[RESOLVED] Are you experiencing random dropped calls?

[bridonca]

DECT uses a totally different frequency range as wifi, so the likelihood of interference is extremely unlikely. However, when you use a lossy codec, such as g.729a on the VOIP, with another lossy codec on the DECT, throw in some jitter, and you might not have the best sounding audio quality.

[FONGO_steve]

Is there anybody on our DSL service experiencing dropped calls?

[NorthPolePal]

Cordless phones may not be an issue here after all. I have been using a corded phone with all my cordless ones turned off, but I still get dropped calls.

[zik]

i still believe that this has nothing to do with us. one user or 2 maybe little more can have issue with there hardwear but from what i see it is much much more than that and it almost happened in a same time that only tells you one thing that the problem is coming to us and not starting from our side

[TSellers]

I just had another dropped call while my DECT phone was removed from the system, so I guess it's 'not guilty' as some of you have already suggested.

Anyway, here's the time it dropped just in case someone else got the same:
2010-06-17 22:58:55.0

[Baskar]

I am still having drop call issue. is there any workaround?
thanks
Baskar

[OverDrive]

Another one just happened to me - 8:04PM same number in nova scotia.

[FreePhoneUser]

Just had a dropped call.

I was on with a 1-888 number, and it disconnected after 21 mins and some seconds. Happened approximately 6:10pm Eastern time. The phone didn't disconnect, all I heard was no sound for about 1 minute until I hung up the receiver.

Wired all the way from connection from cable modem to router to switch to pap2 and wired handset.

My Internet connection did not drop.

[FreePhoneUser]

Just had another dropped call with a different 1-800 number. about 6:35pm. Really frustrating to have to call back, wait on hold agian, and explain a story to a new rep.

[FreePhoneUser]

Just cut out again, 7:08pm, 17m 50s into the call.

[OverDrive]

Just had another dropped call

01:55 2010-06-23 19:52:51.0 2010-06-23 19:54:46.0

[OverDrive]

Another Dropped call.

28:57 2010-06-23 21:06:02.0 2010-06-23 21:34:59.0



Is anyone still looking into this issue? There has been no contact from an admin in 5 days.

[FONGO_kris]

We are still looking into this issue, yes. I will try tomorrow to find some updates.

[TSellers]

Here's my dropped call from today:
2010-06-23 17:30:14.0

Local call (I called home on my cell phone). Call dropped after a minute and 12 seconds.

[cgitej]

Been having the same issues; thought it was my configuration but from the looks of things it does not look that way. I’ve tried a different provider for a whole week and I have not been having any of the issues I was experiencing with freephoneline. Hoping things will get fixed as I would rather stay with freephoneline services.

[TSellers]

I've been regretting having to make a post such as this, and have been putting it off as long as possible.

Yes, it is frustrating, and it is disappointing too. Many of the people who have posted here have demonstrated they appreciate what Freephonline has done for them and are not simply whiners and complainers. Many have been so helpful to other new users such as myself that it makes it an invaluable community to to belong to and participate in, and that helpfulness extends to the staff at Freephoneline.

I just had another call drop, and it is incredibly frustrating trying to call them back and explaining what happened, and that's IF you have the proper number on your caller ID to call them back. In addition it is almost guaranteed to happen every day numerous times, and seems to be happening more in spite of the fact I have replaced every single piece of hardware that is involved with connecting to my DSL line in the hopes of solving the problem.

I don't want to drop the service, but I'm afraid there's no other choice. At the moment Freephoneline has not stepped forward with any further information about what is really being done about the problem, about any timelines to have it fixed, etc., etc. While there have been constant promises that it is being looked into, there has been no substantive information given out as to what in fact is being done, for all we know perhaps it is just a hope and a prayer that the problem will someday magically go away and in the meantime the fact that it's free will be the only business model required to suceed. I don't want to be unfair as I also must point out that people like Steve and Kris seem to work tirelessly to address issues to the best of their ability, but they can only go as far as their resources allow, and who knows what resources the parent company are allowing? For example if you owned the company wouldn't you reach out to the affected customers in a good faith gesture and at least offer them a free Canada long distance plan so they can call the people they just got disconnected from back again? And I don't buy the doctrine that you cannot judge our parent company based upon Freephone line, to me that's a bit like the US Gov't saying we have not part in the Gulf Oil Spill, it's all BP's fault. You cannot expect an employee to get on a forum and say, 'my managers are not giving me the support I require', I expect that would be very poor job security!

Anyway a number of people have mentioned they use other providers with some success. For those of you that have, if you wouldn't mind PM'ing me who I should look at, it would be appreciated as Freephonline was my first and only experience with VOIP so far.

[bridonca]

Tsellers: I feel for you, I still believe your frustration is misplaced. The problems you experience are classic SIP VOIP through NAT issues. I have had the same problems with other SIP VOIP carriers. So it is the main reason I am not giving freephoneline a hard time, the likelihood there is a problem on your end is still pretty good. What is frustrating of course, is no one is able to pin it down.

So enough blame games from me. What are your options? Here are 3 I can think of.

I use Magicjack for my outgoing calls. Incoming calls are flaky on the Magicjack, again, the fault of SIP VOIP through NAT. Fortunately I can forward the Magicjack number to any phone in North America, which is very handy. Cost is about $50, and $30 a year. Another option is voip.ms. It is something like freephoneline, though they offer a bit more. It is supposed to be reliable, but again, I have be hearing some people have incoming call issues. Then there is Skype. What makes Skype awesome is that it finds a way for the call to get through, and does every dirty trick in the book to do it. If you need a robust call though the Internet, Skype is the best way to do it.

I would not be in any hurry to port your number from freephoneline. You can use freephoneline to forward the call, and since it is not using any of your computer gear, I suspect it will be much more reliable. You might need to think about getting a cell phone with unlimited incoming.

[TSellers]

Thanks bridonca, I hear what you're saying, especially about porting the number. I realize that I could do just that only to have the same problem elsewhere.

I guess what caught my attention was some of the other users here saying that they have used other VOIP providers with the same equipment and not experienced dropped calls, then do get the dropped calls with Freephoneline.

I'll look at the options you suggest. As I now have a second PAP2T as a backup, I'm wondering if the best way to test things would be sign up and test another service or two that are able to provide a local number to my location and see how things go before making the leap to porting the landline.

In the beginning I recall the hiccup with Skype was not being able to get a local number, at least not without involving some third party workaround and different hardware, that looked expensive.

I does seem like there are a bewildering array of alternatives available to sort through though, thanks for the feedback, you're obviously very experienced.

PS: And Kudos to Freephoneline for allowing us to have this discussion here, the fact they are doing so speaks to their integrity.

[zik]

this is not a normal issue with all VOIP providers i use to be with acanac i only switch to fpl because it is free and they did not have the problem we are having now and i,am using the exact same equipments . go and look in other voip forums you wont see this much compliant from dropped calls ,i don't mind paying few $ if that means less dropped calls ,it wold be very nice from an admin to shed a light on this issue

[bridonca]

zik: You made me smile! Google "acanac dropped calls" and you will see the humour. My limited experience tells me no SIP VOIP operator is immune to this crap!

Why your ATA would work on one sip provider and be flaky with freephoneline? My most intelligent guess is that if you have a good router with the right ports forwarded, and a clean Internet connection, and you still have problems, your registration timeout settings might not be correct. Useless info, because I have no idea what the correct settings to a particular ATA would be, short of using trial and error. And even if I got the same model down pat, that is still not useful. For example, do you know how many types of PAP2 devices that are out there, all using different chipsets and firmwares? And that is not even counting the knockoffs! Cisco belongs in its own place in hell for doing this to their gear.

I think freephoneline may be on to something switching to Grandstream gear. I own a few of Grandstream's devices, a BT101 phone and a HT-286. I do not recall ever having to deal with dropped calls on Grandstream gear, either I am lucky or the firmware is smart enough to deal with it. Saying that, most SIP VOIP gear I used did get working, some just needed more attention than others. The major problems I did get usually had to do with NATs I have no control over.

[FONGO_steve]

I think freephoneline may be on to something switching to Grandstream gear. I own a few of Grandstream's devices, a BT101 phone and a HT-286. I do not recall ever having to deal with dropped calls on Grandstream gear, either I am lucky or the firmware is smart enough to deal with it. Saying that, most SIP VOIP gear I used did get working, some just needed more attention than others. The major problems I did get usually had to do with NATs I have no control over.

On that note, we're also finding the Grandstreams are helping remedy a few other problems users used to report too. We're seeing exponentially less reports of one-way audio due to a "use random RTP port" option the Grandstream's have. Most dropped call reports are also Linksys users too - not sure if that's just due to the numbers or not (we haven't used the Grandstream's for as along as the Linksys' yet)

We have not given up on this, but it's a lengthy and time consuming process. Trying to reserve the time of those I need to talk to can be difficult, but I continue to be persistent. As we've said before, since this thread is mostly people complaining of the issue it looks bigger than it is, but in reality it's under 1% of users who have ever reported these problems. But regardless, we aren't giving up on finding out what the common variable there is.

[mmaqbool]

My calls going to drop with call log message "TorontoFibernetics block"

Please help

[Yroc]

As we've said before, since this thread is mostly people complaining of the issue it looks bigger than it is, but in reality it's under 1% of users who have ever reported these problems.

I too have been experiencing a large number of drop calls as of late. It is something that needs to be resolved (I did not bother complaining as I am sure many others have not who are having this issue)....

[FreePhoneUser]

Just had another dropped call.

I don't use my FPL heavily, maybe once -twice per day but when I do, it seems that there is a 50% chance the call will disconnect at some random interval.

All of my disconnects have been with an outbound call (only because I don't receive incoming calls to this line).

At this point I wouldn't be willing to recommend to my friends/family to depend on FPL, at least until the issue is resolved.

[TSellers]

I took some measures to be proactive and at least see if bridonca's theory is correct. I received a number of suggestions and I looked at some alternatives.

I downloaded and installed vBuzzer so I could see their options. I almost signed up, but the one thing I did not like was the 'fine print' where they tell you that no matter what payment method you choose, you are committed to a one year contract. I looked at voipdiscount but I couldn't find a local DID for Canada. I noted bridonca's post about lots of dropped calls on Acanac so didn't even look there.

So then I went over to VoIP.ms after a few people recommended it. One user said that he uses both Freephonline and voip.ms and while he does get dropped calls on the former, does not on the latter. I liked the look of their site and their business model and pricing scheme. I ended up signing up for the value service and getting a local DID number. I installed it on the second line of my Linksys ATA and the process was pretty painless this time because most of the relevant ports were already forwarded in the router. Then I forwarded my landland which I earlier ported to Freephoneline to the new DID and everything seems to work fine. Now I can make outgoing personal casual calls on my freephonline account, and make the important ones on the other line. However I have no guarantee yet I will not still experience dropped calls. If I do, then I will go out and buy a Grandstream ATA as suggested and bemoan the fact I just bought a new second PAP2T as a backup ATA. There is already one advantage to having a new local DID, when I try to call home to my freephonline using a Rogers cell phone it will not connect, but a Telus cell phone will connect. I opened a ticket with Rogers months ago, and they never fixed the problem and never even got back to me.

If I do not get any dropped calls, then I will hang on with Freephonline as long as it takes and wait for the issues to be resolved, as they probably will eventually. If I still get dropped calls, then I will probably order a Grandstream and see if that makes any difference. So far I've only actually made one short call on the service so I can't comment on its quality.

I really appreciate all the comments, suggestions, and feedback everyone has taken the time to offer.