOIP account. ipkall.com

very easy to set up, No inbound charge, and free divert. then you just use your voip account to divert to any number.



.

Can you please provide info on how to connect to voicestick using a sip device?

The monthly garbage fees are gone. Also you might want to sign up on the beta program for www.myglobaltalk.com

In the signup screen there is a box labeled AGENT. Put in the code MGTBETA1 What this will do is cause us to not proceed with charging your card $10 to put in funds for calling. Or in otherwords you will get $10 to try us out.

It will work with all cell phones, and if you have a Windows 5.0 or 6.0 cell, it can provide you with a free application to allow your out of country dialing to be seamless.

Which SIP device are you wanting to use?

Then use our new sister site. It is designed for cell phone and forwarding. There is no separate charge for incoming.

i was not adressed for this question but i would like to add it in my AVM Fritz!Box 7170...

Chris

Bruce,
Does this mean that the customers who converted to "dial-out only" can get their dial-in numbers again?

Fritz box fon. I want the registry server of your service.

I don't have a magic button to move from call out only, back to a real number (DID)

Just sign up for a new account, and let me know and I will kill the old account and move any funds from there, AND issue a $10 credit for your trouble of setting up the new one.

I am not up on the software.

Here are settings used in many ATA and SIP device.
This example is from the famous PAP2 box.

From this list you may be able to figure out which ones you need.

Sip Port: 5060
Proxy: i2telecom.com Use Outbound Proxy: yes
Outbound Proxy: 206.165.50.116 Use OB Proxy in Dialog: no
Register: yes Make Call Without Reg: no
Register Expires: 3600 Ans Call Without Reg: no
Use DNS SRV: no DNS SRV Auto Prefix: no
Proxy Fallback Intvl: 3600 Proxy Redundancy Method: normal
Display Name: Your Name User ID: (11-digit VS DID) 1973xxxxxxx
Password: xxxxxxxx Use Auth ID: yes
Auth ID: 1973xxxxxxx
Preferred Codec: G711U
Use Pref Codec Only: yes
DTMF Tx Method: InBand
Dial Plan: (*xx|[3469]11|0|00|[2-9]xxxxxx|1xxx[2-9]xxxxxxS0|xxxxxxxxxxxx.)

Bruce...in checking the voicestick site, it seems there is no longer a mention of the $3/month charge for a US number...am I missing something?

Yes. as Bruce mentioned in post #20 above. I just recently signed up again.

Yeah the fees are gone and the guy that came up with the fees is gone, as the fees drastically impacted our business.

Is there a minimum usage of 1$/month?

Okay nice but I lost track...has Voicestick (or the new service) figured out how to avoid people being charged for a 5 minute call when hanging up after 30 seconds as the call goes into voice mail?

YES!!!

We got rid of the old IVR billing system, and the entire call flow is in the switch.

Here is what was happening. You would call a phone (cell or landline with voice mail)

You would let it ring 1 to 4 times, no answer, so you would hang up. Well the IVR would continue to ring for another two ring cycles as it was slow to tear down the call. So now the VM answered and the call could go from 30 seconds to maybe 1 1/2 min. depending on the other ends VM message and such.

Now when you hang up, the switch hangs up in an instant.

I had forgotten about that old problem. What a pain it was!

Thanks for bringing it up, I am sure others had the same question.

On a per min plan, yes. It is the "ANTI-HOG provision. If it was free the hogs would ti up hundreds of DID's at our expense.

So if you only say used 80 cents in a month we will round it up to $1

Well 1$ per month for a good quality DID->SIP service is a good deal. We used it mainly for inbound before as well as our local ADSL providers flatrate coveres nearly all countries already.

Did you manage to connect to their sip server via the fritz box? Which registry server did you use?

Question about voicestick
 

I have a question for Bruce.... I used to use voicestick but left when they started charging for everything. My question is whether you stopped changing for incoming calls and when you change for E911 for US numbers (I'm not in the US).

I don't see any box labeled AGENT. Which section is it on?