VOIPo Residential Service Feature List/Launch Pricing

[VOIPoTim]

There has been a lot of discussion regarding our VOIPo Express service which is now in Public BETA and available to ALL of you immediately. VOIPo Express offers toll-free numbers, virtual local numbers, and a fax service to send and receive faxes easily.

We’d like to now introduce you to our residential service. Just as we have for the VOIPo Express service, we’ll soon be opening our full residential service up for Public BETA.

There are two ways to use the Residential Service.

Option 1 – VOIPo Adapter

We’ll send you a phone adapter that allows you to use your regular telephones just as you normally would. The adapter is about the size of a deck of cards and very easy to install. It has an Ethernet port, a phone port, and a power port. You just plug the power cord in, connect it to your router and then plug your phone cord into it. It will connect to our servers, provision itself and within about 1 minute, you’ll have a dialtone on your telephone. You can then make and receive calls as you would on your normal phone. If you move, just take it with you. Your service and number won’t change (unless you want a new number). Just plug it into your new internet connection and talk. This is similar to Vonage in terms of the service type.

Option 2 – Softphone

A softphone is basically a computer program that you can optionally use to connect to our service. You’d then use it to make/receive calls using your computer and a headset/mic. This is particularly handy if you’re traveling and have it installed on your laptop. You can essentially bypass expensive hotel phone charges and use your home phone even though you’re not home.

Basic Features

Call Waiting
3 Way Calling
Caller ID with Name
Call Waiting ID
Anonymous Call Rejection
Caller ID Block (*67)
Call Return (*69)
Call Forwarding
Voicemail

Advanced Voicemail

With the VOIPo voicemail system, you can have your voicemail messages delivered directly to your e-mail (even multiple e-mail accounts) as a .WAV file. You can also setup notifications to go to certain e-mail addresses without attaching the file. With both options, you’ll get the date/time, the Caller ID info, and the length of the message. Of course you can always check your messages from your phone or by dialing in remotely as well.

We’ve also incorporated US SMS notifications as well. If you setup SMS voicemail notifications, you’ll get a short and sweet text message with just the essentials and no e-mail fluff…the date/time, number, caller ID info and length. The text notification is short enough to fit into one message without being cutoff with all major US carriers.

Contacts

vPanel also has a contact management system. Once you add a contact, you can add unlimited phone numbers for it to identify when the contact calls. You can also assign your contacts to groups like family, friends, work, etc. You can setup as many groups as you’d like. The contacts system is fully integrated with other features including Custom Caller ID, Call Routing, Click to Call, etc.

Custom Caller ID

When you add someone to your Contacts, you can optionally provide a nickname for them. If you do, we’ll override the default network Caller ID with the nickname. So as an example, if you have a contact with the nickname “Mom” and you get a call from that contact using the phone number you labeled as “Cell” for her, your Caller ID will show “Mom – Cell” for your Caller ID name. This is especially useful if you get calls from someone from a cell phone or something that doesn’t have a traditional Caller ID name.

Click to Call

When in your contacts, you can initiate a call to a contact’s number with one click. Just click their number…your VOIPo phone will ring. Once you answer, we’ll automatically connect your call.

Advanced Call Routing

Everyone is bombarded with calls these days and we wanted to give everyone a little bit of control. All incoming calls can be routed based on criteria you set. By default, all your incoming calls will get through to you. If you want to change that, here are some options.

What you can route….

Specific phone numbers
Use wildcards to create custom ranges or route entire area codes, etc
Contacts
Entire groups of contacts
Private/Blocked number calls
All callers that aren’t a contact

Where you can route your selection to…

Busy signal
Disconnected message
Forward to another number
Straight to voicemail

You can setup unlimited routing options and manage them all in real-time.

Outbound Call Routing

With outbound call routing, you have the ability to route your outbound calls in a similar way. As an example, you could route “128” to a phone number and create your own custom speed dial. If you don’t want your daughter using the phone to call her boyfriend…you could route those calls to a perpetual busy signal....or even your cell phone. If your local government or city has a public information line, you could route “511” to this. Basically, you can manipulate how outgoing calls from your phone are handled in any way you want.

7, 10, and 11 Digit Dialing

One of the annoying little things with VoIP has often been that you need to dial “ 1 + Area Code + Number “ for all calls including local calls. Since you normally don’t need to do that with a lot of regular phone services unless you live in a major metro area, people in your house may even get confused when they have to do it, etc. In order to keep the fact that you’re using VoIP as transparent as possible, we support dialing 7, 10, or 11 digits. When you dial 7 digits, we automatically add the area code of your primary phone number to the dialed number. This isn’t huge, but little things add up to make a better user experience.

Failover

Since we’re dealing with the internet, nothing can ever be 100% reliable. While we can try, there will be occasional network glitches both on our end and on your end. With our advanced failover system, you can optionally specify a backup number (like a cell phone) to forward your calls to if there’s ever a problem with the connection anywhere between our network and your phone adapter. This is also useful if your power goes out or you just lose internet connectivity for any reason.

E911

The FCC requires that we provide E911 service for all US-based customers. If you live in an area which is equipped to electronically receive address information, your address will be automatically transferred to YOUR E911 center when you dial 911. You can update your E911 address in real-time within vPanel in case you’re traveling, etc.

Do Not Disturb

If you enable DND, ALL your calls with be routed to voicemail or a busy signal (your choice) unless the caller is specifically on your “whitelist”. In addition to having a whitelist of numbers, you can whitelist groups and contacts as well.

SIP URIs

For those more advanced users, our entire system supports SIP addresses throughout. Your account will have a SIP address for direct SIP calling and you can also use SIP addresses anywhere you would specific a destination number in the system with call forwarding, etc.

Community Powered TeleMarketing Block

Telemarketers are getting more and more crafty these days. We noticed there were a lot of database type sites where people shared numbers of telemarketing calls they got. We decided to integrate a telemarketer block based on community based submissions. If you enable this feature, any calls flagged by you or other VOIPo users as telemarketing will automatically go to straight to your voicemail. This will be one of several community-based projects that are integrated.

International Call Block

No one likes surprises, so we’ve included the option to block international calls from being made using your phone with one click.

Choose Your Own Area Code

When you order VOIPo service, you can select a phone number from any available location even if you don’t live there. So if you live in NYC, but would rather have a Miami number, you can. Numbers are not necessarily tied to your physical location.

Number Portability

If you already have an existing phone number, you can transfer it to our service as long as we normally offer service in the ratecenter of the phone number. One limitation…we cannot port in cell phone numbers…landline, VoIP, and toll-free numbers are fine. Transfers typically take 3-6 weeks to complete (this is industry standard unfortunately).

Tentative Pricing

$22.95 – If Paid Monthly
$59 – If Paid Every 3 Months
$99 – If Paid Every 6 Months


Unlimited Calling to the US and Canada
Free Calling Features (All of the Above)
Free Phone Adapter

All plans have a $29.95 activation fee. Federal, state and local governments in the US along with the FCC require us to provide certain services, comply with certain regulatory policies, and collect taxes when they deem appropriate. A USF surcharge and an E911 Recovery Fee will be billed with service. We don’t like to do this either, but unfortunately VoIP is regulated by the government unlike web hosting.

Optional Addons

Virtual Numbers

You’re able to add additional phone numbers to your account from any cities/ratecenters that we offer service in. Just like domain parking, these numbers simply point to your main account. This is especially useful if you want to have a presence in another city.

Additional local numbers can be added for $4.95 Monthly or $24 Yearly.

A personal toll-free number that points to your account can be added for $4.95 Monthly or $24 Yearly. 100 Toll-Free minutes are included with each toll-free number each month. Additional minutes are billed at 2.9 cents.

Resellers

We know that all of you are very excited about our VoIP Reseller Program. You'll be able to resell this service to any of your customers. We anticipate launching the reseller program shortly after the full launch of all VOIPo service. Basically you'll have a $25/monthly reseller account which gets you access to our entire system including our infrastructure, our proprietary vPanel control panel system, etc. You'll then buy each account at a wholesale rate and bill your customers whatever and however you want.

Wholesale pricing will be released when we get ready to launch the reseller program.

[Jordanlw]

...
So... Maybe you should consider Australia as your next stop?

[wildweasel]

This seems to be a very competively priced package. Did I miss it somewhere, I don't see if this is an unlimited minutes package. If not how many minutes are we talking on the residential service? Thank You.

[VOIPoTim]

Originally Posted by wildweasel

This seems to be a very competively priced package. Did I miss it somewhere, I don't see if this is an unlimited minutes package. If not how many minutes are we talking on the residential service? Thank You.

Unlimited minutes for all calls to the US and Canada. All the features are included.

[Rockoids]

Originally Posted by VOIPoTim

Unlimited minutes for all calls to the US and Canada. All the features are included.

At what point do you plan on building in unlimited International calling, as the competition has gone there already with various packages that bundle in a dozen or more major countries?

[VOIPoTim]

Originally Posted by rockoids

At what point do you plan on building in unlimited International calling, as the competition has gone there already with various packages that bundle in a dozen or more major countries?

We're looking at a few options for that, but no current plans. Most people in our BETA said they'd rather have the lower pricing than international included.

If we stuck to the $25 pricepoint like most of the others offering this are at, it would be completely feasible.

We just had to choose which route to take and opted for lower pricing in general.

Maybe we can look at an addon for a few dollars...

[Rockoids]

Originally Posted by VOIPoTim

We're looking at a few options for that, but no current plans. Most people in our BETA said they'd rather have the lower pricing than international included.

If we stuck to the $25 pricepoint (including prepaids) like most of the others offering this are at, it would be completely feasible.

We just had to choose which route to take and opted for lower pricing in general.

Maybe we can look at an addon for a few dollars...

With Vonage, the basic 24.99 plan includes a few countries, such as the UK, France and Spain. The rest are available in a series of optional packages, each having a higher basic price.

A neat idea would be an "add your own country" package, where you get, say, a dozen countries for $4.99 and can choose from a list. Certain countries that have a higher connection fee can be added to, say, a $7.99 plan. I don't know if this level of customization is feasible from a programming, management and billing standpoint, but it would be interesting. Not all of us want the canned packages, and sometimes you have to pay more to get a semblance of what you want.

[VOIPoTim]

Originally Posted by rockoids

With Vonage, the basic 24.99 plan includes a few countries, such as the UK, France and Spain. The rest are available in a series of optional packages, each having a higher basic price.

A neat idea would be an "add your own country" package, where you get, say, a dozen countries for $4.99 and can choose from a list. Certain countries that have a higher connection fee can be added to, say, a $7.99 plan. I don't know if this level of customization is feasible from a programming, management and billing standpoint, but it would be interesting. Not all of us want the canned packages, and sometimes you have to pay more to get a semblance of what you want.

Yeah, I really like this idea and from a billing/system standpoint, it would be very very easy to add in. We've built things to be pretty modular and handle pretty much any complex billing scenarios we can come up with.

[Rockoids]

Originally Posted by VOIPoTim

Yeah, I really like this idea and from a billing/system standpoint, it would be very very easy to add in. We've built things to be pretty modular and handle pretty much any complex billing scenarios we can come up with.

I'm getting more and more intrigued.

More features:

Packet8 offers the ability to customize your Outgoing Caller ID name, within limits, though it doesn't work too well.

VoIPYourLife gives you music on hold.

You may want to pack in features and customization to differentiate yourself.

Packet8, by the way, offers an Internet-based PBX substitute for businesses. Since HostGator has lots of business users among its clientele, as you might expect, would that be a feasible plan for the future?

[VOIPoTim]

Originally Posted by rockoids

Packet8, by the way, offers an Internet-based PBX substitute for businesses. Since HostGator has lots of business users among its clientele, as you might expect, would that be a feasible plan for the future?

We have a Hosted PBX solution complete...just needs more internal testing at this point. I'll be posting info on it in the near future.

[Rockoids]

Originally Posted by VOIPoTim

We have a Hosted PBX solution complete...just needs more internal testing at this point. I'll be posting info on it in the near future.

This may actually be something I might consider in the near future as our business grows. For now, we have one VoIP line, with Toll-Free number linked to it, plus two lines with one of local landline providers.

And three lines with AT&T Wireless --

[livepublicity]

this sounds cool add your own country.
who is going to ship the interface to costumers the resellers or Voipo and is free?

thanks

Originally Posted by rockoids

With Vonage, the basic 24.99 plan includes a few countries, such as the UK, France and Spain. The rest are available in a series of optional packages, each having a higher basic price.

A neat idea would be an "add your own country" package, where you get, say, a dozen countries for $4.99 and can choose from a list. Certain countries that have a higher connection fee can be added to, say, a $7.99 plan. I don't know if this level of customization is feasible from a programming, management and billing standpoint, but it would be interesting. Not all of us want the canned packages, and sometimes you have to pay more to get a semblance of what you want.

[VOIPoTim]

Originally Posted by livepublicity

this sounds cool add your own country.
who is going to ship the interface to costumers the resellers or Voipo and is free?

thanks

The devices can be shipped by us or purchased ahead of time and send directly. We'll post all the specifics and pricing info on the reseller program soon.

[rana333]

What is the pricing structure for Canada?

The Voipo Adapter: So you can only use 1 phone for the service? Is it possible to have all the phone jacks in the house on the voip service?

I love the "add your own country" idea. It's brilliant!

Is the reseller program going to include billing, customer service, etc..

[VOIPoTim]

Originally Posted by rana333

What is the pricing structure for Canada?

The Voipo Adapter: So you can only use 1 phone for the service? Is it possible to have all the phone jacks in the house on the voip service?

I love the "add your own country" idea. It's brilliant!

Is the reseller program going to include billing, customer service, etc..

We have a few more things to wrap up with Canada. I don't expect the pricing for it to be much different really, but we need to confirm a few things in the regulatory area and determine what they are going to cost to comply with before we commit to particular pricng for it.

Expect an announcement for it and also about the reseller program with more info and pricing within the next few weeks.

The adapter has one phone port. You can connect multiples using a splitter or if you have phone jacks in your house, you can plug it into one of them and as long as there are not other active phone lines running through them, all your connected jacks will work. This is what most people do.

[gopinathan]

Originally Posted by VOIPoTim

Tentative Pricing

$22.95 – If Paid Monthly
$59 – If Paid Every 3 Months
$99 – If Paid Every 6 Months


Unlimited Calling to the US and Canada
Free Calling Features (All of the Above)
Free Phone Adapter

All plans have a $29.95 activation fee.

Viatalk home unlimited package offers $199 for two years for new customers and $150 / year for exsisting customers. If you have BYOD, activation is free. What do you guys think about it?

[livepublicity]

and the adpter is free plus if you have your own device. Shipping and Activation are waived.

Originally Posted by gopinathan

Viatalk home unlimited package offers $199 for two years for new customers and $150 / year for exsisting customers. If you have BYOD, activation is free. What do you guys think about it?

[slapshotw]

Is it possible to transfer my current vonage number?

[VOIPoTim]

Originally Posted by slapshotw

Is it possible to transfer my current vonage number?

Yes, not a problem.

[VOIPoTim]

Originally Posted by gopinathan

Viatalk home unlimited package offers $199 for two years for new customers and $150 / year for exsisting customers. If you have BYOD, activation is free. What do you guys think about it?

Let's keep the discussion in this thread to VOIPo and questions regarding VOIPo services/pricing, but I'm actually the former Vice President of ViaTalk (left in 2006), so I'll comment on this as I know their model very very well.

I'd say check their reviews (DSLReports.com is a great forum that has a lot of info) and be careful.

Notice that SunRocket was priced higher and went out of business. It's a model only sustainable by prepaids and not operating legally. As long as new signups come in this month prepaying, there is enough money to pay for the service for the current customers.

ViaTalk also has massive amounts of debt according to NY UCC filings (if anyone is interested check NY UCC filings for HostRocket.com Inc) and is currently in Federal Court where they are being pursued for a $45 million for blatantly ignoring patents held by other companies. Accoring to court docs, the patent holder is also seeking an injunction to prevent them from contining to operate while in violation.

Since most of them are public record, it's also easy to see that ViaTalk doesn't have many of the required FCC filings or even an ID number to remit some taxes, USF contributions, etc. It's important that all the providers remain in compliance with US regulation and remit funds they collect as taxes/fees to the appropriate agencies.

I think with all of this in mind, you should be able to make your own decision of whether or not it is a safe bet to prepay with them.

[codesight]

Originally Posted by VOIPoTim

The adapter has one phone port. You can connect multiples using a splitter or if you have phone jacks in your house, you can plug it into one of them and as long as there are not other active phone lines running through them, all your connected jacks will work. This is what most people do.

Active phone lines means?

Like my current qwest regular landline? Once I test the voipo out on just my router and one phone and I cancel my qwest, then there would be no "other active phone lines"?

I just need to make sure I have all my phones available. Of course, I could always get one of those 4-phone systems I suppose, but I'd still like to know the answer to this.

Thanks, this system is sounding better every day.

[VOIPoTim]

Originally Posted by codesight

Active phone lines means?

Like my current qwest regular landline? Once I test the voipo out on just my router and one phone and I cancel my qwest, then there would be no "other active phone lines"?

I just need to make sure I have all my phones available. Of course, I could always get one of those 4-phone systems I suppose, but I'd still like to know the answer to this.

Thanks, this system is sounding better every day.

Yeah exactly. Basically phone jacks are "usually" wired together in your house. You just can't have multiple lines colliding with each other.

If you disconnected Qwest, there wouldn't be anything running through them. So if you plug our device into one of them, all connected jacks will pick up on the signal running through them and work.

This is not 100% since wiring in houses varies some, but for 99% of them, that'll work fine.

[wildweasel]

Is the unlimited calling for incoming and outgoing calls? Also will VOIPo furnish the adapter free or will we have to purchase it and if so how much? Thanks.

[VOIPoTim]

Originally Posted by wildweasel

Is the unlimited calling for incoming and outgoing calls? Also will VOIPo furnish the adapter free or will we have to purchase it and if so how much? Thanks.

Yes, we provide the adapter. The pricing listed does include unlimited incoming/outgoing residential calls in the US/Canada.

Tentative Pricing

$22.95 – If Paid Monthly
$59 – If Paid Every 3 Months
$99 – If Paid Every 6 Months


Unlimited Calling to the US and Canada
Free Calling Features (All of the Above)
Free Phone Adapter

All plans have a $29.95 activation fee. Federal, state and local governments in the US along with the FCC require us to provide certain services, comply with certain regulatory policies, and collect taxes when they deem appropriate. A USF surcharge and an E911 Recovery Fee will be billed with service.

[RainbowViper]

Tim,

Just a minor point I'd like to have clarified, but I'm told (and is my experience) that if you have your landline service terminated and want to use the existing internal phone wiring for services like this, to make SURE that the phone line actually coming into the house to that old two-post shunt block, or newer multi-wire "Network Interface" box (usually gray), is physically disconnected.

i.e. Don't trust that the Telco won't accidentally send power back to the line. Physically disconnect the wires inside the house at the "Point Of Entry", then cap each wire seperately with electrical tape or a wire nut.

If your disconnection requires a tech to come to the house, ask them to do it for you and show you where the wires are. I think they will at no extra charge.

The way things have been worded in this post, I can't tell if that's something you already tell new customers to do, or if you even recommend it.