UPC's Phone addon

cubix

Getting UPC in on Tuesday for for Teli/phone/BB. Anyone else here not bother with UPC phone and get the likes of Blueface instead
Basically I need to keep my old eircom number: For €13 odd UPc will give you 100mins a month, were as the likes of Blueface with give you 300min for a €10, I know I can keep your number with UPC so I presume its the same with Blueface when you go VOIP.

Anyone done this setup or is it to much hassle

Solair

The Blueface solution is pretty good and, especially if you have a proper VoIP phone or ATA, you will get reasonably good quality over the UPC connection.

However, just beware that they are not directly comparable products in many ways.

Blueface is an internet VoIP service i.e. traffic is carried from your phone/device across your ISPs network and mixes with general internet traffic. If the network's congested, you can get glitches.

UPC's phone service also uses VoIP technology, but it is not sending voice across the internet. Instead, it is hosted on a private, managed network, much like a modern office phone system or even some of the VoIP systems used in major telecommunications companies.
So, the quality of calls is always good.


Normal VoIP:

<Phone/ATA>

---

<Your ISP>

---

<Public Internet>----<VoIP Switch (Telephone exchange)>

---

<Phone Network>

Cable Phone:

<Phone/ATA>

---

<Private Cable Network>

---

<VoIP Switch (Telephone exchange)>----<Phone Network>

Blueface is excellent, but I'm just saying that a cable phone is not internet VoIP, it's more comparable to using an Eircom ISDN line or something of that nature as it's a totally private, managed network.

For all intents and purposes, your UPC phoneline will behave almost exactly like an eircom line. As far as I am aware, it is not SIP based either.

cubix

Cheers Solair, will my existing cordless fones work with UPC setup or will I need to get one of them.

Solair

Any tone dialling phone works with it.

Solair

I'd stress though that Blueface's pretty decent quality over UPC. You'll mostly never notice any difference.


The downsides is that you *can* occasionally have issues and also that you need either a VoIP phone or a seperate ATA. Where as with UPC, you can just plug the phone straight into the analogue PSTN port on the router and it just works like a normal land-line.

cubix

Thanks again, going to do a little more digging as I have a netgear TA612V lying in the box doing nada. Got it in the early days with the thought of using it over the adsl for cheaper international. ITs probably worth so little due to new/better tec. With regards to the odd clitch on VOIP with BF or similar I can live with as the house phone gets little or no use but I no if I say to herself to drop it there would be umtin reasons why not to.
Just have to double check with BF that for their €9.99 package you get to keep your original eircom number.

Solair

I'd say just pick the package you prefer.

UPC's packages aren't too bad, but just remember the anytime world offers only give you 400 minutes to international destinations and it seems it's only off-peak too.

Blueface have a nice range of VoIP Panasonic phones and they're not too pricy either.

You can port your landline over to either UPC or Blueface quite easily. All you need is the phone number + the UAN number from your previous providers bill.

You can also dial into blueface's system and call abroad too from your mobile by dialing an 01 number.

pizzahead77

Solair wrote: »

I'd say just pick the package you prefer.
Blueface have a nice range of VoIP Panasonic phones and they're not too pricy either.

Be careful with these Panasonic phones from Blueface - great phones but Blueface have custom firmware on them (at least TGP-550 is) and they won't give out the admin account details for them so any changes have to be made by them :mad:

cubix

Cheers, what that about your last line, "you can dial into BF's system with your mobile for internation calls?

pizzahead77

cubix wrote: »

Cheers, what that about your last line, "you can dial into BF's system with your mobile for internation calls?

You dial a Dublin number on your mobile and then enter the international number so it will then use either your Blueface call plan minutes or call credit

Solair

It's REALLY handy if you've got free land line calls on your mobile!

http://www.blueface.ie/go-mobile.php

You basically register your Irish or UK landline or mobile number (up to 5 of them I think).

You call the Dublin 01 or London 020 number from a registered mobile/landline.

It will recognise you from your caller ID and invite you to call the number you wish to reach.

and that's it.

You can also store 9 speed dial numbers, so you can just dial in and hit like 1# to call whoever you've stored on it.

Regarding VoIP handsets:

You can pick up a lot of other decent VoIP handsets online.

The Siemens Gigaset VoIP phones are really nice.

Although if you're only using Blueface €69 isn't bad for the Panasonic, restricted as it might be.