[terry_gardener]

i am thinking joining o2 or be broadband.

please can someone tell me if there is any issues with using voip on either of these ISP.

is there any sound quality issues.

what is the reliability like with these isp using voip.

thanks

[YodaBlair]

Hi. You should know that it doesn't matter who your ISP is because all the IP traffic is routed many different ways. I mean that a call from uk to us can go through serveral different carriers. If a link is found to have really poor quality then your call will be routed through the carrier's 2nd choice, etc.
As an ISP though, i'd prefer be as it consistently gets high ratings speed and service-wise

[TOMMOHAWK_UK]

I think O2 own BE now anyway don't they? Certainly my exchange was upgraded (LLU Rack installed) by O2 and then all of a sudden I was able to receive a 24Mbit service from O2 and BE where there was nothing before.

Anyway, YodaBlair is right - check out thinkbroadband :: The UK's largest independent Broadband / ADSL comparison & review website which gives you a good insight to which Broadband provider is the best for you.

[Cable Monkey]

BE and O2 are part of the Telefonica group. As part of the same group it is normal they would share resources. The only real difference between the 2 would be the branding that comes up on their homepage and potentially pricing.

[Beowulf1]

Both are same ISP just different branding and packages.

As for your VOIP there is absolutely no problem with any SIP based service, line quality is excellent eg i have 2 seimens s685ip phones and i can be on 1 SIP call whislt kids can be on another SIP call with no noticable drop in either calls quality.

Then again i have a decent line quality so it will depend on how good your line is. But the 1Mb upload spreed compared to the normal 256/512 will certainly help with you VOIP calls.

[terry_gardener]

thank beowulf1

that is a answer i was hoping for. i did have 20mb broadband with VM and voip and internet worked without an itch but after about 6 months the quality of the connection became crap. very erratic speeds and on voip tests QOS was below 50% all the time. this affected voip big time. and download speeds suffered badly also getting max 2mb from speedtests.

after about 8 calls to so called vm tech support they couldn't fix the problem and basically said that they dont support voip, internet radio and streaming video. i said i didn't want support with these internet services but there is something wrong with the line, since i get problems with these 3 internet services 2 desktop pcs and laptop using both windows and linux. they blamed everything from windows firewall to linux and still didn't solve it so i reduced the service to 2mb connection and i am getting better service on this than i did on there 20mb connection, still cant use voip but internet and downloads work better. when we tried to reduce the package to the lowest one they tried to get us to get another 12 months contract to do it, but declined this and got it reduced when we said that we would cancel altogether and not pay them if they didn't and they agreed to the terms.

needless to say we are leaving as soon as the min 12 months is up that is why i have asked regarding o2 and be.

i am surprised that they have releases 50mb broadband if they cant handle 20mb they have no chance with 50mb.

[Cable Monkey]

It is obvious there was a fault situation there. Did an engineer visit to verify your speed problems? I suspect the improvement you experienced when they cut back the service had more to do with the fact they fixed the problem than any inherent problem with 20Mb working.

[terry_gardener]

yes the engineer did come out and tested the downloads using his laptop and downloading 1 file from MS website, it was 1.5MByte per second.

the other problem that i was having was massive speed range from 18 mbit to 1mbit per second.

the engineer tried once and then said that it was ok and left.

when i did a speedtest just 1 hr later it was less than 4mbit per second.
while on the phone to the VM engineer they basic asked for me to open IE and then visit the vm homepage and then when i said it has loaded they said seemed ok. and when i did a speedtest using a site they recommended Namesco BroadbandMax ADSL Broadband Bandwidth speedtest | Test your ADSL Broadband connection speed it showed again less than 3mbit. this was very annoying as the speedtest and download speeds where very irratic

they even tried going into the device manager and then in the properties of the nic card and changing the speed connection from auto. they said click 10mbps and when i said i had 20mbps connection they said that they would had to place me on hold so he could find out which option to pick. (only had 100mbps full and half duplex left) they said select the 100mbps full and retry and the fault was the same.

thing is the first 2 times that i phoned up there did there tests and they found that the cable modem was dropping packets. and the engineer changed the modem just in case.

there bottomline to me was basic is the internet working as in can you visit webpages when i said yes they said that they could not do anything else.
they basically blamed the following things in the 7-8 calls made to them.

1. windows firewall not been updated enough (i had only just done a fresh install of xp and did full updates from MS until it said no more updates available, even had same problem even i disabled the firewall at there request)
2. traffic management policy (even though i had just come in from work and no one had downloaded anything over the cause of the day so i was no where near the 3gb limit)
3. linux (even though it happened in windows xp)
4. p2p software even though i had none open and running (they seemed to not believe me when i said i didn't have any running.
5. security software even though i got the problem in linux and in windows even when i briefly disabled it to test.

they seemed to be just finding ways to get rid of me one agent even tried to get me to hang up by saying hello can you hear me for a couple of minutes and when i shouted yes he stopped and then the call continued normally.

there customer services and technical support is waste of time and they are the worst company that i have had the pleasure to do business with.

dont get me wrong they do a good internet connection when it works but if something break or there is a fault they are useless.

[akikul]

a word of warning

Voip ports are blocked on the router that o2 provide. I have been trying to find out why and their response was:

'VOIP is blocked on our router as it is not supported by o2. If the VOIP facility was available then we would be inclined to support any technical queries. This support is not yet available.'

I did tell them that it was a rubbish excuse and I have advised that I now expect full support when things like my ssh tunnel isn't working.

Their reply:
'As mentioned in previous emails, we do not support VoIP technology with our router. If you were to purchase your own router, you would be able to set this up.'

I have gone through the website and have not found anything about them blocking Voip.

mmm, a phone company blocking VOIP for no real reason. Sounds fishy to me.

[Cable Monkey]

Why does that sound fishy. They are running a business and making calls via broadband potentially robs them of revenue.

[terry_gardener]

i emailed o2 with regard some questions i had. this is the reply with regard to voip

You shouldn't have any issues using VOIP, but again I need to let you know, it's not something we support.