In reply to a post by Tacitus:

I think you're probably correct, but IMHO it would be better to prevent it happening rather than have the hassle after the problem occurs.

Yes; as I said much earlier in the thread I too would avoid Andrews Arnold because of this potential open ended direct debit issue.

Does anyone have stong views about the Swedish company Tel2 ?

https://tel2.co.uk/index.html#plans

It seems that you may be able to use Paypal with Tel2 which means that you may be able to have more control over the payment (subject to the fine print) but some sites give Tel2 a thumbs diwn for sales practices.

From the following Trustpilot Reviews they appear to be another one to avoid:

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/tele2.com

Regarding the broadband providers and copper lines, they all often have unlimited calls package options, (eg. for £6.00 extra), but you need to add the copper line rental cost to that to calculate the overall monthly cost of copper lines so overall copper lines always cost more and part of the costing model that the broadband copper line providers use when supplying VOIP Lines appears to be inflenced by what they see as a loss of revenue from the loss of copper lines and until the main copper line providers, BT etc, get out of that loss of copper line revenue mind set and they stop trying to link their VOIP offering to their broadband and their own routers mobiles phone lines are the the competitors to VOIP lines.

Edited by Fido (Sun 18-Sep-22 20:40:00)

I initiated a port to Sipgate before they stopped sign ups, using an unused account from years ago. The port will actually complete this week.

That said; the business model where accounts can sit there and never ever make a call seems to be unsustainable.

The marginal cost to Sipgate of having an unused account is virtually zero..

My line will be used for occasional calls but if they try and impose a monthly charge in the £10 range there are many other/better alternatives for residential users.

If I recall this is not the first time Sipgate have tried to remove the Basic/Starter service... they would actually do better if they delayed trying this for another 3 years or so when the PTSN gets switched off.

In reply to a post by gt94sss2:

If I recall this is not the first time Sipgate have tried to remove the Basic/Starter service... they would actually do better if they delayed trying this for another 3 years or so when the PTSN gets switched off.

I have theory around this...probably ballcocks, but here it is:

Germany switched off their PSTN in 2014 I believe - this was around the time that Sipgate first mooted the withdrawal of their free tier - I reckon because there was a surge of new subscribers from the fatherland.

Fast forward to 2022 and the imminent shutoff of our PSTN starting with copper stop sells already underway, I think they may be seeing a similar surge of Brit applicants and they've probably thought, well enough, now time to charge.

As said maybe purely coincidental. But who knows....

In reply to a post by gt94sss2:

The marginal cost to Sipgate of having an unused account is virtually zero..

The marginal cost is not just the dormancy cost; it us also the recovery of the setup cost to Sipgate of setting the account up, providing a free number and sending a letter from Germany, at Sipgate's expense, to confirm the customers address which including staff costs is probabke a nominal £3 to £5 per customer which will never be recovered if no calls are made, - Couple those costs with rising energy, equipment, staffing and bandwidth costs and it is easy to see why Sipgate has sought to rid itself of the residential customers who never make a call.

In reply to a post by gt94sss2:

If I recall this is not the first time Sipgate have tried to remove the Basic/Starter service....

Until I read this I had not realized that Sipgate had planned a similar move in 2014 and I then googled and I found this old thread which indicates what happenned in 2014 and somewhat explains Sipgate's motivation.

https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/voip/4375510-sipga...

In 2014 a reply to a customer who was closing his account in response to the news Sipgate wrote;


"Currently we are investigating options available to us to continue service to all basic accounts holders who actively use their accounts. Clarification via Twitter, Facebook and direct emailing will be made by our UK Product Development team over the coming days.


My recomendation to Sipgate would be not to give up on residential customers altogether a smarter way would be to add small monthly fee options of £1.00 plus all calls to be chargeable as they are now or possibly a £2.00 monthly fee that also included 100 free calls per month as that model would be competitive and should grow the customer base and should provide a regular income stream for Sipgate.

Regards,
Fido

In reply to a post by Tacitus:

A&A also look good but I'm a bit put off by their use of Direct Debit. VoIP is hackable and it would be reasonable to be able to set a monthly limit on call costs. A limit on time/cost for individual calls doesn't do it since it would be possible for a hacker to rack up a number of relatively short calls and a large bill in a short time.

AAISP do have some security to prevent big bills - restricting access to known IP addresses/ranges, sendng an email if a bill exceeds a certain amount and sending an email if a new endpoint registers.

I appreciate that these measures may not be sufficient for some, but they're better than nothing!

In reply to a post by Tacitus:

At present I pay iDNet £6/month for unlimited calls via PSTN. None of the VoIP providers will come anywhere near matching that.

I guess that decision comes down to how many outgoing calls you make - As a light user I've never found that I'd generate a bill anywhere near the £x/month for unlimited calls. Again, this may not be appropriate for everyone but it's worth looking realistically at your usage to see if unlimited deals are an expensive option?

Edited by ferretuk (Tue 20-Sep-22 08:53:22)

In reply to a post by ferretuk:

AAISP do have some security to prevent big bills - restricting access to known IP addresses/rranges, sendng an email if a bill exceeds a certain amount and sending an email if a new endpoint registers.

I find these work well, but I turned off the IP alert as I use the app on my mobile phone.

In reply to a post by MHC:

I would recommend VoIPify ... previously known as Port5060 https://www.voipify.net/features/

UK owned and based. Their monthly charges are reasonable and their call charges are excellent. Most companies are much th same when it comes to porting costs.

Hello MHC,

Thank you for your recommendation for Voipify.

I have never known Sipgate to answer the phone but Sipgate usually do respond to email/message/queries but my query to Sipgate, (from a week ago), asking for information as to their plans regarding my Sipgate Account have not been answered.

At present with regard to Sipgate we are in lombo.

If Sipgate let us know that we can stay as we are I will stay with them but I have been looking at alternatives and I have decided upon Voipify if Sipgate do not relent.

I phoned Voipify today and they answered the phone. - A good refreshing start for a Sipgate customer. - No direct debit with Voipify, you preload the account and only the balance in the account can be used for calls so no open ended direct debit risk to keep a careful eye upon but you do need to keep a positive funds balance in the account.

The Voipify website does not make it clear but the basic monthly cost for one user with one base station, is £4.20, (including VAT), which is higher than most others but the higher base cost is then somewhat balanced by the lower call cost of only 0.6p per minute which mitigates it so, after considering the alternative suppliers, cost, reliabilty record, reputation, etc. I have decided upon Voipify if Sipgate do not quickly let us know that our Sipgate Accounts can stay as they are.

Regards,
Fido

Good to get teh feedback ...

I like them for US calls - cheaper than most of Europe including mobile.

Yes,you need to keep a positive balance - or at least for a year or so. They will email daily when you get close to zero, and topping up is easy, create an invoice and then pay it. OR in my case when I go negative I can still make/receive calls for a while and just need to pay off the balance monthly if I wish, although I tend to stay in credit.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

Not everyone has a mobile and for a significant number of subscribers that do have one, it is generally switched off

I can honestly say I don't know one person who typically has their mobile phone switched off, accept they may not get a signal from time to time but never switched off.

Edit: Just to add I am referring to people's personal mobiles phones not company ones that they may choose to switch off at the end of the working day.

Where I live there is little signal, the phone has to work hard to stay connected. This flattens the battery in a few hours. The phone needs to be switched off or on charge.

Similar story here with mobile signals. What we do is use wifi calling with the phone in airplane mode. That stops it looking for a signal that probably doesn't exist and draining the battery. Simply switch airplane mode on, that will most likely turn the wifi off so just turn wifi back on again. You do of course need to remember to switch airplane mode off when you go out but you soon get used to that.

Edited by sjr (Tue 20-Sep-22 15:44:45)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

That's a given. I've not known any VoIP providers to port external numbers in for free. Its usually somewhere between £20 and £40 to do so.

Everyone gets charged to do it... so unless people offering ultra budget services fancy taking a hit, they'll charge too