[Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Questions & Answers] IT_Architect:
Deleted. Wrong thread

---------- Post added at 08:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:03 PM ----------

We haven't finished our analysis yet, but he is saying Silver at CallHippo looks interesting and I thought I'd pass this along in case it fits your situation. Scroll down the features of the Silver plan, and remember you only need data from any source for VOIP. For the last several years we've gotten small clients into RingCentral. While this is less feature rich, in many situations it could be substantially less expensive because it includes 3 extensions. The features are pretty intriguing, and may be a fit for you guys, so I thought I would pass it along. I'm having one of the guys play with CallHippo but if I'm going to be realistic, my curiosity will probably get the best of me to play with it myself. The Bronze is the lowest priced one that has call recording at $8/mo., but if you do the math, the Silver at $15/mo. is less expensive because it includes the line charge, $6.00, plus a $2.00 credit in minutes, plus free incoming, otherwise 2 cents a minute, far more features, and they maintain your data forever. You can see the features demoed here.

Noteworthy Pluses:

- keep your data forever. That can save your keester.

- Call recording you can download

- It says you can ring multiple devices and have unlimited concurrent connections and even gives you 3-Digit Editable Extensions and call cascading off one number. It includes and automated attendant, and call cascading to ring the first free extension. That says that up to 4 people could be using that number at the same time if you transferred the call as a secretary might do. That seems too good to be true. That would be like a 4-line hunt group for free. With RingCentral, you would pay a full line charge monthly for each extension.

- All it requires is a data connection, whether that be cellular data plan, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Wi-Fi Hot Spot. If you have an acceptable wireless provider that officers a cellular-data only plan that is less expensive, take it. If you can't, at least you never have to port any numbers when you switch carriers because you never used the number anyway.

- You can buy additional phone numbers in 50 different countries for $6.00/mo. or $54/yr. Thus, you could be anywhere physically, have a local number anywhere, with no long distance for any of them calling you, or you calling them.

- People seem quite happy with the performance of their service so latency must not be too much of a issue. Latency is a factor in any voice system but if there is too much, during pauses in conversations, the other party believes they can speak but the party on the other end already started speaking again, so it seems like they are rude and talking over them. You can see extreme latency example on TV when there is someone reporting by satellite. (celestial)

Minuses I see offhand:

- The Silver plan does give you number porting. One could port to Google Voice and set it up to forward. However, if it has real CallHippo has real caller ID, it might not work with Google in the middle, hard to say. A plus for some people is you can have Google prompt for their name before forwarding the call. That will get rid of 99% of the spam calls. If you returned the call from the CallHippo number, it wouldn't show the Google Play number that you would want it to UNLESS you can change what callerID returns as you can with Ooma. However, with multiple lines to different countries they would have to have that for each line because that would only work for the US because Google Voice only works with US numbers. Another plus to the Google-based number is there is no way to beat their rates for long-distance so you could use the Google Voice client for that, but you would get no recording for those calls. If you go CallHippo Premium for number porting reasons, and only used one extension, then you would be way further ahead with RingCentral for less money overall. However, if you foresee the need for more than one person having separate conversations like in a hunt group, you can't come close to beating CallHippo because we are talking about 4 people on same number at the same time.

Unknowns as of yet:

- It says SMS. Based on other low-cost VOIP options I've seen in the past, I'm guessing that does not also include MMS.

- CallerID on low-cost systems often means simply showing you their telephone number. When cornered they say, "Oh, you mean Enhanced CallerID." CallerID with CNAM is what you want. You want to know BEFORE you answer the call if it is a call you've been waiting for, or another $5M line of credit you have been approved for before their low interest rate expires.

Please let me know if you've had any experience with CallHippo or personally know someone who has and what their opinion is of it.

Edit: The average business VoIP phone call will require 85 kbps of bandwidth, which works out to ~1,600 minutes per GB. Data-only costs trend at about ~$5/GB.

Thanks!