Highspeed Internet and VoIP

cjewell

Bronze
Oct 11, 2004
1,160
0
0
As of right now I have the Orange internet rental and a Vonage VoIP line. I am finding the quality on the Vonage VoIP line really bad and I think it is because the Wifi is slow, then fast, then slow, then fast.

What is the highest speed internet I can get on the NC in Sosua?
If it is Claro - do I have to send someone to POP? (I am out of the country but need to get this fixed)
Is Claro internet wired into the house?

Any help would be great!! This is driving me nuts.
 

texan

Member
Apr 1, 2014
442
2
18
I am guessing they did the first thing of unplugging the modem then letting it restart. Seems like you do have to restart modems a lot. I have Claro and our Claro has a phone but with limited minutes. The phone seems to work well but I would have to check into the price for more and our unlimited minutes with claro. We can call the US with our Claro phone for the same cost.

I have thought about getting a VoIP line to call the US but haven't done. I also use FaceTime , FaceTime audio and Viber with my wifi network. I have talked to people using that magic jack and it works ok but not perfect.
 

cjewell

Bronze
Oct 11, 2004
1,160
0
0
Vonage should work well with a highspeed connection - I just dont think my connection is fast enough.

I just was chatting with a friend on Facebook who said Claro is the fastest but that I would have to commit to a 1 year contract. Is this true?

I am guessing they did the first thing of unplugging the modem then letting it restart. Seems like you do have to restart modems a lot. I have Claro and our Claro has a phone but with limited minutes. The phone seems to work well but I would have to check into the price for more and our unlimited minutes with claro. We can call the US with our Claro phone for the same cost.

I have thought about getting a VoIP line to call the US but haven't done. I also use FaceTime , FaceTime audio and Viber with my wifi network. I have talked to people using that magic jack and it works ok but not perfect.
 

RandyLRM

New member
May 21, 2014
100
0
0
Have you done a speed test on it (you should do this several times to quantify the speed changes)? If yes, what speed are you getting? I do have Claro and works great with my VoIP, which provided by Fonality. Claro does require a one year contract.
 

texan

Member
Apr 1, 2014
442
2
18
When we started Claro we did sign a one year contract. We are looking into Tricom to see if we can save some money. Claro has been pretty good so far. But my laptop works a lot better around the house then a smart phone. But something like a Voip I don't think we would have any problems. I mostly surf the internet and watch some youtube stuff. The youtube take a second to load but then it works fine.
 

ramesses

Gold
Jun 17, 2005
6,672
809
113
I have cable Atlantico internet. My speed is 2/0.5 mb. I only had to buy the modem and pay monthly at the Delancer office in Charamicos. I use MagicJack and it is clear 95% of the time with only the occasional breakup.
 

amp

Bronze
Oct 5, 2010
730
8
18
When I signed up for Claro it was an 18 month contract. You can get 3mbps (which is about the minimum for most internet related activities in this day and age) for about $2,200 and double the 3mbps to 6mbps for a little under $3,000 if you bundle those with a phone. Not sure how much internet costs by itself.

Here is a webpage where you can "Arm Your Plan" from Claro: https://appsec.claro.com.do/wps/portal/do/sc/personas/todo-claro/paquetes#info-03a
 

cjp2010

New member
Mar 25, 2013
397
0
0
I use Vonage with DeLancer and it works well. But you do have to have a fast enough connection. Here upload speed is usually not 1/2 of download speed like it is in the U.S. Upload needs to be at least 512K for the quality to be good. Mine is 768K up and 3M down.

Do a VoIP speed test not just a regular speed test and see if it finds any issues. When I had to troubleshoot in the past I used this one - MyConnection Server Online Portal. When I first moved here I had bad cabling that was causing a lot of jitter. The techs didn't understand what that meant but I talked to the owner and he understood and after they replaced the cable the problem went away.

It helps (especially on inconsistent connections) if you plug the Vonage adapter directly into the modem and then plug your router into the vonage adapter.

If you have settings on your router to control QOS it will also help to set them so that voice gets priority over everything else.

If you login to your vonage account you will have a configuration for bandwidth (bandwidth saver). Set it to highest (90K). You have to be pulling at least 90K. No sense in limiting your bandwidth on the Vonage side and having issues here too. Even though it is only 90K I still found I need at least 512K upload for it to work well here. Distance adds latency so that skews the numbers a bit.
 

Luperon

Who empowered China's crime against humanity?
Jun 28, 2004
4,510
294
83
Nothing beats Ooma for good voip at slow internet speeds, been using for 8 years at speeds like 200 and less up and down.
 

Serge1960

New member
Apr 2, 2014
145
0
0
Nothing beats Ooma for good voip at slow internet speeds, been using for 8 years at speeds like 200 and less up and down.

we do the same Luperon, I pack the OOMA in my suitcase & bring it around the world... when it rings it my local number.. & no one knows where you are
-Serge
 

waytogo

Moderator - North Coast Forum
Apr 3, 2009
6,407
580
113
Santiago DR
Whatever you do..............
Do not sign with Tricom...........
Terrible, terrible, terrible...............
Have another thread about my current bad experience with them............

B in Santiago
 

Jaime809

Bronze
Aug 23, 2012
1,152
0
36
Agreed; I have a PAYG plan with Tricom, and I can never get them to actually turn on my device when I pay for the service.
 

windeguy

Platinum
Jul 10, 2004
42,211
5,966
113
Vonage has told me that they want a 1 Mbit/s upload speed. I dropped CLARO when they stopped providing me with the speed I was paying for and previously getting. They told me I was too far from the central station. I told them that neither of us had moved, but they didn't get it.

I have a cable modem and Vonage works well with a 4 Mbit/s down and 1 Mbit/s upload plan. No problems calling the US or DR land lines. The only problem I have with Vonage is some issues calling DR cell phones with the additional Vonage World Plan that includes a monthly allocation of minutes to DR cell phones.
 

tommeyers

On Vacation!
Jan 2, 2012
1,599
0
36
I live in Santiago
As windyguy said: examine the speed in the two directions. Frequently the company will state a high down speed and supply a low up speed. Both are necessary for VoIP.
 
H

Halsey

Guest
I have Skype installed on PC, but I use it mainly to talk for free. Otherwise I use the Smartgroschen. They have a small top-up starts from 0.89 Euro, so just enough to use from time to time.