rogerluli Posted May 2, 2006 Report Share Posted May 2, 2006 italkbb fixed the incoming problem we had. It turns out that it wasn't their problem at all. It was a problem with the linksys router. Finally with my wife (speaking Chinese) me (able to understand the computer instructions) one tech speaking English and two in Chinese the problem is no more and our phone works fine. For all those that follow this official CFL guinea pig be aware that not all routers support voip. There is however a patch or upgrade on the linksys website to correct it. My router is a version 5 (v5). If anyone has this problem I can now walk you through it. With italkbb you select the number you want by area code. This would allow you to have a local phone number for family in another U.S. area code. You also get a Chinese 17951 number. This is like our 800 numbers whivch do not charge the caller for long distance. The 17951 numbers are Voip special phone numbers. Since you can forward your calls, your SO in China or family members can call you toll free anywhere in the U.S. You can also take your adapter with you while traveling, plug into a dsl or cable router and a phone to use your line anywhere. With the calling history you have proof of communication as evidence when needed. Gee I still can't believe we can stop gathering evidence. Now that we resolved the only problem we had I may soon cancel the old land line. THis would mean that at less than my regular land line's monthly bill we have unlimited two way calls with China in addition to all service the phone company provides.210938[/snapback]Sheeesh...we have been using italkBB for about a month and are having problems with local calls...the person on the other end cannot hear us...long distance in the US and to China has been fine...I bought a new Linksys router to set this up...Laopo called them last night and they took down the # of our router and were supposed to call back with info but never did...So we are not totally happy... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
izus Posted May 3, 2006 Report Share Posted May 3, 2006 im real happy overall with lingo i pay penny's for the connection and very rarely have issues.19.99 a montha little over 1 cent a min for DynaSkyheavy month of 3000 min comes out to like 50 bucksi call china with cellphone or home phonei dont think it'll change either once she gets her with her calls to familyi wont lie maybe 5 min of out of service every other month. its very nice though to have everything come in from my brighthouse connectionTV, Internet and Phonelinesdont wanna lose brighthouse.has never happened in 5 years in orlando i have my cell phone for emergency Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeeFisher3 Posted May 6, 2006 Report Share Posted May 6, 2006 I've been trying to get a fax to work on my PC for several weeks. I've gone through two different internal modem and three external ones. Finally, I got the last one to work - on my land line. italkbb wouldn't send a stupid fax, so I called the service folks and told me to start the number with a # and then 1-area code-number. Damned if it didn't work!212161[/snapback]Yeah, just like the book said it would. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeeFisher3 Posted May 6, 2006 Report Share Posted May 6, 2006 Finally got my local land line number transferred over to italkbb. The land line is now dead and the only phone service we have is italkbb and a very expensive per-minute cell phone. The cell is only used a couple times per month for very short calls so the $5 monthly fee is never used and rolls over. For $5 it's worth the security for Xiahong when she's out driving around on her own. Such a deal, call anywhere in the US, China and 20 some other countries for free. Even have a China local phone number so family can call and talk as long as they want. Total telecommunications bill of $30 per month including the cell. And I have three way calling, caller ID and other features that were not included with my land line. Oh, I paid for the unlimited global plan for a year and got two months free.213084[/snapback]Friends and family are using the China number and it seems to be working fairly well. Occassionally we get the bottom of the well sound, but if we call back it seems to be OK. Changing the Cable TV to Dish, canceling the phone and all we figure to see a savings between $80 - $90 a month. Figure that will help when buying the next tickets to China. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan R Posted June 24, 2006 Report Share Posted June 24, 2006 No more land line! We cancelled the old home phone and now only use italkbb for home. It is working fine. Saves money and gives us more use of the internet cable which also supplies us with kylinTV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted June 24, 2006 Report Share Posted June 24, 2006 Just some tips for those with DSL or cable so you can maximize your available bandwidth. If you're trying to figure out the bandwidth you have available, you can always use this link to do a quick speed check: http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ I'm living (and working remotely...eventhough my boss thinks I'm still in Texas...Shhhhh!) and the main problem I find sometimes is that the chinese govt controls on the internet cause the "ping" times to be quite high (around 250ms). High ping times will cause ANY VOIP (voice over IP) connection to be slow, sketchy or unbearable. It's obvious the chinese servers are checking each packet as it comes in and out of the country. Even with my vpn connection there are still some days the call quality gets iffy. You can check your ping time here among other thing (but you'll need to do the free registration): http://www.dslreports.com/beta/doctorping Just some things to think about.... Personally, before I moved here to live with her during the waiting-game we would just use the free voice chat function within MSN Messenger. Howerver, it looks like the new Live Messenger wants you to pay for doing that now. Go figure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeeFisher3 Posted June 25, 2006 Report Share Posted June 25, 2006 No more land line! We cancelled the old home phone and now only use italkbb for home. It is working fine. Saves money and gives us more use of the internet cable which also supplies us with kylinTV.226189[/snapback]Since we went to ITalkBB we have only had one problem, I would receive a call and not be able to hear anything, and a restart of the phone box solved that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogerluli Posted June 25, 2006 Report Share Posted June 25, 2006 No more land line! We cancelled the old home phone and now only use italkbb for home. It is working fine. Saves money and gives us more use of the internet cable which also supplies us with kylinTV.226189[/snapback]Since we went to ITalkBB we have only had one problem, I would receive a call and not be able to hear anything, and a restart of the phone box solved that.226441[/snapback]We still occasionally get a really bad connection but only with local calls... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan R Posted June 25, 2006 Report Share Posted June 25, 2006 No more land line! We cancelled the old home phone and now only use italkbb for home. It is working fine. Saves money and gives us more use of the internet cable which also supplies us with kylinTV.226189[/snapback]Since we went to ITalkBB we have only had one problem, I would receive a call and not be able to hear anything, and a restart of the phone box solved that.226441[/snapback]We still occasionally get a really bad connection but only with local calls... 226488[/snapback]Have you tried seeing if there is an upgrade on line for your router? Linksys.com provides voip upgrades for many of their routers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NewDay2006 Posted July 21, 2006 Report Share Posted July 21, 2006 Anyone using DSL and the internet phone service?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NewDay2006 Posted July 22, 2006 Report Share Posted July 22, 2006 Not sure it makes much sense. I don't think you can have DSL without regular land line telephone service. If so, it would probably be cheaper to go with onesuite if you calls are only to China. The big cost advantage with italkbb is that you can unplug your landline service.232597[/snapback]I saw online today you can have DSL without the phone service. currently my phone service is about $100 per month including DSL, without long distance. I currently pay about $20-30 a month on onesuite.... So I think I can save about $30-40 a month if I go with the IBTALK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NewDay2006 Posted July 22, 2006 Report Share Posted July 22, 2006 Not sure it makes much sense. I don't think you can have DSL without regular land line telephone service. If so, it would probably be cheaper to go with onesuite if you calls are only to China. The big cost advantage with italkbb is that you can unplug your landline service.232597[/snapback]I saw online today you can have DSL without the phone service. currently my phone service is about $100 per month including DSL, without long distance. I currently pay about $20-30 a month on onesuite.... So I think I can save about $30-40 a month if I go with the IBTALK.232653[/snapback]If you can get DSL without local phone service, italkbb would be the way to go - in my opinion. It gives you free calling to China and a local China phone number so folks over there can call you for free. It is a set monthly fee with free long distance anywhere in the US and about 20 countries. If you must keep local service, down grade to the absolute minimum. Italkbb gives you caller ID, call waiting, conference calling and all that stuff for free. I even figured out how to fax stuff with it.232657[/snapback]I will look into it more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shanghaigale Posted November 8, 2006 Report Share Posted November 8, 2006 Hi Merc,I am going to send this info to my wifes friend in China and see if they are interested in signing up her husband is american and they live in Shanghai now. If it works I will let you know. Hey, I see you are from Kettle falls just north of Spokane, I live just east of Spokane near the Idaho border. Do you get to Spokane often? I have been married now for about 8 years to my Shanghai wife and we have been back in the states now for going on 5 years. Life is great.shanghaigale I'd be interested to hear if anyone is having any luck with this. $100 a month is a $100 a month, and that is what I spend in a month at OneSuite, even at 2.9c/min... If she can call me free... But I would need to know it works fairly well... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NewDay2006 Posted November 21, 2006 Report Share Posted November 21, 2006 (edited) Hi Merc,I am going to send this info to my wifes friend in China and see if they are interested in signing up her husband is american and they live in Shanghai now. If it works I will let you know. Hey, I see you are from Kettle falls just north of Spokane, I live just east of Spokane near the Idaho border. Do you get to Spokane often? I have been married now for about 8 years to my Shanghai wife and we have been back in the states now for going on 5 years. Life is great.shanghaigale I'd be interested to hear if anyone is having any luck with this. $100 a month is a $100 a month, and that is what I spend in a month at OneSuite, even at 2.9c/min... If she can call me free... But I would need to know it works fairly well...It works fine. I've had it for 3 months or so... a few problems, but nothing that lasted very long, a few minutes mostly. My wife can call me from anywhere with her cell or her home phone and I can call her on both also. My cable did go up in price from $41 to 57 lst month , which is a bummer. it took away $16 in savings I was receiving. So I figure I'm only saving about $18 per month since the increase, but my wife can call me for free and she knows her friends and family will be able to call her for free when she gets here and I will save about $20-30 in Onesuite charges a month when she is here, Priceless. Edited November 21, 2006 by NewDay2006 (see edit history) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NewDay2006 Posted November 22, 2006 Report Share Posted November 22, 2006 Your cable fee went up? That's wierd. They offered to reduce the increase if I signed up for cable... I won't... I only wanted it for the internet... it is my only choice for internet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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