Home › Forums › Costa Rica Living Forum › Calling the US using a land line?
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May 22, 2010 at 12:00 am #199457gzeniouMember
Hello Folks,
Thinking about moving a branch office to CR. I know the deal with Voice over IP but we need something rock solid. Meaning high quality communications. We have found a way of getting high quality calls via land line in to CR for 15 cents a minute. Does anyone know the cost to use a land line via ICE to call the US. Probably need to call the US about 10-15 hrs a week. I’m guessing cell phones would be a huge drop in quality and much more expensive but I have no specific knowledge of this.
Location: Atenas
Thanks for your input.
May 22, 2010 at 8:07 pm #199458cacevedo222MemberI know that Vonage has service here. It is a landline phone and the quality is excellent.
May 22, 2010 at 8:14 pm #199459DavidCMurrayParticipantWe’ve just installed a MagicJack. So far, it seems to be virtually perfect. For $20 per year for unlimited calling to the U.S. plus a number in the U.S. for incoming calls, it’s hard to beat. And if you sign up for five years of service, the price drops to a guaranteed $14 per year.
May 22, 2010 at 9:45 pm #199460maravillaMemberi use magicjack, too, and it’s been great, and calls to canada are free as are the calls to the u.s., and for people in colorado, it’s as if i were there because for them it’s a local call.
May 22, 2010 at 9:54 pm #199461costaricafincaParticipantWe have started using this system as well.
May 22, 2010 at 10:06 pm #199462gzeniouMember[quote=”DavidCMurray”]We’ve just installed a MagicJack. So far, it seems to be virtually perfect. For $20 per year for unlimited calling to the U.S. plus a number in the U.S. for incoming calls, it’s hard to beat. And if you sign up for five years of service, the price drops to a guaranteed $14 per year.[/quote]
Very interesting, I just checked out the website, It is voice over IP but according to them if your using a regular phone it is much better quality then talking through your PC. It appears you only need 128kbs upload speed. Wonder if the CR network is consistent all the time or are their major outages or even brief ones. Of course during one of these outages you will lose the call
Please keep us updated, I would love to hear the progress on this.
May 23, 2010 at 12:02 am #199463jtd2Member[quote=”gzeniou”]Hello Folks,
Thinking about moving a branch office to CR. I know the deal with Voice over IP but we need something rock solid. Meaning high quality communications. We have found a way of getting high quality calls via land line in to CR for 15 cents a minute. Does anyone know the cost to use a land line via ICE to call the US. Probably need to call the US about 10-15 hrs a week. I’m guessing cell phones would be a huge drop in quality and much more expensive but I have no specific knowledge of this.
Location: Atenas
Thanks for your input.[/quote]
There are also some available VOIP services…one time fee…no more monthly payments…just connect the equipment to the router/modem(high speed internet connection).
You can search on Google or any search engine…search subject: voip one time fee…you will get list of companies that offer this service.
May 23, 2010 at 12:49 pm #199464DavidCMurrayParticipantCR Wi-Fi, based in Atenas, is offering wireless Internet access at 1mb down/512kb up guaranteed (it’s usually faster). We’ve been their customer for almost a year and so far the only outages we’ve had have originated with the equipment at our home. Their network has been nearly perfect.
I know four or five MagicJack users who all swear by them.
May 23, 2010 at 3:54 pm #199465gzeniouMemberI have been doing a little homework on this, With VoIP it clearly the quality and speed of your internet connection that makes the difference. Magic Jack you need to have your PC on, Vonage and some others plug directly into your router, thus you don’t need your PC on 24 x 7.
Since connection quality and speed is the most important factor, I found a great website that will predict your success with VoIP by testing out your speed and quality of connection.
http://myspeed.visualware.com/index.php
click anywhere on the map then click on a green tac. (this will take you to a server)
Next click on start test.
The results will show your download speed, upload speed and Quality of service.However perhaps the best test of all is the VoIP test, this test is located on the top right of your screen under test type. It actually measures the jitter of the line. Our home connection in NC (it is satellite) showed the speed was okay but the line was too unreliable for VoIP due to Jitter. You probably would want to run this test several time at different time to really get an accurate view of your connection.
If you try the test, perhaps you will be kind of nice to share your results and the kind of connection you used.
Thanks
May 23, 2010 at 6:33 pm #199466VmcMemberMagic Jack is great as long as your ISP is good, but put it on a cruddy ISP and the calls suk…Serious.
If David and Maravilla and everybody has good luck with it, then the ISP must be good and consistent. I used Magic Jack on our 300 year-old Caveman DSL in Tennessee and it was awful, while others on good High-Speed internet swear by it.
I have to agree with them….it’s a great thing, and aside from SKYPE, this is what we’d use.
Dan.
May 24, 2010 at 3:05 am #199467costaricabillParticipantWe have Vonage & Skype, both of which work well as long as the internet is working well. Friends have visited and used their Magic Jack and that little box seems to work well also.
Vonage is not cheap, but you can port your U.S. number to CR if that is important. I have a friend in St. Petersburg FL that just told me about a new service named OOMA, and he loves it. All of his calls to our Vonage line are crystal clear, and he says the ongoing costs are very low after you make the initial purchase. You must do the initial set-up in the States and then you can port the phone number to CR. Of course any of these “phone alternatives” will only be good as long as the company is in business. -
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