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"Up to 2 voice channels" and 10gb bandwidth usage

I signed up for a free account a while ago and have now upgraded to a premium account. Using the free account, any second incoming call would go straight to my VM, which would say something like "extension <number> is on the phone". The PBXes homepage reads that the free account comes with Up to 2 voice channels, which implies that under certain conditions you do not have two voice channels at your disposal. Could someone please tell me what those exact conditions are? All is working fine now that I have upgraded to the premium features.

Further, I was wondering if it’s possible to test for latency (jitter) b/w your servers and a third party VoIP provider. If not, then I would like to submit a request for such a feature to be added to your already impressive list of features. I think it would really help people in making a selection of VoIP providers that they want to use.

Also, I have noticed that the usage monitor equals every minute to 2 MB of usage. I read on this forum that even if you go as little as 500 MB over this limit you will be forced to pay 10 euro's (15 USD!) extra for that month even if your usage for the next month stays within the quota. I’d say that the softcap of 5000 minutes is a little unsatisfactory (only 2.5 hours a day, origination and termination combined!) and quite frankly unnecessary, considering that an extra GB of bandwidth costs only 0.09 EUR at Hetzner where the Nurnberg server is hosted. I understand that this service offers a whole lot more than just bandwidth availability, but one would assume that you already pay for this added value with your monthly subscription charge. Again, I love this website’s impressive set of features but I really think that bandwidth policy is a little ridiculous and ought to be communicated to the consumers more clearly (E.g. this service comes with 5000 minutes as we assume every minute of calling time to use 2 mb of bandwidth). Anyway, just wanted to put in my two cents on that! I’d appreciate a response though!

Thanks so much!

RE: "Up to 2 voice channels" and 10gb bandwidth usage

After reading thru your request once more I make a second attempt for answering it:

When you exceed the maximum 2 channels of a free account the system will not respond by voicemail. The caller just gets a busy tone.

So I guess your PBX just needed a reset which is automatically performed by an upgrade to premium. The FAQ in the WIKI describes how a reset can be requested manually.

Thanks for your feature request for displaying latencies. However an implementation is technically difficult because a provider may route the packets differently on every call and hide the true latency to PBXes.

Two more questions...

Hi, I have two more questions. As you probably can tell by my previous post I'm pretty annoyed with your low bandwidth quota, but I saw that your other plan, PBXes PRO, does not such have a quota. When I tried to order it, however, it asked me for the additional number of extensions, minimum being 5. Does this mean that the minimum monthly charge for PBXes Pro is 5 times 9.95 EUR? I only need it for myself and occasionally my brother's Sip phone, but I think I use more than 5000 minutes a month on average. Also, I wanted to ask you whether it is possible to hold ONE free account along with a paid account, registered to the same name and IP address.

RE: "Up to 2 voice channels" and 10gb bandwidth usage

• The minimum of PBXes PRO is 5 extensions. You can watch the Usage display to see how much bandwidth you actually use.
  
• It is not possible to hold a paid and a free account. This question has already been discussed elsewhere in the forum.

jjpieper, one important detail i-p-tel left out is that you can (if I'm not mistakened) purchase additional bandwidth quota for your premium account at the cost of 9.95 euros. So for approximately 20 euros you should be able to get 20 GB bandwidth quota.