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For the past year we have been battling with Frontier Communications of America to make our phone line stop humming and to equalize the audio so that there was proper mid/low/high sounds on the line. Unfortunately, and somewhat to Frontier's defense, we live in a sparsely populated area at the end of a seven mile cable run.
For the past year I have kept copious notes about our issues which included: caller-id failure, voicemail failure, busy signals for no reason when people would call us, hum and buzz on our phone line, and DSL dropping and signal fade.
Again, in Frontier's defense, they spent much more time than they probably should have on this issue, and we finally -- after many months -- got the DSL solid. However, the phone continued to be an issue. After several theories about where the power induction was occuring were debunked, I finally gave up.
Keep in mind, I had gone from a rock-solid VoIP connection with pin-drop audio, to a phone on the end of a fence post wire with muddy audio -- my ears were not happy! Add in the caller-id failure (a result of unbalanced phone wire impedance), and the various other issues we've had and I was upset that we were paying over $80/month for this type of service; something needed to be done about it.... but I was in a two year contract.
That two year contract kept me from doing anything for some months, until one day the final straw broke. Just a few weeks ago Frontier decided they were going to block outbound port 25 and require everyone to use their mail servers to send e-mail. Not a problem for your average stay-at-home mom.... but a huge problem for us business folk who might be at three different ISPs throughout a day. Being able to use a corporate mail server as a central place to send out mail is extremely important.
I called up Frontier and spent some time on the phone trying to come up with a suitable midground with the tech. I explained to him I just needed to be able to send mail via port 25. He told me that I could only do that with a business account or a static IP address. I explained I was not going to pay for a business acount to get access to something that existed when I originally had service, and that I considered this a breach of contract on Frontier's side as they had altered the services offered to me while I was in contract.
The tech somewhat agreed, and I asked if he could just give me a static IP and we'd call it even. He said no, there was no way he could do that. I asked to speak to his supervisor. His supervisor also stated that they could not give me a free static IP (keep in mind this would cost them less than $1/month for that IP and would keep a customer happy).
After much deliberation we both concluded a static IP was not going to happen, so I asked the supervisor to remove the DSL from contract as as far as I could tell the contract had been breached by Frontier. He abliged and we moved on.
The next day I called Frontier and asked to signup for the 'DSL Lite with Security Calling' package, which is basically a phone line that only accepts inbound calls, and outbound 9-1-1 calls, and carries your DSL over it. Funny thing is -- you can order the Security Calling to allow for only outbound or only inbound calls and its around $10/month for the line; but as soon as you do inbound and outbound its now around $25.00/month.... sheesh.
So with our old phone number still active for incoming phone calls, and our DSL solid, I setup a Google Voice account and got a local telephone number. (WARNING: If you are not technical stop reading now). The Google Voice number rings to a free DID from IPCOMM which rings to a VoIP phone at our house. To make outbound calls, we dial the number as normal which runs a Python script on a server, which makes Google Voice perform a callback to the IPCOMM DID. As this callback is happening the call from the house is parked, and when the IPCOMM call connects from Google Voice it is joined to the parked call -- resulting in a successful outbound call. The end-user at the house has no idea how it happened.
For Caller-ID we're using bulkcnam.com to do name lookups.
Call-Waiting and Call-Waiting/Caller-ID (which actually didn't work with Frontier) now work great!
And we have added benefits like Music-On-Hold, call routing, forwarding, follow-me, voicemail with transcription and e-mail notification.
ORIGINAL COST: $80/month
NEW COST: $30/month (phone&DSL) + $15/month (server - which is used to host other things like this website, so the total cost does not go to phones)
SAVINGS: $35/month - and we now have crystal clear, hear a pin-drop audio on our phone!
The moral of the story? If the phone company can't build a quality phone network and you live in the middle of no-where, be prepared to do it yourself!
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