Rogers Internet Phone

Rogers Internet Phone service peaked my interest when I first read about it. With six standard calling features and unlimited North American long distance calling for the same price as a regular line with only two calling features and no free long distance anything, it just made sense! Rogers Internet Phone service includes the following six calling features:

• Anonymous Caller Rejection
• Call Display
• Call Forwarding
• Call Waiting
• Deluxe Voice mail
• Three-way Calling

If you get the deluxe package for $35.95 a month it includes unlimited free North American long distance calling. If that’s not required you can always choose the basic plan for $19.95 and pick a different long distance plan to suit your calling needs.

So here’s a little story of how everything worked out for me ordering Rogers Internet Phone service. I figured I would do it all online since I could just log into my Rogers account. As I started filling out the online form the further I got the more I realized the form is set up more for first time customers instead of existing customers. It got to the point where it was going to do a credit check (which is pointless since I’m already their customer) and asking other obscure mandatory questions that couldn’t be answered… and so the first failure was met.

I ended up calling in the following day to order the service and change from my existing Rogers Digital Home Phone service. They said it was no problem and I could keep the same number and I would have the gateway (router) in 2 or 3 business days. It all sounded good to me and 7 days went by with no gateway… and so the second failure was met.

I went back onto the rogers.com website to obtain the internet phone service number. Holding to my intuition I assumed that looking under the section ‘Internet Phone’ on their website and clicking on ‘Order Rogers Internet Phone’ would likely lead me to the correct number. The number listed is: 1-800-668-8883, which is not the phone number for the Rogers Internet Phone service department. This of course led to lots of being transferred around and being hung up on as is standard fare. As I found out by asking directly the correct number for Rogers Internet Phone dept. is 1-800-298-6939… and so the third failure was met.

Finally getting through to someone who might be able to help I advised them of my order and the time frame which had been laid out but not kept. After looking through my account info they glibly advised me that they could not migrate my phone number and therefore I could not get the Internet Phone service. So I asked them if anyone had been intending on calling me to notify me of this little problem or if I was supposed to just figure it out on my own somehow. They replied saying someone had tried calling me, I told them there was no record in my call display of them having called nor were there any messages. They told me that the person who called didn’t get any voice mail. I was starting to get a little rude at this point since I have Rogers voice mail no less and they could bloody well see that on my account. I don’t care who they said they called but it sure as hell wasn’t me… and so the fourth failure was met.

To me there was a simple solution to this problem, if they couldn’t migrate my existing phone number then why not give me a new one. You would think they would just offer this to you but no I had to make the request. And so yet again I ordered Rogers Internet Phone service and was again told that I would have the gateway in 2 or 3 business days. Believe it or not it actually happened this time.

Hooking up the gateway was easy but for those of you who have a home network and probably an existing wireless router there are a couple of things to keep in mind. You can daisy-chain your wireless router from the gateway but before you do make sure you’ve changed the settings on the wireless router so that DHCP is disabled and the router has a static IP that is outside the range of the gateway, ie. 192.168.1.201 if you don’t do that you’ll end up with an IP conflict and nothing will work. Additionally also make sure that you’re going from a LAN port on the gateway to a LAN port on the wireless router, not the WAN, unless you want to set up a sub network which I highly doubt.

Rogers doesn’t support this but the gateway will actually command all the existing hardwired jacks in your house. This is pretty handy considering there’s only one phone port in the gateway. Once you have the gateway hooked up you can call Rogers to activate the service and it can take up to 24hrs before the line goes active, in my case it took 12hrs. It can take up to an additional 3 business days before all the calling features are fully activated. I’m remaining hopeful that they’ll be working tomorrow.

All in all a bit of an ordeal but I believe it to be worth it in the end! (REALLY NOT WORTH THE HASSLE)

|| UPDATE || October 10th/2007 ||

Rogers Internet Phone service continues to be an ongoing ordeal. I’m really debating switching back to the Rogers Digital Home Phone service again. I’ve started to notice that during the middle of the day it will take repeated dialing of the same number to get connected. I will get various error message recordings from Rogers such as the number has been disconnected or no longer in service, please contact your operator for assistance etc. After trying to redial a couple of times the call will finally go through. It doesn’t seem to matter what number I dial, whether it’s a toll free number, local numbers, or other major cities in Canada. Rogers of course has no idea why this happens.

The other ongoing issue with the Rogers Internet Phone service is the choppy connection if there is any network activity while talking on the phone. Rogers sets the default bandwidth for the VoiP phone service to 8kbps, I had called them previously to increase it to 64kbps. They were able to do so but advised that it’s using up more of your monthly bandwidth allocation…not exactly a big deal. Increasing the bandwidth for the Internet phone service seemed to help a bit but it’s not perfect. It doesn’t make much sense as I have a 8MB download connection and 800 kbps up. So I could be downloading something at say 70kbps and uploading at 30 kbps, a phone conversation during this type of network activity will squash your phone call. It’s hard to say if the Rogers Internet Phone service is just so basic that it craps out easily or this has more to do with Rogers traffic shaping. Either way it’s annoying!

The other ongoing issue with Rogers Internet Phone service has to do with the ‘Message waiting off’ indicator. I had a tough time trying to explain this to Rogers Internet Phone technical support. It’s pretty simple, someone calls you and leaves a message. You get the message waiting indicator which on some phones is just a flashing light and on more advanced phones like my Sanyo touch it works more like a cell phone display and you get the envelope icon. So, you dial into your voice mail, check your new message and then disconnect. On older phones or more basic phones this will cause the flashing light to turn off meaning you have no new messages. On my Sanyo touch, the envelope will disappear and it will briefly display a message on screen stating ‘Message waiting off’ indicating that you have no new messages. That message should only come up on the phone after checking your new messages. The problem with Rogers Internet Phone is that this particular message will display on the phone every five to ten minutes for a full minute and while it’s being displayed you can’t do anything.

Most people including Rogers Internet Phone technical support assume it’s the phone and not the service. Well this is wrong as I have already troubleshot that theory prior to anyone ever bringing it up. This same Sanyo touch phone was used with my Rogers Digital Home phone service which had the same features with voice mail etc. I had never experienced this issue with the previous phone service. I had also hooked up this phone to a Bell PSTN line with voice mail features and did not experience this issue. It’s just the Rogers Internet Phone service that causes it. So all the Rogers technical support people could do is reset the message waiting indicator in the switch. So they went ahead and did that and guess what happened? I still get that message appearing every few minutes and now when I have a new message I don’t get the message waiting indicator at all. Now I have to call them back yet again!

Another annoyance of Rogers Internet Phone service is well the lack of service, they don’t have techs available all the time. A couple days ago I had called in and they just advised there were no techs on the floor and asked if it was okay if I called back the next day. Like I had much of a choice… well I shall keep adding my adventures with Rogers Internet Phone service and see how much longer I can take it before I have to switch.

|| UPDATE || October 12th/2007 ||

As it turns out it wasn’t much longer indeed before I made the fatefully long awaited call back to Rogers to ditch the Internet Phone service and go back to something that actually works. It was no surprise that they didn’t even ask me why I wanted to cancel the Rogers Internet Phone service. I think they were more than happy to switch me phone plan, probably easier for them anyhow since the Digital Phone service actually works. They assigned me a new number right away and would have had the tech come the next day even though a tech is not really required it’s just a faster way to get the equipment. Tech is coming out on Saturday and finally I will be done with the failure that is Rogers Internet Phone service. I wouldn’t be surprised if that service ends up discontinued. With all the people I’ve talked to and articles I’ve read it sure sounds like VoiP has a long way to go before becoming reliable, again a surprise considering how long it’s been around. Oh, also wanted to point out that no matter what Rogers says, you cannot port your existing phone number over to the Internet Phone service and vice versa. You’re looking at new phone numbers each time.

So just to recap here’s 7 good reasons not to get Rogers Internet Phone service.

• Bad service, technical support only available sometimes.
• Technical support cannot resolve technical issues.
• Message waiting off indicator could not be fixed.
• Any amount of network activity above standard web surfing even on a high speed connection will give you choppy phone conversations.
• Phone service does not always connect and you get various false positive errors.
• Deluxe service including six calling features with tax and network fees costs $46 a month. Rogers Digital home phone $38 a month.
• SMC Gateway is a piece of crappy hardware.

Thinking about getting Rogers Internet Phone service??? Don’t do it, save yourself some money and also a lot of hassle and headache, you’ll only end up switching back to something else anyways!