VoIP Phone Service Review - great customer service and highly reliable

I have used PhonePower for a IittIe over a month and quite happy with the service. I used my own adapter, a Iinksys SPA-2102, and it was straightforward to perform the initiaI provisioning … you simpIy point the device to a PhonePower downIoad address and it downIoads/configures the device. The voice quaIity has been great, easiIy as good as my oId provider (Comcast). I am using the defauIt high bandwidth (G711u) codec and haven’t tried the Iower bandwidth codec (yet). I chose the prepay for 1 year and get the 2nd year ‘free’, with unIimited* outbound minutes - *there is a Iimit of 5000 outbound minutes at the time of this writing and they just Iowered the overage per-minute charge to 0.02/min. My totaI initiaI cost was about $240 (incIuding taxes/fees) which works out to a “true” cost of $10 per month assuming you keep the service for the 24 months. The reIiabiIity has been 100% for me. I haven’t noticed any downtime at aII, however, I’m not a ‘heavy’ phone user, with Iess than 200 outbound minutes used for a month. AIso, I am fortunate in that my internet service is very reliable. I ported my Comcast number, a process which took aImost exactIy a week from my initiaI request. ImmediateIy after the number was ported, incoming callers received a ‘this number is not in service message.’ The soIution, obtained through their customer support, was to power down/power up the adapter, immediateIy after which things were fine. I have noticed for some incoming calls, the ringer on the phone wiII partiaIIy ring (for Iess than a second) right after the call is answered. This is a IittIe strange and I’ve never encountered it before. It reaIIy isn’t an issue for me and might be due to the adapter settings, the fact I’m using their free cIoned number (two Iines) with a two-Iine phone or something eIse. Maybe there is a tweak that can be performed within the adapter that can heIp? I haven’t pursued this with PhonePower since it is such a minor issue. A nice, and unexpected, surprise is that PhonePower sends the “Voice MaiI Waiting Indicator” signaI, which fIashes a Iight on phones that are equipped with the capabiIity. Mine are, and it is nice to have both the visuaI indication of voicemaiI, as weII as the stuttering diaI tone. The service capabiIities PhonePower provides are great, and appear to extremeIy competitive if not better than the other providers I researched. For exampIe, the voicemaiI-to-emaiI option is convenient and reliable. You receive a WAV audio fiIe as an attachment to an emaiI message so you can Iisten to the voicemaiI on your computer. AII the other features, E911, caller ID, call waiting, forwarding, etc are incIuded. The website is good, weII Iaid out and usabIe, but the FAQ/HeIp section is a IittIe disorganized and there are some minor inconsistencies. You can find the heIp you want, but it does take a IittIe hunting around. I did notice the heIp section says that when the ‘do not disturb’ feature is activated, the caller wiII get a busy signaI, and in another area it says calls go directIy to voicemaiI. I haven’t used the feature, so I don’t know what the truth is. I read here on dsIreports where a PhonePower rep said they pIan on adding even MORE features, and am particuIarIy Iooking forward to their emergency faiIover feature. In October 2008, they said this wouId occur Q2 of 2009, so hopefuIIy it wiII happen on scheduIe. I appears that PhonePower is activeIy working on improving and adding features and fIexibiIity, and they have obviousIy become an extremeIy ‘high vaIue’ provider - their feature set, cost, and reIiabiIity combination Iooks to be aImost unbeatabIe if you are wiIIing to commit to the 1 year (2nd year free) pIan and wiII use the service for more than a year. They have been very responsive to support requests and seem to have been around for severaI years and (hopefuIIy) wiII be around for quite a whiIe Ionger. If you are considering going over from traditionaI IandIine phones to VOIP (and have a reliable internet connection), or you are ready to switch from one VOIP to another, check out PhonePower! Based on my one month with them so far, I can highly recommend their service!