Australian VOIP DID, faxstream duet, NBN changeover

[emexes]

a VOIP service at $4/month including DID and free landline calls within Australia (that I do on the mobile anyway)

Australian Phone Company - Residential VoIP - Home Phone Service Plans

Their VOIP service and price is right, and I have had positive interactions with the support staff. I found them when I was testing VOIP services looking for one that worked with regular POTS fax machines. I also discovered that entry-level GrandStream ATAs do regular POTS fax better than the Cisco/Linksys/Sipura entry-level ATAs. I'd given up years ago trying to do fax over VOIP, but then I discovered that faxing on Optus NBN VOIP to TPG NBN VOIP worked great, so I gave it another shot.

On a related note: my parents had copper home phone and a faxstream duet piggyback number for their fax machine, with distinctive ring so that the fax machine only answered fax calls (although that didn't stop my parents trying to answer them too). This has worked great for years, but... then they were forced to change to NBN. I'll spare you the unhappy details, and tell you what I should have done.

The NBN changeover process does not cope well if you have a "complex service", ie anything other than a single phone number on a single phone line. If you have extra phone numbers on a line, you will probably lose those extra numbers when porting the service to NBN. What I should have done is port the extra numbers away from the POTS provider and to a VOIP provider, so that all that was left on the line to be changed to NBN was just a single, simple (not complex) telephone number and service.

Live and learn.

Things are actually better now than they were. My parents never really grasped the concept of two phone numbers on one line. Now that the phone and fax numbers are on different separate independent services, and they can send/receive faxes whilst talking on the phone at the same time, my life is much simpler. ?

One last little tip is that TPG has a basic NBN phone line replacement plan $30/month with PAYG phone calls, or an extra $10/month for unlimited non-international calls. It comes with a router and 10 GB/month of data too, so if you're careful to keep within that data limit, it's great for doing email, news and online sudoku. We did get stung a couple of times by devices doing iOS updates at 3 GB a pop but, once we sorted that out, it's been smooth sailing since.

 

[mangojack]

I have just ported Mother over to Aussie Broadband (from Westnet / iiNet / Tpg) and it is a refreshing change. (I am sleeping better )
While I used to praise Westnet for its exceptional service .. it diminished slightly when iiNet stepped in, and was pretty much robot talk when TPG took over the reins.

She also discovered Netflix, which her 100GB data allowance could not handle. Also, constantly reminding her that if she talked for more that 20mins to mobiles
it would be extremely expensive, just seemed to become a monthly talking point.

Her NBN plan from A.B is $60 unlimited data (although I think she watched the entire Netflix catalogue, and it is no longer needed ) and unlimited calls to all phones.

If Aussie Broadband offered ADSL I would jump ship as well.... I can see the NBN Node thru the trees... , But we cannot connect.
And Westnet have removed the ability of upgrading plan , so we are stuck on a 12/1 which averages out at 1 MB per sec.

Hopefully , the latest Government announcement (extending the nodes FTTH? ) might offer some light.


Question : Fax ? versus Email...

 

[emexes]

Question : Fax ? versus Email...

Not all octogenarians are au fait with email.

Two button presses is all it takes for dad to fax to his regular recipients. ?

In fact, perhaps it is too easy: sometimes he accidentally faxes me stuff when he's trying to photocopy it.

Also, fax has (well: had) the advantage of resulting in a piece of paper at the other end that can't be ignored as easily as an email. It is particularly useful for drumming a message home inside government bureaucracy, in that there is a good chance that other people in the office get to see the message too, enhancing the prospect of action.

A related strategy that has worked well is to keep resending the same fax each day, with handwritten crossing-out of yesterday's date and adding today's date. Usually, eventually the recipient cracks. Admittedly, sometimes I have to start squeezing the new dates down the side of the page, etc, but that just makes it more obvious that I'm not going away until I get some response.

 

[emexes]

If Aussie Broadband offered ADSL I would jump ship as well.... I can see the NBN Node thru the trees...

Do you have any line-of-sight neighbours that are in the NBN area? Perhaps you could share internet with them using a couple of range extenders with directional antenna.

You could argue that you're just helping NBN get their coverage sorted. ?

When we lived in a block of flats a few years ago, it didn't take much to rustle up community internet sharing between adjoining units. ?

 

[rabbitBUSH]

I have just ported Mother

Good one mate : every 10 year old has to give Mum a hand......

 

[rabbitBUSH]

keep resending the same fax each day

I find that if you do a traceroute along the copper wire (well those parts that haven't been wholsale stolen overnight - yup 25kms in one night) and find and enter the office (with the extension number quoted on the website - front door security will oblige with directions) toting a cricket bat - things happen even faster. . . . . You can do ALL that in one day . . . .

community internet sharing between adjoining units.

Reminds me : my daughter and partner used this to connect satellite TV between houses. the service has a facility called "extra view" for a small fee - seems like nothing that a short piece of wire won't fix. (Or just make sure that the neighbour doesn't understand what a secured WiFi router is.)

We can do all sorts of things here in Africa.