VOIP Advice

Hi all,

New to the forum and looking for some advice. During the thunder storms we had at the start of the week my DECT phone got wrecked (power surge took out the base unit). I'm currently on a fixed term landline contract with BT, but that ends in a couple of months.
So, I'm considering future proofing my system a bit and getting a Gigaset N300A paired with Gigaset C570A handsets. My plan is to use this setup with BT until the contract ends and then switching over to a VOIP provider. So I'm looking for some advice with two things:
1 - Will that work?
2 - Which VOIP providers go best with this setup? (I'm looking for a deal that gives free calls to landline and mobile and also provides an inbound number).

Not sure if it makes a difference, but I'm in the UK.

Hope someone can help with this.

Thanks

Alex

In reply to a post by AlexGoldie:

Hi all,

New to the forum and looking for some advice. During the thunder storms we had at the start of the week my DECT phone got wrecked (power surge took out the base unit). I'm currently on a fixed term landline contract with BT, but that ends in a couple of months.
So, I'm considering future proofing my system a bit and getting a Gigaset N300A paired with Gigaset C570A handsets. My plan is to use this setup with BT until the contract ends and then switching over to a VOIP provider. So I'm looking for some advice with two things:
1 - Will that work?
2 - Which VOIP providers go best with this setup? (I'm looking for a deal that gives free calls to landline and mobile and also provides an inbound number).

Not sure if it makes a difference, but I'm in the UK.

Hope someone can help with this.

Thanks

Alex

Just to make sure that you get relevant advice, do you have broadband as a separate contract to your telephone service? If your phone and broadband are bundled together and you wish to migrate your phone but not your broadband, you should bear in mind that migrating your phone to an independent VOIP provider may well cease both your landline and your broadband. We need to make sure you don't get caught out by that situation!

I have BT as a backup broadband provider which I will be getting rid of when the contract ends. My main provider is Starlink.

If you want to call mobiles you may find that using your own mobile phone is cheaper than making voip calls.
If you have an N300 you may find it cheaper to route calls to mobiles via companies such as Discountvoip and use companies such as Sipgate and Voipfone for calling landlines.

In reply to a post by AlexGoldie:

So, I'm considering future proofing my system a bit and getting a Gigaset N300A paired with Gigaset C570A handsets. My plan is to use this setup with BT until the contract ends and then switching over to a VOIP provider. So I'm looking for some advice with two things:
1 - Will that work?
2 - Which VOIP providers go best with this setup? (I'm looking for a deal that gives free calls to landline and mobile and also provides an inbound number).

Hello Alex,

I recently changed over to VOIP and I had similar decisions to make regarding which VOIP Provider to use and what ATA/Dect Phones to use.

I decided not to port my old number so that the change to VOIP would not affect my existing broadband provision in any way.

I now use Sipgate Basic with a free new local phone number, (of my choice), provided by Sipgate for free; together with a Gigaset N300A base station linked to Gigaset C375A phones and this setup works well

The Gigaset N300A did work with my Panason Dect Phones to simply make/receive calls but none of the Panasonic Phone Features worked. eg. Call memory/list of numbers but all features work with the Gigaset C375a phones.

Regarding the setup; I am not 100% sure that it is necessary but prior to setting up the N300a, I disabled both RTSP Passthrough and SIP Passthrough on my Asus Router and disabling these is probably worth doing whatever ATA Dect/Voip device you use.

Regards,
Fido

Thanks for the tip Michael. That's a good idea.

Hi Fido,

Good to hear from someone who's been through it. Glad the combination worked. From looking at their site I think SipGate is the one I'm going to go with. The starter package combine with the UK_Allnet_Flat sounds like a pretty good deal. Unlimited landline and mobile calls for just £9.95 per month seems pretty reasonable.

Thanks for all the good suggestions guys.

In reply to a post by AlexGoldie:

Hi Fido,

From looking at their site I think SipGate is the one I'm going to go with. The starter package combine with the UK_Allnet_Flat sounds like a pretty good deal. Unlimited landline and mobile calls for just £9.95 per month seems pretty reasonable.

Sipgate Starter is basically a Pay As You Go Service with no line rental and a very reasonable call cost per minute as follows;

https://www.sipgate.co.uk/all-call-rates#landline

Personally, (since I do not make a lot of calls), I do not pay for a monthly calls package and last month it only cost me 50p for landline calls.

I use my mobile for mobile calls.

Regards,
Fido

In reply to a post by Fido:

In reply to a post by AlexGoldie:

Hi Fido,

From looking at their site I think SipGate is the one I'm going to go with. The starter package combine with the UK_Allnet_Flat sounds like a pretty good deal. Unlimited landline and mobile calls for just £9.95 per month seems pretty reasonable.

Sipgate Starter is basically a Pay As You Go Service with no line rental and a very reasonable call cost per minute as follows;

https://www.sipgate.co.uk/all-call-rates#landline

Personally, (since I do not make a lot of calls), I do not pay for a monthly calls package and last month it only cost me 50p for landline calls.

I use my mobile for mobile calls.

Regards,
Fido

I think you ill find that the call rates for Voipfone are slightly cheaper particularly to UK mobile numbers.

Of particular note is that calls to numbers on the same platform are free with both companies.

Yes, you can run your existing landline into the N300A and have up to 5 VoIP services at te same time. Then when you mgrate your copper landline to another VoIP it becomes the sixth connection.

All the other stuff in your OP is good, as noted by other folks.

2 - Which VOIP providers go best with this setup? (I'm looking for a deal that gives free calls to landline and mobile and also provides an inbound number).

All SIP service providers will provide an inbound number, otherwise there wouldn’t be much point in them 😀

Most providers will also allow you to port over an existing number for use with their service for a nominal fee.

Calls to landlines cost money to make - you’ll either pay this though the cost of the subscription to the service + per call/per minute cost or through an (optional) call package which offers a bundle of minutes at a bulk discounted rate.

To get a more educated answer, you would need to indicate an approximate number of landline call minutes you use each month. Presumably these are UK landlines too?

Hi all,

Thanks for all the help and suggestions. I have signed up for Sipgate and have my N300a along with C575a handset. I'm currently trying to register, but it's saying Registration Failed. Do i have to wait for the autherisation latter to come through the post so I can "complete telephony" so that this will register or is there a problem?

I'm going to try using it as a pay-as-you go and see what it's like, if it's looking like it's going to cost more than I'd like, then I'll just add a package to it.

Thanks

Alex

Have a read of this

https://secure.live.sipgate.co.uk/faq/setup/index/id... (you will have to log in to access the details, you can find the link by going to sipgate and searching for the setup instruction if you don't want to click the link)

When i registered, the account was usable straight away but it was over 10 years ago.

Hi there,

Yep, followed all those steps earlier. I've been in touch with Sipgate, hopefully they it's because it's not activated yet.

Thanks

Alex

Hi Alex,

You are probsbly already using this link as a setup guide;

https://teamhelp.sipgate.co.uk/hc/en-gb/articles/625...

It took about a week for the registration pin to arrive by post and I had completed registration before I set it up. - I loaded the account with £10.00 so it had some cash in it and I made a text, (via the account), from my PC to my mobile at a cost of 6p to see if that worked and it did.

I then set up the N300a using the method in the above link. - It does work but I suspect that there can be a bit of a Hokey Cokey when it is first registering and I set mine and left it for 20 minutes and when I went back to it it was up and running.

The passwords to use is the one within the phone information area of the Sipgate Account for your phone number and not the one used to login to the Sipgate Account itself.

Also; it does not tell you to do this anywhere but it is probably worth making sure that the router firewall does not block access by disabling SIP Passthrough as prior to setting up the N300a, I disabled both RTSP Passthrough and SIP Passthrough on my Asus Router and disabling these is probably worth doing whatever ATA Dect/Voip device you use.

https://www.nextiva.com/blog/disable-sip-alg.html

I hope that this is of help.

Regards,
Fido

Edited by Fido (Mon 29-Aug-22 12:12:08)

In reply to a post by AlexGoldie:

it's saying Registration Failed. Do I have to wait for the authorisation letter to come through the post so I can "complete telephony" so that this will register or is there a problem?

If you setup and configured the N300 (or ATA) correctly it will register even before the letter verifying your postal address comes through the post, what you won't be able to do until it arrives is make or receive calls but it will register with the Sipgate server.

Edited by deleted (Mon 29-Aug-22 17:09:04)

Hi Fido,

Thanks for the information. Yes, I was following that guide, I actually was using my login rather than the details for the phone (thanks for that). But even after I changed it I'm getting the same thing.
I'm using a Starlink router which you can't really do any configuration changes on, but I ran a test and SIP ALG is off, so at least that's one less thing to worry about.
I've sent screenshots to Sipgate so hopefully they come back and tell me what the issue is.
Thanks for all your help.

Alex

Hi Dect,

Thanks for the tip, I've did a side by side comparison and everything looks right. Some of the menu options are slightly different from the instructions. Guess they've not updated them to match the newer layout or something, but everything I can see matches up.

Hopefully Sipgate comes back with something.

Thanks

Alex

Hi all,

Just to let you know, I've got this resolved. When I was configuring my number on Sipgate I didn't route it to a device properly. Once I updated that, everything went fine.