Phone Power VoIP Review - Review on phone power's voip service

Reviewer: Flip.phinoi

Pros:

Introductory price is good

Features are useful

Accessibility to web functions are great

After minor tweaking, sound quality improved

Cons:

Shipping of adapter should have been free!!!

Somewhat of an annoyance but it could be me trying to get all the functions to work to. When I have two call going on at the same time and I both terminate them, my phone somehow rings twice, and when I pick up nothing!!! I'll try to decipher what's going on and will post another review....

Other Thoughts:

I ordered my service on 01/09/09 and received a three emails. (Confirmation, Order Notification, and Shipping Notification). The package was shipped 3-Day Select using UPS. I expected to receive the package on the 14th, but I wasn't at home to sign for it so I got it on the 15th.I unboxed the package and got the adapter out along with the instruction. The adapter (Grandstream HT502) was definitely smaller than I expected. I plugged everything up as per the instruction included in the box. The diagram below illustrates how I have everything setup. My laptops seems to be surfing the web without latency even when I am on the phone which is a good thing. I'll try to stream video, downloads, surf, and talk all at the same time later on (review for that to follow) Since I have a relatively new house, I have a patch panel in the garage. I've disconnected my phone line coming from the street from the service provider by using this as a guide. After I've disconnected, I checked my patch panel and there was a telephone junction box with a bridge port. I plugged my VOIP adapter into my router, and one of the phone jacks into the bridge port of the telephone junction box. I've plugged my Uniden expandable phone to one of the 5 phone jacks at home and I get a dial tone, I waited a few minutes and attempt to make a call and got throught without any problems; other than......The default setup, there was some weird static noise coming from the phone itself (but it could be the phone itself because I have not used it in over three years and needs to be recharged). My first call, I got a complaint saying that I was breaking out, again - it could be the phone itself. There was a delay of mere seconds when I speak and for the other person to hear it and vice versa. There was a minimal noise with the reception as well. I've accessed my Linksys router and made some change into the QoS (Quality of Service) settings to give the port #1 High priority because this is where the HT502 is connected to. I've made several attempts to call out and the quality is definitely have improved. The delays was very minimal, no echo, no static noise. Everything is clear (so far).The web interface, especially the click2call was extremely useful (I used the same technology with our Cisco VOIP at work). I like the ability to create a phonebook and manage forward redirects along with activating the phone clone from the account page. I've tested the power forwarding feature which I added both my cellphones and it worked. When someone calls my home, my other two cell phones would ring to, or I could have it ring my house, if unavailable, then ring my personal cell, and if unavailable, ring my work cell. I thought it was a neat feature, but I reverted the feature to default as I didn't need it at this time. The ability to view minutes and call history is also great and almost always real-time. There are other features that are available that I somewhat tested and seemed to be functional.More updated review coming....I have not have to deal with Customer Service so I could not post a review on that area yet. I will place another review after I perform some testing on quality when my broadband bandwidth is high.