Costa Rica Calls Fail

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 15, 2004 Posts: 9

We have been trying to call family in Costa Rica, but no joy. For about
a week now, we have not been able to complete calls to family there.
If we make the call from a cell phone or the local phone carrier they
go through just fine, but if we try from Vonage it rings but no answer.

Calls made to the cellular network there do go through just fine, it
is just the land line network that appears not to work.

You hear 2-3 ring tones and then a long one as though it was routing
to elsewhere, and then normal ring tone.

Has anyone had this problem of late? My wife is starting to ask that
I get another service as this is not acceptable to us.

Posts: 22 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Nov 04, 2004 Posts: 22

I also had extremely bad luck to the Philippines. Calls worked less than 50% of the time. Cell Phones in the Philippines never worked and would just break up. Luckily now I switched to FWD and 2 Sipura 3000s for my Philippine calling. I think with Voip companies its just hit and miss wether the company has a descent connection to it.

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 15, 2004 Posts: 9

Well, except for a short period where there was no termination what
so ever (it was fixed in about 24 hours) we have had good luck with
our calls to CR. But for about a week now, it has been hit or miss on
the wired network side with calls to CR. If we call a cell phone the
far end rings just fine, but if we call a land line phone most times it
does not ring, but you do get ring tone on this end. That I guess is
the most frustrating thing with this issue, unless you KNOW it is not
ringing on the far end, all sounds well.

I hope that they get it fixed soon as my wife talks to her family a lot
and really needs it. She gets frustrated with it and gives me grief
because it does not work.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 19, 2005 Posts: 2

Thats solved the problem good for ya

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 15, 2005 Posts: 1

There may be more than meets the eye about VOIP issues in Costa Rica:

vonage-forum.com/ftopic2406.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" class="postlink">http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic2406.html

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 15, 2004 Posts: 9

I hit the link you gave and got kicked back to the message thread
It appears that internally there is a bit fight going on in CR over who
is allowed to carry IP calls. I will not go deep into it, but it is political

The calls to CR should be terminated at the same point in CR on the
ICE network. It is interesting that the cell phone calls were going
through just fine it was the wire line ones that were giving problems.

Right now we do not appear to be having issues, my wife has been
making calls with no problem. We also have a friend from there who
is staying with us, he has called home several times and had no
problems, so we think they are fixed at this point.

Posts: 1

I have two vonage accounts... one box in FL and the other at my in-laws house in Costa Rica. The calling to/from Costa Rica vonage to vonage or vonage (us) to land line in CR is spotty at best. This has been an ongoing problem for about a year now. My wife is about had it with the service as she calls over and over and almost never gets through. Sometimes it does work vonage (us) to CR cell phone but the reliability is pathetic. I am getting ready to cancel both our the accounts we have and go to a traditional LD service.

I was on hold for about 45 min today waiting for a "international support representative" from Vonage. After the wait I was told that there are no international support representatives that work Sundays and they would have to call me back.

I remember when Vonage was a great company from New Jersey and they've moved to a big advertiser that provides lousy international service. Whether the issue is politics or not, I wish they would level with people and either fix the problem or tell us they do not offer service to Costa Rica.

-Mike

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 15, 2004 Posts: 9

We really only noticed this problem back after the first of the year.
It is indeed irritating, I hope that they fix it as the rest of my service
works great.

It appears to come and go, at times it works great then it totally goes
down hill.

I have found that the best time to call Vonage is weekday mornings
seems you get someone to talk to quite fast at that time, particularly
monday mornings.

Posts: 2146 · Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2005 12:46 pm Post subject: Costa Rica May Criminalize VoIP

Slightly off topic, but certainly interesting:

February 28, 2005 (10:09 AM EST)

Costa Rica May Criminalize VoIP

By W. David Gardner, TechWeb.com

The growing surge in international VoIP calls has caused the state-owned telecommunications monopoly in Costa Rica to propose legislation that could criminalize the use of Internet telephone calls.
The Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) said that it views VoIP as a value-added telecom service and, as such, it should be regulated. At its most Draconian, the proposal would make Internet telephoning a crime.

One Costa Rican official of an agency seeking to promote the Central American country's software industry said last week that ICE's proposal would be "disastrous" to the country's efforts to grow its software development and outsourcing businesses. The official, who asked that his name not be used, noted that Costa Rica has been rapidly growing its outsourcing business and low-cost telephone service is crucial to the growth of that business.

ICE is a telecommunications monopoly. While some have criticized it for stifling competition, it has established efficient telephone service throughout the Costa Rica, which is rapidly-emerging from third world status. Market research studies have noted that some 78 percent of software developers in the Central American and Caribbean region are located in Costa Rica,

The ICE proposal was first reported in "La Nacion," the country's national newspaper, which noted that some 20 percent of the country's international calls are made using VoIP technology. The use of Skype Technologies' peer-to-peer Web calling is widespread and other VoIP services including U.S. VoIP pacesetter Vonage are also used to make and receive calls to and from the Central American nation.

Claudio Bermudez, ICE deputy director, was quoted by La Nacion as follows: "VoIP, which is characterized as a telephone service, is a (telecommunications) carrier and substitute telephone service, and as such uses the public telecommunications infrastructure."

The question of VoIP and whether it should be regulated as a telephone service or left unregulated as a data service has been hotly debated for several months in the U.S. Most governmental agencies and courts have ruled that Internet phoning is a data service that should not be regulated.

Earlier this month, Vonage complained to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission that its service had been blocked by a high-speed ISP.

To date, there is no evidence that the ICE has blocked any VoIP service in Costa Rica.
http://www.techweb.com/wire/networking/60403862

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 15, 2004 Posts: 9

I have been dicussing this with a good friend of mine who used to work
with ICE, he thinks that there is a good possibility that they may be doing
some sort of blocking because there is very little money made on the in-
coming calls, I do not know how Vonage handles the connection to ICE,
but suspect that they make even less money off of the vonage calls than
other calls. It is certainly in their favor to try to get people in CR to make
calls outbound as that is where the money is made.

I saw the article in La Nacion on line also. My wife has asked her family
to make a complaint to the national omnibudsman in order to see if we
can get to the root of the issue.