Thinking of Switching from Shaw Phone to voip.ms (Shaw Price increase Rant)

[ipeefreely]

I heard that Shaw was going to have a price increase next month and sure enough got my bill yesterday and it’s going up about $8.50 to $127 + GST. I have pretty basic service with them, Broadband 100, Basic HDTV and Basic Shaw Phone… this is the second price increase this year, last one about $5 in April (I think). I started paying $105 + GST two years ago… :whipped:

EDIT: Just priced it out on Shaw site and it's $105! WTF why does an existing customer have to pay $22 more per month!!! :banghead: :banghead: :bullshit: I think I'll call in tonight... :nut:

Any way I was thinking of ditching Shaw Phone witch will save me about $15 a month because I rarely use it (the only use it gets is telemarketers… :nut: ) and if it keeps going up HDTV too (I only watch the news)! :banghead:

I haven’t looked into VOIP providers in a few year and I only use the phone maybe 5 times a month or so (my wife doesn’t use it either) but it’s still handy to have…

Anyone have any experience with voip.ms or any other VOIP providers lately? Any hardware recommendations? :)

Thanks! :D

[codetrap]

Do you have a cell? If so, don't bother with VoIP. Just negotiate a decent long distance package for it.

[lsc2g]

i've been on vonage for like 8 years now.. 19.99/mo with everything and more shaw/telus offer..

[ipeefreely]

Originally posted by codetrap
Do you have a cell? If so, don't bother with VoIP. Just negotiate a decent long distance package for it.
Nope no cell... like I said I barely talk on the phone. I hate it when it rings!!:rofl:

I was thinking of picking up a smartphone because they're going to add GPS to the buses in Edmonton in a little while (it's in trial right now) and we get free WIFI at work... so I might just do that...


Originally posted by lsc2g
i've been on vonage for like 8 years now.. 19.99/mo with everything and more shaw/telus offer..
I was looking to pay less, not more!! :rofl: I have no problems with the quality of service just the price! :rofl: With voip.ms it would be less than a penny a minute...

Thanks thought! :)

[Ven]

It completely blows my mind how often and how much Shaw raises prices. I severed their phone recently and will sever their other services as more options develop. Anyway, I replaced their phone with an Ooma VOIP system, the hardware and service is solid, and I pay $3.98cdn a month for more features that Shaw's phone. Everyone has been very happy with the change and the savings. Hardware is about $150, looks quality, easy to set up, and hook up. We ported our number over and haven't looked back. Shaw called twice a day from Calgary and India for over two weeks. The best they would do is knock off $5, and slammed all other VOIP services, and refused to believe what we now pay for home phone with more features. I told them to get used to it.

http://www.costco.ca/Ooma-Telo-Air-Wireless-VoIP-Home-Phone-Service-Bundle-.product.10395616.html

[rage2]

I'm still surprised people pay for home phone service. I dunno what the point is when cell phone offers much better convienence for similar money. Telus has a new cell phone plan coming out at the end of the month.

http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2013/07/15/telus-announces-new-two-year-talk-and-text-data-plans/


The centrepiece of the new plans is an unlimited Canada-wide talk and text plan that starts at $35 if you already own your own wireless phone — a rate that will likely lead even more Canadians to drop their wired home phone service. The flat all-you-can-use rate includes voicemail, caller ID, conference calling and call waiting.

“I challenge anybody to find a home phone in Canada that is approaching $35 with unlimited nationwide long distance calling across Canada,” said Johnston.
For consumers who opt for a new mid-tier smartphone, the monthly cost is $45 for two years, dropping to $35 at the end of that term, and for premium smartphones the monthly bill will be $55 a month, also dropping to $35 at the end of the term.

[eblend]

My parents and I, and my friend are all on voip.ms

Voip.ms is very feature rich (you can sign up without putting any money into the system and play around) and works awesome. I have ported my parents number over. Calls between voip.ms customers are free. Calls within Canada are $0.0052 per minute (half a penny) and calls to Japan for example are 2.5c per minute. When I initially signed up I put in 25 bucks, lasted me for almost 2 years :D

I have just a dial out line, so no one can call me on that number, but I can make cheap international calls. I have it setup that when someone receives a call from me they have my cell phone number show on the caller ID, so if they want to call me back they can on my cell phone. You can get a real phone number for $2 a month I think it is, and another $1 for E911 service. If you don't have a phone number and only dial out, you only pay whatever it costs per minute.

For 2 bucks for example you can get 384 minutes of local talk. I don't even bother looking at where I call anymore, shit is so cheap.

There are a ton of features that I don't even use myself, but you get your voicemail which will automatically be sent to your email as a wav file, can do hold music by uploading your mp3s, creating an automated menu system if you wanted to be like all the big companies..press 1 for blah, press 2 for blah, can even setup shit like dialing into your own phone line, entering a password, and then being able to proxy through your house phone to make calls wherever. There is things like call queues, recordings of phone calls, call forwardings, ring groups, caller ID filtering, time conditions and things like that as well if you so choose to use them. Everything is configured through the web interface once you login.

I have been with them for just over 2 years now and their service is rock solid. I like the online call log so you can see exactly when someone called you, or when you called, and how much it cost and all that, in real time.

You also can get a free INUM from them which is an internet phone number. It is a number that you can call from another INUM capable device and it will ring. So even though I don't have a local number, if my parents wanted to get a hold of my at home on my home phone, they could dial my INUM and my house phone will ring.

It's really neat. I have 0 regrets of moving. If you are paying more than $5 a month for phone, you are paying too much

Ditch shaw and go for it. You will need an ATA adapter, but voip.ms shows you how to configure almost any kind of ata you can buy.

Here is a snippep from voip.ms for the last 3 month for me:

Calls: 93 | Duration: 10:13:32 | Total: $7.32954

[suntan]

But how is Shaw going to build their new office tower downtown if everybody quits their service??

Think of the carpenters!

[yellowsnow]

I use a free service called Fongo. I transferred my (403) home number to the service, and have call forwarded that number to my cell and my wife's cell. You could also download the Fongo app and receive/make calls from there using your wifi or data plan. Canada wide long distance is free. I don't ever call long distance anywhere else, so I don't know the cost of that.

Has call display, call forward, call waiting, all for free.

http://www.fongo.com

[Mitsu3000gt]

I suggest just ditching the home phone altogether. I don't think I'll ever use one.

Just grab something like the unlimited everything $57 package from Fido and it includes Canada wide long distance. Not sure if that is still on or not.

[Xtrema]

The only thing that tying me to the landline is my ancient alarm system. If I can move that away, I would switch to VOIP systems.

Shaw ain't stupid. They know it's coming. Their new pricing is heavy on Internet cost. TV and Phone is just a ride along now.

[ga16i]

Originally posted by Xtrema
The only thing that tying me to the landline is my ancient alarm system. If I can move that away, I would switch to VOIP systems.

Shaw ain't stupid. They know it's coming. Their new pricing is heavy on Internet cost. TV and Phone is just a ride along now.

QFT. Last I looked Broadband 50 is up to $75 / month now. I think it was closer to $50 a year ago. I could see me switching off the home broadband once cell wireless data gets cheaper in price and higher in speed.

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by ga16i
I could see me switching off the home broadband once cell wireless data gets cheaper in price and higher in speed.

Not in the next century.

Telus just jacked their 6GB plan to $100 a month, data only.

[HiTempguy1]

Originally posted by ga16i


QFT. Last I looked Broadband 50 is up to $75 / month now. I think it was closer to $50 a year ago. I could see me switching off the home broadband once cell wireless data gets cheaper in price and higher in speed.

Yea, I was talking to Shaw the other day and asked them what their absolute cheapest plan was, the lady told me $50/month :nut:

Apparently po' folk can't get a 256kbps connection anymore :dunno:

[UndrgroundRider]

I prefer Anveo over Voip.ms. You get incoming and outgoing SMS over your DID, better call quality and WAY more features.

I currently run all my business lines and my cell phone through Anveo.

(Also, Martin, the owner of Voip.ms is kind of a dick.)

[ipeefreely]

Originally posted by eblend
My parents and I, and my friend are all on voip.ms ...
Originally posted by Xtrema
The only thing that tying me to the landline is my ancient alarm system. If I can move that away, I would switch to VOIP systems. ... Thanks for the write up eblend! :) Do you have any recommendations for a ATA adapter?
One thing that I did forget is my alarm system as Xtrema mention... do you have a alarm system? I did a quick search and it looks like I might just need a special config file from voip.ms to make it work...

Originally posted by Ven
... I replaced their phone with an Ooma VOIP system, the hardware and service is solid, and I pay $3.98cdn a month for more features that Shaw's phone. ...
Originally posted by yellowsnow
I use a free service called Fongo. ...
Originally posted by UndrgroundRider
I prefer Anveo over Voip.ms. ... Thanks guys! :) I´ll check them out! :thumbsup:

EDIT: Also to those who mentioned a cell phone (Rage2, Mitsu...) I really don't talk much (or use long distance) but I may take a look into Pay as You Go or I think with my work I can get a plan for $2 per month with minutes extra (I'll have to look it up again) plan with Telus (but I'd have buy the phone first)... More to look into/think about! :rofl:

[eblend]

I heard good things about Obihai adapters, but I usually use Linksys ones.

I picked up 2 x SPA1001 adapters for $20 total on Kijiji. just about any one will work.

To be honest, you don't sounds like you need many advanced features, so any service that has even more isn't a benefit to you. Whatever works. My only experience is with voip.ms and haven't had any issues.

[UndrgroundRider]

Originally posted by ipeefreely
EDIT: Also to those who mentioned a cell phone (Rage2, Mitsu...) I really don't talk much (or use long distance) but I may take a look into Pay as You Go or I think with my work I can get a plan for $2 per month with minutes extra (I'll have to look it up again) plan with Telus (but I'd have buy the phone first)... More to look into/think about! :rofl:

For anyone interested in what you can do with VoIP and your cellphone this is my setup:

- Ported my main cell phone number to Anveo
- Received new phone number on cell phone through provider (Rogers)
- Incoming calls go to Anveo and are forwarded to my new cell number
- Outgoing calls from my cell are automatically prefixed to one of my VoIP numbers. This allows me to dial out from the VoIP system, paying VoIP calling rates instead of my carrier's. The prefixing and subsequent dialing is all automatic, so I dial normally.
- All calls to/from the cell phone use voice network, so you avoid the latency issue
- If you have a My Five/Ten plan then you can set one of the numbers up as the dial out number and essentially have free calling all the time.
- Incoming SMS arrive over e-mail, and can be responded to directly in the e-mail
- Outgoing e-mail to a specialized address is sent via SMS
- I have complete control over voicemail because it goes to my VoIP system first. Currently using Google Voice API to do speech to text, after which voicemails are e-mailed to me in mp3 format.

There are a few downsides to this setup:
- SMS is over e-mail, which is a pain. I'm working on an app that will let me receive/send sms natively
- Incoming calls will still cost you airtime. At some point in the future I may write an app that pulls callerid from a webserver, so you can set the outgoing callerid from your VoIP system to a MyFive number, netting you free incoming calls while maintaining caller ID.