Over the past few weeks I have been trialling a VoIP provider I hadn’t noticed in New Zealand before, 2talk, and I have been very impressed.
Usually I would write this the other way around, and rave on for a bit then talk about my experience, but in the interests in not boring you too much I will skip to the review. Update: Because this post got far too long, I actually split into two posts.
My experience has been absolutely flawless, every call perfect quality, no dropped calls or degraded quality. I signed up for the $15/month personal plan, in which you get 500 minutes and two NZ numbers. I used one of my allocated numbers for an 0800 number, and signed up for a local Greymouth number, so I could call my parents without even using any of my minutes (“local” calls are free).
After a slight muddle with passwords when I first signed up (I hadn’t read the thing telling me not to put symbols in my passwords) I was up and running within 15 minutes, including the time to download a SIP client for Mac. I’m using X-Lite at the moment.
I called myself on the landline, to check out the delay (It is pretty bad usually when I do it with Skype), it was totally insignificant, much less delay than a call to a mobile. They have a very featured web control panel to help set up auto attendants, call forwarding, voicemail, you name it they have it – even wake up calls. Obviously if I was going to do it seriously I would buy a SIP phone so I didn’t have to have the software open on my computer.
I should mention that I have a fibre connection back to Snap which I get around 17Mbps up and down on, so I am not exactly trialling it on an average NZers connection. I’m hoping to give the service a try at work over the summer break, where I will move a few of the lines going into our PABX over to 2talk and see how it goes.
(My ping to sip.2talk.co.nz at the moment is ~18ms)
I would highly recommend giving this a try. I just signed up for a month to give it a go because it was so exciting, I won’t be keeping the service as I am a student so unfortunately can’t quite justify it.
I can’t help but thinking how great it would be if I went travelling overseas etc, get a nice phone with a SIP client and wifi, sign up with a local number in NZ, and call all I like for practically nothing.
Let me know how you get on!
8 Comments
The service is terrible
They make you call an 028 number for their phone service (so if you have config issues like me you get stiffed) and they dont reply to their support email address.
Avoid 2talk if you can – try another viop service
Good point Hugh, I hadn’t noticed they only had an 028 support number. You could try ringing them in the middle of the night, it sounds like they have an answer machine, they will then return your call and save you having to pay mobile call rates from a landline..
I do agree that they could be a little better at replying to (or replying more quickly) support emails, but I haven’t had anything I’ve needed an urgent reply for yet.
Hey mate we are approaching 2Talk services for our premium phone cards… any additional thoughts. Uncle
Hey Steve! Sounds like a good idea to me.. they have been rock solid, and saving us lots of money. Having a few call quality issues but I think that is our internet connection (ADSL) rather than anything to do with them
I too joined 2talk recently. It worked great for the first week or so but now I cannot receive calls. I lodged a support request which they responded to very quickly with some standard sounding message saying they had refreshed my line etc. It didn’t fix the problem and I have now been sending messages and emailing them for days to which I get no reply. Cannot contact them by phone either, straight to voicemail.
Definitely avoid these guys if you need reliable support.
I’ve had 2talk service for my client and myself it worked firn for while but I ‘ve few issuess from last 8weeks. I called them almost everyday and I open ticket and lodge my fault 2-3 times a week but no reply from this people.
As fas the support goes my view “absolutely terrible verryyyyyyy bad!!!”
Avoid if you can! in fact I’m looking for another suppliers in NZ
Thanks for your comment, just out of interest what sort of problems have you been having with them (apart from bad customer service?). We are currently experiencing some quality issues but think it is related to our hardware instead of 2talk.
We have been using 2talk for nearly 2 years and found it to be reliable, but their customer service is the worst i’ve ever know. I have had multiple times where I have called them and left messages which dont get returned and emails which dont get answered. At one point they stuffed up my 0800 number and my customers all heard “you have reached 0-8-0-0…” for a voicemail. They never responded to my emails asking for a compensation due to 3 days of lost customers. Their motto seems to be “if there is a problem, ignore it. If it an easy fix, send a very quick email.”
In saying this, i am forced to stay with them because my company uses call recording and other features of the 2talk portal religiously and their rates are better than World Exchange (who have AWESOME support).