Issues calling CenturyTel numbers?

barkndog · Post by **barkndog** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 3:26 pm

My wife (who is on the phone a lot btw) has noticed that voice quality varies with locality. Long distance has good voice quality, but "local" calls have static or break up. I think I've narrowed it to just the local telco, which is CenturyTel.

We live in a small town outside Birmingham, Alabama - and although Birmingham is served by ATT (Bellsouth), many of the surrounding towns had smaller, local telcos - most of which have been swallowed by CenturyTel. CenturyTel doesn't seem to play nice in this new day of communications - and since they're fairly small I think they are not monitored as closely as ATT.

Does anyone else have issues calling a CenturyTel subscriber? Anyone notice any differences when calling folks with providers other than ATT?

mberlant · Post by **mberlant** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 8:00 pm

To narrow it down further to CenturyTel, how would you compare conversations between calling an AT&T line and calling a CenturyTel line from a cell phone? From another carrier?

barkndog · Post by **barkndog** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 8:23 pm

Never had a problem from my mobile phone (Cingular/ATT Mobile) or from my work (ATT service through a PRI) to CenturyTel numbers - and I used to have a land line with CenturyTel.

Since my original post, I have spoken with another MagicJack user in this area who says he doesn't have the same problem. So maybe it's an issue on my PC or network - maybe high traffic coinciding with those particular calls . I plan to get a QoS appliance and see if that straightens some things out. If it were not so expensive, I'd get a dedicated thin client as well.

barkndog · Post by **barkndog** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 10:43 pm

I'm going to bump this up, because this is odd. The issue is local numbers, only 205-655-xxxx and 205-661-xxxx. Any call to or from these exchanges has a voice delay. You speak, the person on the other end doesn't hear it for about a second. Sometimes cannot hear it at all. These are CenturyTel numbers. Other calls, local but ATT customers, don't have the problem. No problems with any mobile phone providers either.

Does/has anyone else have/had issues only with specific numbers or exchanges? I looked at the MJ FAQ but it doesn't cover this and I know chatting with support will take a while.

Currently, I'm trying to get in touch with the other local user with MJ that is not having the same problem to analyze his setup. Although I welcome any suggestions from anyone here that might have dealt with a similar issue. Other than this issue, it's working out great. Now if people would stop outbidding me on a thin client...

mberlant · Post by **mberlant** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 12:52 am

barkndog wrote:The issue is local numbers, only 205-655-xxxx and 205-661-xxxx. Any call to or from these exchanges has a voice delay.

Any call to or from these exchanges? Since the outbound service and the inbound service really aren't related to each other, the only common point I can think of is the proxy server you are homed to.

Try another proxy server and see if it makes a difference.

barkndog · Post by **barkndog** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 10:35 am

I'll try that tonight when I get home. Thanks for the response.

barkndog · Post by **barkndog** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 9:39 pm

Just an update - this issue seems to have worked itself out. No changes to my system, no reboots. Maybe MJ updated the proxy server - whatever happened, the calls are clear with no echos right now.

My QoS appliance (Hawking) arrived this afternoon - I'm afraid to install it, I don't want to mess up a good thing