Does anyone here have this Panasonic Telephone?

[Sgt_Strider]

http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/telephones_central/globarange/globarange.asp

This seems like a pretty neat idea, but I don't like how it's tied to the JOIP service. Does anyone here have this phone and if so, can I use any other VOIP providers?

[Sgt_Strider]

bump!

[Gagan]

I too am looking for an answer to that question.......have you been able to find anything yet???

[cecoil]

I bought a couple of these globarange JOIP;) along with the contracts- North America 800mins $15/month. Sent them accross the globe. Once you put your credit card to activate them, it is very difficult to remove your credit card unless your cancel card or key in a fake credit card and delete the real card no. It is very difficult to log onto the JOIP website with the user name and password.. You need to be an IT person, like I am to use this phone. It is not for normal people unlike what panasonic claims.
Customer support from Bangalore India is in a different time zone and very difficult to get hold of. Joip has given several contact numbers none work.Try dialing 1 877 669 5647 etc and see for yourself. The number given by joip to paypal does not work either. Joip belongs to DeltaThree which offers competing products iConnecthere which offers cheaper call rates without buying the globarange phone. Once you buy the globarange phone, you are stuck with a white elephant. The phone is locked to JOIP which has terrible customer support and you are held at ransom. However, if you want a cheap globarange phone, these go second hand on ebay for around 10 dollars, probably from customers who were fed up with poor support. The phones bb-gt1540, bb-gt1500, bb-gt1502 etc cannot be used with any other VOIP provider. The free calls promised between globarange phones do not work at all times. The connections are poor with the result when my phone works the other phone does not and we end up making regular landline calls through bell. Sometimes, the phone appears to ring and no one seems to be answering, but in fact the phone is not ringing on the other end at all. I have a very good ISP and high speed internet, yet call quality to JOIP is not very good, I cannot here what they say. God forbid, if you ever need to call 911 using the joip phone, no one will answer like the case of the recent death of an infant at Alberta due to the voip 911 not getting routed correctly. In short stay clear of JOIP and globarange. I will be fair and say the phone itself from panasonic is great:razz: , but JOIP sucks so the phone is useless.

[deathracer]

Hi,
I too have purchased the Panasonic phone and have signed up for a monthly JOIP plan.
To clarify, the Panasonic phone is a DUAL capable phone. (VOIP and traditional land-line)
As such, it could be a good solution for people who are not totally comfortable with going VOIP 100%)
In my case, I'm getting a great bundle on Bell SAT/HighSpeed Internet/Land-line......so I'm paying only the basic Bell phone service to retain my land line for DSL.

So, 911 service for me is not an issue, because I do have a solid BELL land line.

For all local calls, I press the Green TEL button and I'm using Bell's land line
For all long distance, I press the orange IP button.

My DSL gets about 4.9 Meg typically - and the VOIP part (JOIP) has been fairly reliable.

The phone itself is great. I got the full featured base station with keypad and answering machine.

What I haven't tried yet is calling into the base station from my Cell phone, which should allow me to call anywhere in the world for no extra charges over my monthly VOIP charge.

At present, for my Roger's cell phone long distance I'm using WINTEL direct from my cell phone, so I want to stop doing that and start using my Panasonic/Joip setup (however, I can only use this when I'm in my area)

BTW, your JOIP telephone # can be any area code, so if you have lot's of relatives who live in England, you can change your VOIP telephone # to be a local # from England....that way your relatives can call you as if it's a local call.

As for the reported problems by cecoil

- I only have one single Panasonic phone, so I have not experience cecoil's problems linking to another Globarange phone.
- I never had problems connecting to the call center, however, the call center staff did seem not too experienced.
- I do find the joip website could be improved
- My JOIP VOIP connection has been reliable.

I hope they make improvements in the areas that cecoil pointed out because the whole dual phone concept is great

[deathracer]

Hi to add to my previous post,

When you start a JOIP monthly plan, you can download the JOIP softphone, which is like a SKYPE service

I'm in Italy and I have the JOIP softphone on my laptop. I haven't used it much, so I'm starting to test it

I setup the JOIP softphone to use either my laptop's built in speaker/mic or a headset. The only drawback to using the headset is when you get an incoming call, your laptop's speaker ring goes to the headset.

I just tested 3 calls to Canada.
1 to Montreal
1 to Banff
1 to a cell phone in Montreal

All worked great

The JOIP soft phone is very simple, so it doesn't have anywhere near the features of Skype. But it will allow me to call anywhere in the world from my laptop.:cheesygri