Customer Reviews

AT&T CallVantage Service VoIP Telephone Adapter

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I ordered Callvantage service through the AT&T web site on a Monday and received the unit on Friday via FedEx. As part of my order I asked AT&T to port my current home phone number over to the Callvantage service. The port was completed 5 days after my adaptor was received. Once I received the adaptor I was able to activate the unit and service and make outgoing calls. You have to wait until your number is ported over before you can receive calls, until then you will receive your calls on your existing providers network. This whole process was very smooth.

Once I had the service up and running we noticed that there were some issues with the voice quality. Incoming voice was clear but our outgoing voice was dropping off from time to time and made having a conversation difficult. I called AT&T and they did some testing of my cable line and said everything looked ok. They suggested that it might be my cordless phone. I changed phones but still no luck. I ended up calling my cable provider and they came out and found two issues with my internet setup on their end which would cause dropped packets and lead to voice quality problems. Once they fixed this up we have had very good call quality from our AT&T service.

The lesson learned is that you have to deal with two providers and as usual both providers at first blammed the other provider for the issue.

On the positive side, I love being able to call long distance anytime of the day and not worry about charges or cellular minutes etc. AT&T has some nice features which I'm sure will get better over time. I like the call log and phone book feature as well as the locate me feature where you can have the service ring up to 5 phones to locate you if you are not home. Comes in handy if you need to be out of the house and are waiting for a call.

All in all I'm pretty happy with the service now that my issues are worked out. If there is one thing that will cause voip to not take off right away, it is the fact that there are more points of failure in having voip then with regular phone service. Your internet can go out, the voip gateway can lockup, your power can go out (unless you have a battery backup for the equipment). These are things that most people are not use to worrying about in regards to phone service. Also, since the unit only comes into one location, you have to have your home wiring adjusted for it to reach all your extensions or buy an expandable cordless system. This is an extra cost and extra effort that many people might not want to bother with.

If you are technically inclined then these issues might not be a big deal but if you are someone who struggles with PC's and internet basics then pass on voip until it becomes more standard and tested.

If you have a reliable high-speed internet connection, this is a must-have service. I've had this for just over two months and have been told several times from people on the other end of the call that the audio quality is clearer than any landline connection. Unlimited calling paired with every imaginable feature makes this a must-have service. The "Locate Me" feature allows you to give out one phone number which will ring up to 5 - yes FIVE - different numbers at once -- for example, your home phone, cellphone, office phone, parent's house, whatever - all at once, and you can accept the call at any one of them by just saying "hello" and then pressing 1 on the phone when the automated voice says "AT&T..." Aside from all the advanced features and so forth, the service is INDESTINGUISHABLE from a regular phone line. You plug in your regular phone, just to the VoIP adapter instead of the regular jack in the wall. The adapter provides a dial tone which sounds exactly like the one provided by your local phone central office. All calling and receiving of calls works EXACTLY like any landline phone, so if you don't tell anyone the phone is actually using a VoIP service, they wouldn't know the difference. Overall you can't beat this deal. There's very little in the way of competition so far, the only notable exception being Vonage who may have slightly lower prices but when you use their service, people KNOW you're on an internet phone. When you use CallVantage, on the other hand, your call is routed via the net directly to a nearby AT&T Central Office that immediately patches you in to the Public Switched Telephone Network. The difference is night and day.

One caveat: the current first generation phone adapter being used by AT&T for CallVantage MUST sit immediately behind your cable or DSL modem and NOT behind any router or other device. This would not be a problem in and of itself, except that if you have a home computer network (LAN) you will not be able to forward more than five (5) ports for applications that need that done. Yes 5 ports total -- not ranges of ports, but 5 ports period. So if you run a P2P app, maybe a server or two, you'll be out of luck. For most people this shouldn't be a problem but be warned. AT&T is planning to have alternative adapters available by the end of September 2004 which supposedly will resolve this issue.

Recently signed up with AT&T CallVantage over cable broadband. The sign up was easy and AT&T handled the porting of my existing telephone number with a high degree of professionalism. Email updates were provided to me throughout the process, which really only took about 1 week rather than the expected 2 weeks.

After signing up, AT&T checked to see that they could port my existing telephone number. That same day, I received an email stating that my telephone number could be transferred and an expected date for completion. At this point, AT&T fedexed the TA to me. On the day that the fedex was supposed to arrive, a customer service agent called me to let me know that it was on the truck for delivery and gave me some brief instructions as to what to do. I followed the simple and clear instructions given by the agent and included in the quick start guide that came along with the TA. The installation was very easy. I hit only one minor snag during the process: the TA didn't activate properly online. So, I called the customer support number that was given on the webpage in case this occurred and they got me up and running within a couple of minutes. The customer support person was engaging, intelligent, and professional. As it turned out, I just needed to try the online activation again. SIMPLE!

Once I was up and running, I made some phone calls to ask people about the sound quality. To my ear, I could not discern any difference whatsoever in the sound quality between CallVantage and the regular phone system. It is crystal clear with no degradation or latency. The friends on the other end indicated the same, that they could not tell any difference whatsoever.

So, excellent voice quality, ease of use/installation, combined with the unlimited local/long distance and all the extra features like voicemail to email and conference calling, do not disturb, and locate me. . . makes me a happy camper.

I highly recommend AT&T CallVantage.

As someone who was a cellular-only telephony customer for several years, my primary reasons for obtaining CallVantage was to have 1) a portable land-line and 2) a 212 area code before moving to New York. While both goals were achieved immediately, I was pleasantly surprised with the superior functionality and sound quality.

Given that I work as a consultant in emerging telecommunications, I have been tracking VoIP services for a while. In fact, I was using the [previously] free Dialpad.com service since 1999. While the sound quality of these older VoIP services was generally good, there was a annoying delay that disrupted the flow of a conversations. To its credit, Dialpad has corrected the problem as of 2005.

In short, the quality of CallVantage is excellent. There is no delay, no static, no fading. The service is so robust, one has to wonder if the traditional switched phone service providers (ILEC's) will become extinct faster than analysts have predicted.

Similar to how other online services such as electronic banking that have trumped their traditional counterparts, CallVantage offers a number of features unavailable with traditional ILEC's. In fact, the advanced features are even beyond what the cellular companies offer, which is probably going to spur further advanced features in the mobile market.

The additional features are numerous with varying degrees of utility. The web-based voicemail retrieval is especially nice. Email notification is also helpful, especially when you forward these messages to a Blackberry or mobile phone. There are other capabilities like call logs and, for an additional fee, call filtering. The call forwarding capability called "Locate Me" offers a number of features, such as having multiple numbers to seek, unavailable on conventional switched telephone services.

Since I obtained the service in mid-2004, I have used it on RCN's cable modem service and Time Warner's cable modem service. Both have been very reliable, so I have not had an issue with any extended interruption. There have been a few glitches with CallVantage, which I will discuss.

One initial problem experienced was that the D-Link MTA (telephone adapter) choked off most of the data bandwidth during the call. Basically, the phone worked fine, but my Internet connection was slower than dial-up. Fortunately, customer service was able to remotely alter the bandwidth shaping setting.

There was a recent glitch in January '05 where the service was not working for an hour or so. More disturbing, however, was that callers received an enigmatic message "I'm sorry, but that customer is NOT accepting calls, message 24G385." After waiting on hold for 45 minutes, I finally reached a customer service representative who was perplexed at my description of the problem and error message. While I have to applaud ATT for using state-side CSR's, they seem to be overstaffed and a bit under-trained.

There are some limitations that advanced users should be aware. The MTA must be placed between the cable modem and router and not after the router. This will pose a problem for small independents who want to work in a shared office setting or who have a combined gateway/router where the coax screws right into a single box. While each MTA supports up to two phone lines, three or more lines requires the user to daisy chain more than one MTA - before the router.

At this juncture, ATT does not provide a softphone client like Dialpad, Skype, or even Vonage. This would be especially helpful if a user would like to make low cost phone calls on the road.

ATT CallVantange service is a robust VoIP offering that has superior features to both switched telephony and mobile phone offerings. The Pros and Cons can be summed up fairly succinctly:

Pros
Excellent Sound Quality
Great Feature Set
Portability
Fixed pricing
Voicemail Message Management From a Web Interface.

Cons
No Softphone
Some Limitations on Connecting with Routers

Given the cost saving and increased functionality, I would recommend this service to anyone who needs a landline and already has a broadband connection.

VoIP is "voice over internet protocol", where your phone service is piggybacked on top of your broadband internet connection. You have to have a cable or dsl modem with an ethernet connection.

I hate the local phone company, I just can't stand paying near $50 for phone service when the cellphone bill is $35. I had to cut all the options on the phone service to get it under $50... but must have the "Area Choice" plan or I pay long-distance fees to call 10 miles to work. So the very best I could do was around $47 a month.

What really set this in motion was the new cordless phone my daughter got for Christmas. She wanted Caller ID and I figured, sure, why not pay $2 a month to make her happy? Geez - That's another $8.95 a month just for Caller ID!!


So I went looking.... Finally an alternative!

There's Vonage which is $5 cheaper, but I chose AT&T's CallVantage plan. For $29.99 a month you get unlimited local & long-distance calls and the feature set is awesome. Caller ID, 3-way calling, Locate me, it goes on and on. I can manage everything from a computer on the internet, 60-day call log, voicemail can be played on computer or forwarded to up to 10 email addys, it is unreal!

I got it hooked up and working within 30 minutes. The telephone adapter sits in between the cable modem and the router.

After I disconnected the phone plug in the box on the side of the house - to separate the house from the phone company - I plugged the telephone adapter into a wall jack. This "backfeeds" the house telephone jacks and allows every phone jack in the house to be serviced.

The quality of the connection is noticably better than the old Bellsouth phone service, gone are the clicks and buzzing noise.


I have noticed a decrease in my internet bandwidth when someone is on the phone, but I feel comfortable with the tradeoff.

There are port-forwarding issues with the current telephone adapter (a nice D-Link product) that may affect those of you that run ftp servers, but it is said they will be resolved with future products. Also, there is a Linksys wireless router with integrated CallVantage support that may resolve it.

BTW, they can usually port your existing phone number over, but that didn't work for me. I had to get a new number. Small price to pay. I'm saving $20 a month and getting unlimited long distance with every possible phone feature. Sweet!

Just a couple of quick note about using the Telephone Adapter (TA) with routers. This is going to be of more interest to people who do advanced configuration with their network setup. If you just want to plug it in and go, then everything will work just fine with the instructions in the box.

1. I have seen some comments here about not being able to put the telephone adapter behind a router. It is true that AT&T strongly recommends you put the adapter in front of the router (between your router and your cable/DSL modem), so it can reserve the bandwidth it needs for phone calls. But, at least with the model that they sent me, you CAN put it behind a router if you'd rather do so. You're just risking lesser sound quality if you try to do heavy internet access while using the phone.

2. The telephone adapter has NAT functionality, but is not as configurable as most dedicated routers. If you are already using a router and don't want to yield that kind of control to another device, then you can still hook up the TA as AT&T recommends (in front of the router), because it allows you to set up your router as a DMZ client. That means all traffic gets forwarded to the router just like it always did. You won't have to worry about copying your port forwarding settings to the TA or anything like that. This stuff is only of concern to people who have done advanced configuration on their router, but for those people it is quite important so I thought it worth mentioning.

I've only had the service for a few days now, so I can't comment on the quality other than to say it's working well so far.

Giving 4 out of 5 stars because there does not seem to be a software interface to make phone calls at this time. I sure hope they add one.

Call Vantage phone service is great. I love the fun features. "Locate Me" is the one I use the most. Life is busy, and I used to miss calls all the time. Now, I have "Locate Me" set up to ring my home phone, my work phone and my cell phone all at the same time. I get a message saying that there's an incoming call from Call Vantage at each phone, I press a 1 and the call comes through to whichever place I'm at. No more missing calls! The phone service is great. It comes with all of the regular features that regular phone service offeres, Call Waiting, Three way calling, Caller Id, etc. No one notices that I am making calls a different way, they still get caller id when I call them too. I've called for customer service a few times and have had quick response to my questions. Also, I don't miss all of those extra charges that were on my old phone bill and added almost $10 to the cost months. When AT&T says the bill is $34.99, it's just that plus the regular sales tax. Now that's fun!

First off, one disclaimer: I am an AT&T employee. :-) I participated in the service readiness test for Florida and was so thrilled with the quality of the service that I had my home phone line switched over as soon as the product was made available to the public in Florida. For just under $35 a month I receive all the features that the local phone company would charge nearly twice as much for, and the quality is very good (even better than my land line!). The Telephone Adpater (TA) works well with my RoadRunner cable modem internet and the ability to receive voice mails via e-mail or through the web site is a huge plus (when I'm working, I can listen to my voice mail without touching a phone). The "Locate Me" feature is also invaluable if I'm out of the house and still need to be reached. It also proved useful during the recent Florida hurricanes; I was able to set up "Locate Me" to dial my cell phone or the land line I use for work in the event that the cable internet goes out during the storms (it didn't). I did find that if I was doing a large file upload over my cable connection (i.e., BitTorrent), the call quality occasionally gets choppy, but this is a rare event.

There are two caveats you have to consider when buying this product, as you have to consider with any VoIP offering: First, if your cable or DSL goes out, so does your CallVantage (it needs the internet connection to work); however, the one time that my cable modem went out, I simply dialed in and accessed my CallVantage web site from my laptop or called into my Phone Feature Manager from my cell phone, activated "Locate Me", and people could still reach me on my cell phone or business land line.

The second caveat is that emergency 9-1-1 service does not work the same way as on a land line. Whereas on a land line you are connected with the nearest 9-1-1 emergency center and your name and address appears on their system for them to find you, CallVantage and other services' VoIP 9-1-1 calls work as they do with your cell phone--you are connected to the nearest NON-emergency point of contact (which in our case is the crime desk of the Polk County Sheriff's Office in Bartow; we live 10 miles west in Lakeland). Most of the time, however, the non-emergency desk can easily route your call to the emergency lines, so you are really not losing a whole lot in that regard. You *will* need to give them your exact location over the phone as they won't have it available in front of them.

If you are familiar with how your home is wired, you can connect your CallVantage TA to your house telephone wiring so that the TA will ring all the phones in the house instead of just one phone. For most homes it's just a matter of unplugging the phone lines from your home wiring at the customer interface box on your house and then plugging in the TA to any open wall phone jack (do NOT try this with your land line still connected at the box outside or the voltage will FRY the TA!). If you do this, you'll want to put a warning notice on your outside customer access box so that a phone company employee doesn't inadvertently come around and plug it back in.

If you can live with the above two caveats, as I am, then you will find voice-over-IP service, and CallVantage in particular, to be an outstanding service that has a LOT of "bang for the buck" compared to your local phone company's land line service.

i had callvantage for about 10 months and it was always spotty. set up was a cinch, and the website they provide is excellent. however, from the moment i plugged the telephone adapter in, i had problems. i can't recall the model number of the TA, off-hand. but it was one of their earlier linksys models. the installation instructions stressed that the TA needed to sit between my cable modem and wireless router.

my first issue became apparent immediately after installation. my phone worked just fine and i made a number of calls. my wireless router, unfortunately, was totally neutralized. i could connect to it directly. dhcp still worked. i could log in and play with my administrator settings (to no avail). i just couldn't access the internet. as best i could tell, the Telephone Adapter was totally and completely blocking traffic that was coming from the wireless router.

this problem was eventually resolved by their tech support. i believe what they did was open up the TA to all traffic coming from my router's IP. i didn't question the safety of this solution... i was just happy to have my internet working. it was at this time that i was made aware of an interesting feature of this (and perhaps other) telephone adapters. the TA tests and maintains a minimum amount of bandwidth with the outside world. if the TA detects too much non-VOIP traffic passing through it from the internet to devices inside its network (or vice versa), it resets itself and/or blocks the traffic.

that bears repeating. if the TA determines its not getting enough bandwidth, it claims it all for itself... this has nothing to do with whether or not you're using the phone at the time -- an incoming call could come at any moment. but when the TA does this, and i never figured out how to adjust that cutoff threshold, you've got no internet.

at times, it took 10 or 15 minutes before i could connect to the outside world again. for someone who works in IT from his home, this is unacceptable. worse, for those 10 or 15 minutes, all the cost advantages of using this service evaporate. i'm paying $40/month for broadband internet access that i can't use. in my mind, callvantage just got $40/month more expensive... because that's all i can use my cable modem for.

other issues abounded, but they all seemed to trace back to the fact that my TA was bunk and seriously hogging my connection. i had a desktop computer connected directly to the TA and it exhibited every symptom of this problem you could imagine. slow downloads. pages not loading. strange browser errors about not being able to access a domain (blocking traffic to/from my DNS servers?) and web pages that would only load if i typed "http://" before the "google.com".

i called callvantage customer service at least a dozen times, but not with great regularity. regardless of what the other reviewers have said about customer service, with the myriad problems i had with callvantage, not once did their customer service line keep me on hold for less than 10 minutes. these customer service representatives are trained to guide you through exactly two procedures: 1) resetting all of your hardware by powering down, then powering it all back up in order and 2) testing the speed of your internet connection using speakeasy.net's online tool. most of the problems i had with the service required multiple calls to reach resolution (or reach kludge, depending on your POV). however, these first line customer service reps ALWAYS insist on you doing these two things first... carefully and calmly explaining that you called an hour prior and 1) reset everything and 2) tested your speed is useless.... say it to the wall before you call them... that might ease the frustration.

there were a couple times where it appeared that resetting everything solved the problem... but the solution was never permanent. and not once while doing the speedtest did a customer service rep tell me that i did not have a fast enough connection to continue using (and paying for) their services.

the final straws for me came when i suggested that perhaps they should send me a new telephone adapter, perhaps a more sophisticated model. the customer service rep explained, without a hint of irony in her voice, that it was company policy not to replace hardware until the customer had called 5 times about the same problem. the catch there is that, even if you call up every tuesday and friday to complain about the same problem, if you wait more than 24 hours between calls, they kick you out of the ticketing system and the next time you call it's a "new problem".

i explained that this was my 6th or 7th time calling in the course of a month about web pages not loading on my computer connected to the TA and she told me that i would be bumped up to the "next tier" of technical support. that pretty much did it... who the hell had i been talking to all along? the "next tier" conferenced into my call and there was some jabber about whether or not i reset the cable modem and TA properly (hilarious)... then they told me someone would get in touch with soon. two days later, at around 10pm, i received a call on my cell phone from a technical support person. i explained that i was miles away from my computer, and that it was friday night. he asked me to call him back at a certain 800 number which, now, i wish i could share with the world. unfortunately the piece of paper it was written on was torn to shreds when i called the number that saturday and was told that my "problem ticket" had been "resolved". i would have to go back to "first tier" customer support, reset my adapter and test my speed a half-dozen times, and then maybe someone technical would be willing to hear my case.

that was when i gave up.... problems with loading web pages in my browser were clearly not going to be resolved by these people. what's more, the phone itself started cutting out in the middle of calls. i'd pick it up and hear no dial tone. i'd call someone and get an operator explaining the number was not in service. simply deplorable.

when i called to cancel, the fellow i spoke to asked if he could entice me to stay by offering me a free month's worth of service. i explained that my service had been near-useless for the last month and pretty damned spotty for the 9 that preceeded that. i'm rolling it back to a regular land-line. there isn't enough "UNLIMITED CALLING!!!" advertising in the world that's going to make me consider using this again.

I am a current CallVantage customer and have received a letter from CallVantage informing me that all CallVantage service will be discontinued after October 20, 2009.