AT&T CallVantage VoIP Service with D-Link Phone Adapter

Rating:
Summary: Enjoy The Future of Telephony Today
Review: As someone who was a cellular-only telephony customer for several years, my primary reasons for obtaining CallVantage was to have 1) a portable land-line and 2) a 212 area code before moving to New York. While both goals were achieved immediately, I was pleasantly surprised with the superior functionality and sound quality.

Given that I work as a consultant in emerging telecommunications, I have been tracking VoIP services for a while. In fact, I was using the [previously] free Dialpad.com service since 1999. While the sound quality of these older VoIP services was generally good, there was a annoying delay that disrupted the flow of a conversations. To its credit, Dialpad has corrected the problem as of 2005.

In short, the quality of CallVantage is excellent. There is no delay, no static, no fading. The service is so robust, one has to wonder if the traditional switched phone service providers (ILEC's) will become extinct faster than analysts have predicted.

Similar to how other online services such as electronic banking that have trumped their traditional counterparts, CallVantage offers a number of features unavailable with traditional ILEC's. In fact, the advanced features are even beyond what the cellular companies offer, which is probably going to spur further advanced features in the mobile market.

The additional features are numerous with varying degrees of utility. The web-based voicemail retrieval is especially nice. Email notification is also helpful, especially when you forward these messages to a Blackberry or mobile phone. There are other capabilities like call logs and, for an additional fee, call filtering. The call forwarding capability called "Locate Me" offers a number of features, such as having multiple numbers to seek, unavailable on conventional switched telephone services.

Since I obtained the service in mid-2004, I have used it on RCN's cable modem service and Time Warner's cable modem service. Both have been very reliable, so I have not had an issue with any extended interruption. There have been a few glitches with CallVantage, which I will discuss.

One initial problem experienced was that the D-Link MTA (telephone adapter) choked off most of the data bandwidth during the call. Basically, the phone worked fine, but my Internet connection was slower than dial-up. Fortunately, customer service was able to remotely alter the bandwidth shaping setting.

There was a recent glitch in January '05 where the service was not working for an hour or so. More disturbing, however, was that callers received an enigmatic message "I'm sorry, but that customer is NOT accepting calls, message 24G385." After waiting on hold for 45 minutes, I finally reached a customer service representative who was perplexed at my description of the problem and error message. While I have to applaud ATT for using state-side CSR's, they seem to be overstaffed and a bit under-trained.

There are some limitations that advanced users should be aware. The MTA must be placed between the cable modem and router and not after the router. This will pose a problem for small independents who want to work in a shared office setting or who have a combined gateway/router where the coax screws right into a single box. While each MTA supports up to two phone lines, three or more lines requires the user to daisy chain more than one MTA - before the router.

At this juncture, ATT does not provide a softphone client like Dialpad, Skype, or even Vonage. This would be especially helpful if a user would like to make low cost phone calls on the road.

ATT CallVantange service is a robust VoIP offering that has superior features to both switched telephony and mobile phone offerings. The Pros and Cons can be summed up fairly succinctly:

Pros
Excellent Sound Quality
Great Feature Set
Portability
Fixed pricing
Voicemail Message Management From a Web Interface.

Cons
No Softphone
Some Limitations on Connecting with Routers

Given the cost saving and increased functionality, I would recommend this service to anyone who needs a landline and already has a broadband connection.


Rating:
Summary: Phone Service that's fun
Review: Call Vantage phone service is great. I love the fun features. "Locate Me" is the one I use the most. Life is busy, and I used to miss calls all the time. Now, I have "Locate Me" set up to ring my home phone, my work phone and my cell phone all at the same time. I get a message saying that there's an incoming call from Call Vantage at each phone, I press a 1 and the call comes through to whichever place I'm at. No more missing calls! The phone service is great. It comes with all of the regular features that regular phone service offeres, Call Waiting, Three way calling, Caller Id, etc. No one notices that I am making calls a different way, they still get caller id when I call them too. I've called for customer service a few times and have had quick response to my questions. Also, I don't miss all of those extra charges that were on my old phone bill and added almost $10 to the cost months. When AT&T says the bill is $34.99, it's just that plus the regular sales tax. Now that's fun!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent call quality, and a bigger bang for the buck
Review: First off, one disclaimer: I am an AT&T employee. :-) I participated in the service readiness test for Florida and was so thrilled with the quality of the service that I had my home phone line switched over as soon as the product was made available to the public in Florida. For just under $35 a month I receive all the features that the local phone company would charge nearly twice as much for, and the quality is very good (even better than my land line!). The Telephone Adpater (TA) works well with my RoadRunner cable modem internet and the ability to receive voice mails via e-mail or through the web site is a huge plus (when I'm working, I can listen to my voice mail without touching a phone). The "Locate Me" feature is also invaluable if I'm out of the house and still need to be reached. It also proved useful during the recent Florida hurricanes; I was able to set up "Locate Me" to dial my cell phone or the land line I use for work in the event that the cable internet goes out during the storms (it didn't). I did find that if I was doing a large file upload over my cable connection (i.e., BitTorrent), the call quality occasionally gets choppy, but this is a rare event.

There are two caveats you have to consider when buying this product, as you have to consider with any VoIP offering: First, if your cable or DSL goes out, so does your CallVantage (it needs the internet connection to work); however, the one time that my cable modem went out, I simply dialed in and accessed my CallVantage web site from my laptop or called into my Phone Feature Manager from my cell phone, activated "Locate Me", and people could still reach me on my cell phone or business land line.

The second caveat is that emergency 9-1-1 service does not work the same way as on a land line. Whereas on a land line you are connected with the nearest 9-1-1 emergency center and your name and address appears on their system for them to find you, CallVantage and other services' VoIP 9-1-1 calls work as they do with your cell phone--you are connected to the nearest NON-emergency point of contact (which in our case is the crime desk of the Polk County Sheriff's Office in Bartow; we live 10 miles west in Lakeland). Most of the time, however, the non-emergency desk can easily route your call to the emergency lines, so you are really not losing a whole lot in that regard. You *will* need to give them your exact location over the phone as they won't have it available in front of them.

If you are familiar with how your home is wired, you can connect your CallVantage TA to your house telephone wiring so that the TA will ring all the phones in the house instead of just one phone. For most homes it's just a matter of unplugging the phone lines from your home wiring at the customer interface box on your house and then plugging in the TA to any open wall phone jack (do NOT try this with your land line still connected at the box outside or the voltage will FRY the TA!). If you do this, you'll want to put a warning notice on your outside customer access box so that a phone company employee doesn't inadvertently come around and plug it back in.

If you can live with the above two caveats, as I am, then you will find voice-over-IP service, and CallVantage in particular, to be an outstanding service that has a LOT of "bang for the buck" compared to your local phone company's land line service.

Rating:
Summary: It really does work!
Review: I became convinced that VoIP was ready for prime-time after using a sophisticated Cisco VoIP phone at work with excellent voice quality and a whole range of features. AT&T CallVantage sent me a slick advertisement listing all of their features and the savings was substantial (and no FCC taxes!). Since I have worked with computers and networks for a number of years, I was willing to take the risk.

I had some initialization problems with the D-Link VoIP Gateway, but fortunately, when I called customer service a very knowledgable professional spent a lot of patient time helping me re-initialize the gateway. He was friendly and very courteous.

I also had some minor voice quality issues, but I called customer service and they changed my configuration to provide a higher quality of service. I haven't really noticed any problems since.

One feature I really like, not mentioned by other reviewers, is that I get an email sent to my work account whenever a voice message arrives. I can click on the link in the email to quickly bring up the CallVantage web site and click on the link to the voice mail to hear the voice mail message played through my computer, using headphones for privacy. The email lists the caller ID as well, so I know who I need to call back right away.

Another basic point that potential customers should realize is that all your existing phones will work with this telephone adapter, since it hooks into the telephone wiring already in your house.

I had another complication because my alarm system uses the phone line to dial a central office. The CallVantage installation guide states that this adapter will not work with alarm systems. However, I called my alarm company and they came out to make some minor wiring changes and now the adapter and alarm system work well together.

Customers should also be aware that AT&T is beginning to support an SIP router, which is supposed to be more sophisticated and reliable. However, after several calls, I haven't been able to get them to ship me one yet, probably because they are back-ordered.

Rating:
Summary: At & T screw up!!!!!
Review: I called At&T Calvantage order the service on 9/30 and receive the adapter on Oct. 7th, hooked the TA up on Oct. 8th and was able to dial outboud call immediately, the voice quality is pretty good, but it obviously take up lots of the speed. I was informed the service will be fully transfered on Oct. 11. As of yesterday, Oct. 12, I still have dial tone in my old regular phone line and the inbound calls were ring to my old phone instead of the calvage phone(I have two phone hooked up cause At&t asked me to keep the phone hooked to the wall jack before the transfer complete), I contacted AT&T acquire about my order, I was told AT&T is having problem to complete my order and if my old phone stop to have dial tone, the inbound call will go to my voice mail. Well, as long as I know who's call ing and people can reach my voice mail, I am ok. This morning, Oct. 13, I picked my phone and there's no dial tone, I use my cell phone to call my number.... "The number you have called is not valid or no longer in service. " What?! What the heck is going on, I tried again, same situation, I have my friends called me, same message.......... time to call At&T, and boy am I mad about the AT&T's rep's response. I informed her my situation, she investigate my account for a few minutes and then put me on hold for a short while, after she come back, she said At&T is having problem with my account and have no estimate time when will the problem be resolved, I asked a few quesiton and was keep interrupted by her said that that's the situation and nothing else she can tell me, sounds very impatient and not helpful, I guess probably because she already knows that they have major problem with my account and do not have an idea how to solve it, I ask for a supervisor, no supervisor, someone will call me back within 48 hours, I asked for complain dept, sure, mail it to a po box address in Missourri, I was VERY frustrated and asked so as customer of AT&T, does that mean there's nothing I can do but accept the situation, the answer was "YES", she also implied I am not the only one having problem, there A LOT OF people facing the same problem like me, and I am welcome to look into alternative........ great, so this is AT&T's customer service. Anyway, I called Verizon immediately, and sign up for their Voice Wing service, you may ask why do I look into pocket8 or Vontage, I really need to keep my current number and voice quality is very important to me. I will report back here let you know how things work out, but I was be very causious if you are considering AT&T's VoIP service, if you are lucky, you will have good voice quality and their price is not that bad, but if not, be prepared you might face situation like mine or another reviewer.....

Rating:
Summary: AT&T VOIP-POOP
Review: I ordered At&t VOIP on July 15th. I received the TA (telephone adapter) from FedEx within 3 business days. I plugged in the adapter and within a few minutes everything was complete. Except the connection. I called tech support for assistance they were helpful. They told me "Yes, sir." I show that your land line phone was ported to CallVantage, what can i help you with?" After a few minutes, they told me that my internet provider "Adelphia" was not currently compatible with their network system. So I had to send back the TA and go back to land line at&t service. Heres the nightmare. Only July 15th they started the port back. On August 31, yes you are reading correctly, August 31 i got my land line phone back and a few minutes after a call from At&t saying: "oh, well CallVantage works now..care to switch back? NO. I replied. After having almost 2 months of now phone service and weekly and daily calls to At&t talking to their brainless customer service employees I switched to VOIP with Verizon. I have to pay a few dollars more, the service is great, but so far I have had the best, quick, responsive and quality driven service I have ever had....POOP on you At&t Voip...I guess Verizon will have to own your Voip service soon.....Recommended: Heck no.

Rating:
Summary: Working well now
Review: I ordered Callvantage service through the AT&T web site on a Monday and received the unit on Friday via FedEx. As part of my order I asked AT&T to port my current home phone number over to the Callvantage service. The port was completed 5 days after my adaptor was received. Once I received the adaptor I was able to activate the unit and service and make outgoing calls. You have to wait until your number is ported over before you can receive calls, until then you will receive your calls on your existing providers network. This whole process was very smooth.

Once I had the service up and running we noticed that there were some issues with the voice quality. Incoming voice was clear but our outgoing voice was dropping off from time to time and made having a conversation difficult. I called AT&T and they did some testing of my cable line and said everything looked ok. They suggested that it might be my cordless phone. I changed phones but still no luck. I ended up calling my cable provider and they came out and found two issues with my internet setup on their end which would cause dropped packets and lead to voice quality problems. Once they fixed this up we have had very good call quality from our AT&T service.

The lesson learned is that you have to deal with two providers and as usual both providers at first blammed the other provider for the issue.

On the positive side, I love being able to call long distance anytime of the day and not worry about charges or cellular minutes etc. AT&T has some nice features which I'm sure will get better over time. I like the call log and phone book feature as well as the locate me feature where you can have the service ring up to 5 phones to locate you if you are not home. Comes in handy if you need to be out of the house and are waiting for a call.

All in all I'm pretty happy with the service now that my issues are worked out. If there is one thing that will cause voip to not take off right away, it is the fact that there are more points of failure in having voip then with regular phone service. Your internet can go out, the voip gateway can lockup, your power can go out (unless you have a battery backup for the equipment). These are things that most people are not use to worrying about in regards to phone service. Also, since the unit only comes into one location, you have to have your home wiring adjusted for it to reach all your extensions or buy an expandable cordless system. This is an extra cost and extra effort that many people might not want to bother with.

If you are technically inclined then these issues might not be a big deal but if you are someone who struggles with PC's and internet basics then pass on voip until it becomes more standard and tested.

Rating:
Summary: WARNING! CallVantage will not port numbers from Vonage
Review: I purchased this with the intention to escape Vonage (and take my original BellSouth number with me), but it turns out that CallVantage has no port agreement in place with Vonage. Amazingly, at least two much smaller providers (Packet8 and Broadvox Direct) DO have port agreements. Why not AT&T? They provide the opportunity to confirm that your number is eligible to port before ordering service. Their site still says my number can be ported; apparently all they do is a rudimentary check of what carrier the exchange *originally* belonged to rather than the current real-time database used by other companies (such as wireless carriers). They tried to port my number from BellSouth without regard for the long form I filled out clearly indicating the service was with Vonage. They dropped the ball multiple times, never sending promised email or calling me directly to follow up. Also, they will not refund my shipping charges to return this item to Amazon. On the positive side, their customer service was fast, friendly, and not outsourced to India or the Philippines.

Rating:
Summary: Sweeeeeeeet.
Review: One word of caution before I begin, if you are using a wireless cable modem or one that has a firewall/assigns internal IP addresses, you'll have to use it in either Bridge mode or chuck it to get a vanilla cable modem. Having said that, I followed the instructions and disconnected the incoming landline from the distributor box (in an apartment it might be in the kitchen) look for ATT's online documentation. That eliminated any voltage in the line, activated the TA and then plugged the output to the wall socket, checked in another room whether i got a signal and voila! it worked. calls are clear, even when i am on the net. yeah, no big downloads coz they become slow. the QoS thingy works! long live VoIP.
One word of caution from a friend, i came to know: the Ethernet connections on the back of the TA box are plastic, so if by accident your ethernet cable gets yanked and the device is unable to travel with it, chances are that the weak, flimsy cheapo plastic that holds your cable to the TA box will give way and then you'll have to make sure that when you plug the network cable back in, it stays in there some way. can't these morons at DLink use metal ones? ain't there enough plastic in that box already?

Rating:
Summary: Out of the box and working in 30 minutes
Review: VoIP is "voice over internet protocol", where your phone service is piggybacked on top of your broadband internet connection. You have to have a cable or dsl modem with an ethernet connection.

I hate the local phone company, I just can't stand paying near $50 for phone service when the cellphone bill is $35. I had to cut all the options on the phone service to get it under $50... but must have the "Area Choice" plan or I pay long-distance fees to call 10 miles to work. So the very best I could do was around $47 a month.

What really set this in motion was the new cordless phone my daughter got for Christmas. She wanted Caller ID and I figured, sure, why not pay $2 a month to make her happy? Geez - That's another $8.95 a month just for Caller ID!!


So I went looking.... Finally an alternative!

There's Vonage which is $5 cheaper, but I chose AT&T's CallVantage plan. For $29.99 a month you get unlimited local & long-distance calls and the feature set is awesome. Caller ID, 3-way calling, Locate me, it goes on and on. I can manage everything from a computer on the internet, 60-day call log, voicemail can be played on computer or forwarded to up to 10 email addys, it is unreal!

I got it hooked up and working within 30 minutes. The telephone adapter sits in between the cable modem and the router.

After I disconnected the phone plug in the box on the side of the house - to separate the house from the phone company - I plugged the telephone adapter into a wall jack. This "backfeeds" the house telephone jacks and allows every phone jack in the house to be serviced.

The quality of the connection is noticably better than the old Bellsouth phone service, gone are the clicks and buzzing noise.


I have noticed a decrease in my internet bandwidth when someone is on the phone, but I feel comfortable with the tradeoff.

There are port-forwarding issues with the current telephone adapter (a nice D-Link product) that may affect those of you that run ftp servers, but it is said they will be resolved with future products. Also, there is a Linksys wireless router with integrated CallVantage support that may resolve it.

BTW, they can usually port your existing phone number over, but that didn't work for me. I had to get a new number. Small price to pay. I'm saving $20 a month and getting unlimited long distance with every possible phone feature. Sweet!