FOOD FOR THOUGHT BulkVS.com -- Great Origination/Termination/TF rates!

AndyInNYC

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I'm keeping my DIDs with flowroute (for now) and using bulkvs for outbound calls only. Nothing to lose except my deposit. $25 deposit is 104 hours of outbound calling at $.004/min.

Andrew
 

atsak

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I'm concerned about companies like this cause I don't know them. My worst fear is that I port numbers to them, they go belly up and then I lose my dids. What would happen in that scenario?

You'd do an emergency port to another carrier, you don't lose your DID's. The porting system is surprisingly flexible (by that I mean not quite as secure as it should be) and speedy if it wants to be, and the port can be completed within 24 hours.
 

AndyInNYC

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BulkVS has been sending me emails about their 'Holiday Specials':

CNAM (Caller ID Name)

$0.002
per query


8YY Outbound Toll Free:

WE COMPENSATE YOU!

$0.0012 - 1 to 99,999 minutes


$0.0016 - 100,000 to 999,999 minutes

$0.0020 - 1,000,000+ minutes



Origination Toll Free Numbers:

Inbound Per Minute Usage:
$0.0055

Monthly Cost Per Number: $0.14

Setup Fee: $0.99

Port In (LNP) Fee:
$0.00 (COMPLETELY FREE)

Vanity Numbers: Same as above, no extra cost


Origination Numbers:

Inbound Per Minute Usage:
$0.0003

Monthly Cost Per Number: $0.06

Setup Fee: $0.05
Port In (LNP) Fee : $0.00 (COMPLETELY FREE)



Enhanced 911

Monthly Cost Per Number:
$0.49

LRN

$0.0001
per query

VOIP is getting cheaper and cheaper.

Andrew
 

phinphan

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Ward, I have followed all the steps except I am confused about the chan_sip entry. Is that placed in the incoming or outgoing section of the trunk setup or does it go into a separate conf file that I have not found?
 

wardmundy

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We're wrestling with BulkVS as we speak. So far, IP-based authentication works. SIP registrations also succeed and outbound calls work, but incoming calls never reach our server. Also tried forwarding incoming calls from the BulkVS side to another number. It originally failed but BulkVS made "a slight adjustment made on your account by our engineering group", and at least call forwarding now works. Stay tuned...
 
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atsak

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We're wrestling with BulkVS as we speak. So far, IP-based authentication works. SIP registrations also succeed and outbound calls work, but incoming calls never reach our server. Also tried forwarding incoming calls from the BulkVS side to another number. It originally failed but BulkVS made "a slight adjustment made on your account by our engineering group", and at least call forwarding now works. Stay tuned...

They're quite responsive. FYI I did have my first glitch with them last week, where calls went to the backup PBX while the primary PBX was online. It was only 3 calls (there are hundreds a day on this particular PBX). They were able to track it down within a few minutes and fix it (in fact it had fixed itself).
 

Halea

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Very busy Monday morning here and phone lines have been busy ringing off the hook. We didn't notice anything unusual and after seeing this thread I just tested all our BulkVS DIDs for incoming (over 20) from POTS and cell lines and they all work fine.
Maybe it was just one of the servers which failed or we were lucky that we were on a server that didn't.
 

Halea

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Alex Hackney said:
I'm concerned about companies like this cause I don't know them. My worst fear is that I port numbers to them, they go belly up and then I lose my dids. What would happen in that scenario?

You'd do an emergency port to another carrier, you don't lose your DID's. The porting system is surprisingly flexible (by that I mean not quite as secure as it should be) and speedy if it wants to be, and the port can be completed within 24 hours.

The DIDs are ALWAYS safe with any voip company actually, since by law they are managed by regulated entities. In the case of BulkVS your DIDs are actually under the management of bandwidth.com which is a major CLEC.
So, do not lose your sleep over forfeiting your DIDs if so and so voip provider goes bankrupt.

The only exception would be IF you are actually not the owner of the DID and you are "renting" them, in which case your so called provider is breaking the law anyway because the USA DIDs are not for rent as they are not commercial instruments under the law. BTW, that's different in EU where not only renting DIDs is permitted but in many countries the only way to get them.

To play safe with a provider that you do not know well, fetch your CSR and check the ownership data in it. It should show the telephone number that you provided as the account number and the address that you provided as the service point address. That's your deed to the DID (with pun intended).
 

wardmundy

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So... we've got everything squared away now. Some of this was simply a lack of documentation. We'll write it up on Nerd Vittles shortly.
 

kenn10

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So... we've got everything squared away now. Some of this was simply a lack of documentation. We'll write it up on Nerd Vittles shortly.
I got it to work immediately with VitalPBX and pjsip. Here's a screen shot. I'll try pjsip on my IncrediblePBX system and see how it does.
1589222462985.png
 

kenn10

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@wardmundy it works like a champ with PJSIP on IncrediblePBX 2020. I'll PM you a screen dump if you like. Really, just the username and password and the list of IP's is all you need. They send the number in 1NXXNXXXXXX format for your incoming route. I did use REGISTER with this account so the inbound is not an issue.
 

krzykat

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@wardmundy it works like a champ with PJSIP on IncrediblePBX 2020. I'll PM you a screen dump if you like. Really, just the username and password and the list of IP's is all you need. They send the number in 1NXXNXXXXXX format for your incoming route. I did use REGISTER with this account so the inbound is not an issue.

I had an issue with PJsip on 2020, and ended up adding a bunch of SIP trunks that I thought was crazy since PJsip should cover that. Can you post your screen dumps or settings for PJsip trunk?
 

phinphan

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We're wrestling with BulkVS as we speak. So far, IP-based authentication works. SIP registrations also succeed and outbound calls work, but incoming calls never reach our server. Also tried forwarding incoming calls from the BulkVS side to another number. It originally failed but BulkVS made "a slight adjustment made on your account by our engineering group", and at least call forwarding now works. Stay tuned...
The only way I could ever get incoming to my server was to allow anonymous sip calls. Fingers crossed that fail2ban will protect us. Of course, they can't spend more than $40 but still.
 

kenn10

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I had an issue with PJsip on 2020, and ended up adding a bunch of SIP trunks that I thought was crazy since PJsip should cover that. Can you post your screen dumps or settings for PJsip trunk?

BulkVS PJSIP screen shots. On the BulkVS home page, go to Interconnection > SIP Registration and use one of the registration trunks listed for your Username. Point your DID to that as well.
1589247282724.png

1589246769363.png
1589246844776.png
1589246874689.png
 
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Halea

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So... we've got everything squared away now. Some of this was simply a lack of documentation. We'll write it up on Nerd Vittles shortly.
The suspense is killing me! So, what happened? What was not properly documented? :crazy:
 

kenn10

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The suspense is killing me! So, what happened? What was not properly documented? :crazy:
To say that BulkVS documentation is sparse, is an understatement. It took a lot of trial and error to figure out how to make it work in chan_sip or pjsip. The key is to use the register function on either and then the issue of incoming not coming through seems to be resolved without opening up anonymous sip callers. While you can set up a trunk using just your userid and password, using the information on the sip registrations instructions with BulkVS is the better way to go. I could not get inbound to work without either opening up anonymous sip calls or by using the register function.

PJSIP just handles this better than chan_sip. I am grudgingly moving more of my channels over to PJSIP in a thoughtful, careful manner.
 

Halea

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To say that BulkVS documentation is sparse, is an understatement. It took a lot of trial and error to figure out how to make it work in chan_sip or pjsip. The key is to use the register function on either and then the issue of incoming not coming through seems to be resolved without opening up anonymous sip callers. While you can set up a trunk using just your userid and password, using the information on the sip registrations instructions with BulkVS is the better way to go. I could not get inbound to work without either opening up anonymous sip calls or by using the register function.

PJSIP just handles this better than chan_sip. I am grudgingly moving more of my channels over to PJSIP in a thoughtful, careful manner.
When I first started with BulkVS I was after origination as I needed to port away DIDs in a hurry. So, to try the company out I bought one from their site and gave a go. I was able to get registration based origination and termination working within the next half-hour, so I was quite happy.

Much later when I tried IP based authentication I recall it was not a walk in the park, but I was able to get it going after some trial and error. I can't remember what specifically I had to fiddle to get things going as I didn't take notes of my changes the way I usually do, but my impression was that the issues were probably with my old PBX setup. I'm still on chan_sip, the only driver that's "production" quality on my setup.

Most recently, I was playing with an old Sipura 3102 and wanted to check out if it would register on BulkVS under one of my accounts. For some reason it couldn't register and it surprised me, but I didn't insist and put it away. I was thinking about revisiting the issue when I had more free time and I was in the mood to do troubleshooting - and that might be soon. So, any fresh info about BulkVS connectivity is welcome. ;)
 

atsak

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Just one other note - they still have some trouble with interconnect in Canada - a few calls are not completing (circuit busy) because the connection between Telus AND Bell (one of the ILEC's) and the carrier they are using in Canada (whom I can't figure out yet but suspect is probably Iristel or Fibernetics) doesn't have enough capacity. I think I'm going to raise another ticket.
 

wardmundy

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Another Bargain SIP Provider for Incredible PBX Platforms
EXwT-8EWkAAYS1H
 

wardmundy

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The suspense is killing me! So, what happened? What was not properly documented? :crazy:

The gotcha (which was a dumb mistake on my part) was that you only use your self-created Trunk Group credentials for IP-based authentication setups. For traditional SIP registrations, you use one of the 3 available setups under Interconnection -> SIP Registration.
 

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