Help sought - making international cell phone calls

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 02, 2005 Posts: 1

My calls to cell phones in the UK and Australia fail most times. As the caller, I hear a ring, until it rings out. But the recipient's phone does not ring. In addition, I hear a single, US style ring, instead of a double ring as used in those countries.

As both my office (4 lines) and home (1 line) use Vonage, and as I do a lot of business in those countries, its a problem. Customer service has offered no help, except to say that Vonage has had problems with their international service provider.

Am I doing anything wrong? Are there settings that can be improved?

Many thanks for any suggestions.

Posts: 14 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 22, 2005 Posts: 14

heck, i even have problems with some cell phones here in the states. calls go through, just a lot of dropouts. calls to some cell numbers seem good but others are not so good.

but anyway, back to the topic. i've made calls to cell phones in Indonesia and have been able to connect every time. actually, the first time i tried, the call got dropped in about 30 seconds. the few times after that have been mostly acceptable quality.

can you tell us what router or phone adapter you are using, how your network is set up, which isp you are using and your up/down rates.

Go here, do a test for London and Sydney and post your detailed results (i know it's not the same as a cell phone connection, but still better than nothing):

http://www.testyourvoip.com/

Posts: 1

DJF747 wrote:

My calls to cell phones in the UK and Australia fail most times. As the caller, I hear a ring, until it rings out. But the recipient's phone does not ring. In addition, I hear a single, US style ring, instead of a double ring as used in those countries.

As both my office (4 lines) and home (1 line) use Vonage, and as I do a lot of business in those countries, its a problem. Customer service has offered no help, except to say that Vonage has had problems with their international service provider.

Am I doing anything wrong? Are there settings that can be improved?

Many thanks for any suggestions.

For the longest time I was getting a Celluar Company in Bermuda every time that I dialed the UK. Have NO idea why it was like that, but it stopped after a few hours (finally).

Ok, simple thing first:

Dialing number (this one is phony)

011 - 44 - 01702-0900-700
-------------^
DROP the leading zero. It's a "local" access code, very much like our local (USA) area codes. If you don't then it's "pot luck" for connection purposes.

Check the BT site for the number you are dialing. They may have been moved to a celluar provider. These numbers are NOT updated in any automatic manner. So, while Vonage may think it's a BT local number. BT may have changed the number over to a Celluar provider. This will cost you more, and it's entirely possible that you won't be able to connect, UNTIL BT gets around to fully enabling "international calling" over those numbers. The switch over can take a considerable amount of time.

These are just some of the problems I've run across while talking to my friends in the UK. When it works it's great. When it don't it's plain out flustrating.

HTH

Bill