I'd never heard of 056 numbers before. They explain them here:

https://www.voipfone.co.uk/EP_UK_Telephone_Numbers.php

But then give very good reasons not to use one!

In reply to a post by zeb99:

I'd never heard of 056 numbers before. They explain them here:

https://www.voipfone.co.uk/EP_UK_Telephone_Numbers.php

But then give very good reasons not to use one!

I wonder if you port your own number in do you have to pay the £3/month

Well, there is no such thing as a free lunch and even in the bargain basements of established hosted providers there have been recently price rises. I am a Voipfone user and very happy with the level of service they give with free calls to them.

If you only really intend to use VoIP for incoming calls then you could be up and running in under 1/2 an hour with a local number on any UK exchange by just paying £3 + VAT a month. If you have a number to port in, then there is a one-off charge of £20 + VAT.

You need to deposit a calling credit to make outgoing calls which can be as low as £5. Interestingly you can call any other VoIP subscriber for free.

Their service is like Lego where you can come and go as you wish with any of there extra services. Their referral scheme could reduce their monthly charge.to you.

A quality provider with a solid service and when things do go wrong, their status web page keeps ypu informed.

I have used Voipfone for years and am very happy with their service.

I just had a chat with voipfone and they said that it was £3/month all inclusive for a number with a single user account. I asked if that single user account could be used on multiple devices but they said no, I would need an extension for each device at a cost of £1.50 per month per extension.

I was assuming that I could use the same account on the other half's mobile as well as my own plus the existing DECT phone and have incoming calls to the ported in landline ringing on all 3 simultaneously but if that's not the case it becomes rather expensive for what we want it for.

Makes one appreciate what a good deal the Sipgate Basic/Starter gig was….

In reply to a post by sjr:

I just had a chat with voipfone and they said that it was £3/month all inclusive for a number with a single user account. I asked if that single user account could be used on multiple devices but they said no, I would need an extension for each device at a cost of £1.50 per month per extension.

I emailed them and got this reply:

You have a choice;

Option One would be have No Extensions. You will then only be able to be on one call at a time.

Option Two would be to have Extensions. Each handset would be configured to it's own Handset [sic] and each handset could be on a different call at the same time as the other handsets.

I suspect that Option One is what you are looking for, therefore the cost will be £3.60 every 30 days.

I interpret that you can have multiple handsets on the one single user account. But they would all operate at the same time so you could only have a single call at a time.

If you wanted to use something like Groundwire or their own Sofphone then that would count as a separate extension. Unless you only wanted to have one call at a time, in which case you wouldn't be able to use the softphone on your mobile and have someone else using the 'home' landline simultaneously.

Dead simple this voip stuff isn't it.......

Edited by Tacitus (Wed 14-Sep-22 13:56:04)

I'm very new to SIP though I've been running an Asterisk system for incoming calls for 5 years. We use Skype for international calls. A few days ago I first signed up to sipgate to discover the retail plan had gone and chose the S plan only to discover I needed to wait for for a PIN number by post! As I was hoping to demonstrate SIP at a talk on Tuesday I was giving I looked elsewhere, discovered this forum and others recommending A&A.

It was a simple sign up process at A&A including paying a £1 initial fee by bank transfer, then confirming an online DD authorisation, and I was up and running with their £1.20/month for a landline number.

This was Sunday. I then got into some technical issues and emailed technical support for a reply hopefully Monday morning. Technical Support is only M-F and (I recall) Sat am. But within an hour I had a reply from Tobias who tried to solve my problem. Excellent. I would say that the A&A website is pretty awful - something looking like a 90s website and I had missed having to have a 2nd password for the SIP line (as opposed to the account).

I then had a 2nd problem trying to configure my MicroSIP, Again Tobias was helping just after midnight Sunday and again Monday morning. That's dedicated customer service. Turned out that the example MicroSIP configuration on the A&A site was not right for my version (which is quite new). When I spotted the error by trial and error I emailed Tobias and he updated the A&A website in minutes.

I can also do sip calls to another sip provider which is nice.

A&A are a UK company and deserve success in what is becoming a crowded market. They really need to get their website refreshed (same as Zen, their website is clunky with obscure links to important information).

Alan

In reply to a post by Alan_Wilts:

It was a simple sign up process at A&A including paying a £1 initial fee by bank transfer, then confirming an online DD authorisation, and I was up and running with their £1.20/month for a landline number.

Hi Alan,

I had had planned to join Andrews Arnold, (right now; as a second provider and potential a replacement to Sipgate if they do not retain Sipgate Starter for existing customers), but there is something in the Andrew Arnold accounts processes for VOIP that made me uncomfortable, and I will pass.

Andrews Arnold seem to insist on direct debit which is OK but what is it is potentially not OK about their system is that the calls costs can be open ended, and you cannot place a limit on the monthly call cost in the extremely remote event of calls being billed that you did not make.

eg. I pay my mobile phone provider by direct debit, but I have set a monthly calls cap as a buffer to limit the liability for calls made out outside of the calls package.

Potentially VOIP systems can be hacked.

Personally, I cannot agree to a potentially unlimited liability for calls via a VOIP call system especially for a website that I have to trawl through to find where things are up to.

Andrews Arnold do answer the phone and they are probably great, but it is not for me.

Regards,
Fido

Hi Fido

Good point. I notice there is a cap on per minute costs which is strange. I recall it is set at 20/min for UK calls (has be enough to cover mobiles) and 1p/minute for international (effectively you need to ring them to get it cleared).

I agree with you, a per month or even per day max would be much better and I would like to restricted international calls to a very few specific countries.

The A&A website has lots of prompts and links to its security page which I've not yet got my head round but it suggested to me that the current SIP topology is not secure. When the whole country goes voip I wonder if we will see a big increase in fraud and even homes hacked.

If you find another sip provide that offers flexible and sensible limits do say.

Regards
Alan