Features Vrs Network Stability

[GregM]

But they don't take into consideration your specific network infrastructure when they decide where to put you. They moved me from the Bay Area servers to the 'mystery server' and it caused my traffic to still go to San Francisco to jump to Level3's network to then get hauled all the way back to the East Coast. Houston was my next best option, but that kind of analysis isn't considered when VT makes the decision for you. They will do what's easiest for them.

Have you tried to get something resolved with a ticket lately? If you're having a problem right now, how long do you think it will take for them to manually shift your config to a new server? My usual 2 hour response for a ticket is currently at 2 days and counting. New customers will probably never know the difference because they didn't have the option for changing their server via the CP taken away. Will their service work? Probably. Will it work as best as it possibly can? Probably not.

[gsquare]

I look at this list with much interest and see many new features which look very inviting and would seem easy to do. It’s also understood that VT is feature rich, and one of the reasons I find myself here and have successfully recommended VT to others. However with a career including the past eight years in Network Configuration Management, I am willing to give VT a break in rolling out new features in a very measured manner. Network change and stability do not necessarily go hand in hand. I suspect that some providers hold off on features due to costs in regression testing, customer support, and the added risk in Network Configuration change. I applaud VT management for their willingness to accept some additional risk in rolling out features, and it appears their procedures are sound. I am always excited in seeing new features enter the inventory; however, the primary functions of a voice network much have highest priority. If tech support is over extended in new feature support, they can’t put the necessary resources against the core network functions. If VT has to build a larger tech support, its $$ and that’s bad for all of us. No doubt, VT’s enthusiasm for participation in this Forum, is an effort to control tech support cost on many issues which can be corrected by the customer. Many of these problems are feature related. With VT adding who knows how many new clients with the $199 deal, the porting related support alone must be a stress in Clifton NY. I’m confident that VT management understands what their resources can handle; however, if the core Network responsibilities are played against the roll out of new features, I am willing to wait for the features to maintain a healthy VT Network.

[jandy]

I completely agree. There are some existing features that I will probably never use. It's nice that they are there, but I would also rather have greater focus on making sure that call stability and quality are the #1 priority, especially with the growth in new users. Everything else is gravy. And VT already has a lot of gravy, IMHO. Nice to have, but wouldn't want to see it negatively effect the call quality.

PS... on 60 Minutes last night they used the phrase "features creep" (LOL) to describe the trend in the consumer electronics industry of including a gizillion features thereby making a simple product much harder to use.

[iampedro]

I agree... I would personally prefer to have to have stability...

I am getting married and I just purchased this service for me and my finance and I would prefer stability over features...

[PIttsburgh1935]

I agree with everything you said. I've had a few minor problems with VT, which were solved quickly, so I would give VT an excellent rating. There have been many petty complaints by people but what can you expect from impatient people. As VT grows in the business I think Brendan & other top managers have their fingers on the pulse of the growing pains. I am amazed at the ages of the top dogs.

[gsquare]

Glad to see a couple comments on my post. I was hopeing some of the VT Tech Support and Network Managers would read this just to know that there are those out here who understand the difficulties they face of a fast growing and changing network structure. There's always the argument between the Sales/Marketing people and those who run and opperate the Network. Growth vrs Stability vrs $$$ is a fundamental arguement in this business. I would add that BYOD is possibly the largest risk VT has taken, and I'm one of the BYODers. VT must feel that BYOD customers are more technically savy and will not require any significant additional support. We'll see about that. Personally, as a BYODer for past couple months, I'm just trying to keep my house in order and have confidence that my configuration is compliant with the VT Network. With many new customers, BYOD, new servers in the past few days, and new features, I hope VT can maintain the availablitity numbers they are looking for.

[Heat305]

Glad to see a couple comments on my post. I was hopeing some of the VT Tech Support and Network Managers would read this just to know that there are those out here who understand the difficulties they face of a fast growing and changing network structure. There's always the argument between the Sales/Marketing people and those who run and opperate the Network. Growth vrs Stability vrs $$$ is a fundamental arguement in this business. I would add that BYOD is possibly the largest risk VT has taken, and I'm one of the BYODers. VT must feel that BYOD customers are more technically savy and will not require any significant additional support. We'll see about that. Personally, as a BYODer for past couple months, I'm just trying to keep my house in order and have confidence that my configuration is compliant with the VT Network. With many new customers, BYOD, new servers in the past few days, and new features, I hope VT can maintain the availablitity numbers they are looking for.

I myself am a "BYODER". The core reason for this is exposure to the technology. I am into technology very much and the VOIP world has taken off so fast it amazes me. I am always trying to get hold of new and exciting hardware/software for personal gratification and maybe future experience. I guess we're both hoping or wishing someone form Tech Support would stop by and see certain aspects of "BYOD" is out of our control and we are using the tools they have supplied us for some assistance but get no response. I have posted several topics and have not seen anyone from Tech Support responding either. The purpose of these forums are to assist each other in any way possible but at the same token it's to relieve tech support call congestion for basic issues and errors that we encounter. I have submitted tickets and they were responded back to in a very timely manner and I applaud VT for this. They do however need to check in here and see folks are asking for help and are patient enough not to congest their tech support line by calling every minute. I would say these are the loyal customers that they need to pay close attention too. I have some tickets that have been open and not responded too in almost four days. Or is this a sign that they are looking into the issue I am having? If it is a nice short response would be acceptable indicating that there are working on it and the minute they find the answer they will let me know. I am enjoying all the great features VT provides but as I get closer to my first month of trial service with VT I am considering looking into other providers and that allows "BYOD" test out their service as well. C'mon VT we are asking for some help. Thanks to all of you guys that have assisted me with other questions that I decided not to call VT tech support for and posted in here instead. VT should applaud you guys that are in here donating your time and knowledge with us.

[gsquare]

I am reopening this not as an "I told you so" however, I think my original premis is still valid. We are going throuh a rather serious network availablity happening, which VT has not expereinced previously from my experience. I'm sure they are reeling from it, possible as I poke this. We hear that the problem is associated with "capacity" and also that Level 3 is assisting certain network issues. Capacity is not a very well defined term and could be associated with numerous areas of the Netork. Once resolved, VT will take a deep one and look at "lessons learned" and try to avoid this in the future. I thought it interesting where VT Brendan stated that one of the problems is that his tech support (probably tier II) was so overhelmed with trouble shooting customers home networks, they were pressed for time to work on the network. I would suppose that this is par for the course in the Voip business especially where you provide numerous features beyond normal telephone connectivity with Voice Mail and Caller ID.
VT over the past several months has, we think, added greatly to their customer base, has added numerous servers including Richmond, Chicago, and San Fran. This all sounds good, however, there is a lot of risk in expanding a network while keeping the existing network stable. My thoughts are that VT has gone into a high risk effort and suddenly run into problems. The efforts to correct it are sometimes more risk because your original plan didnt go well. When I saw this network wide stability issue, and it would be corrected in a "couple days", I simply felt more like a couple weeks, if they are lucky.
I will cut VT some slack on this. My position is that they will learn whatever lessons are to be learned. If this company says that right now we are growing and best that we do that without putting resources to new features, stop the BYOD for awhile, ect. fine with me. VT will succeed with a good price, basic features, and availability. The rest is fluff in the long run.

[car2589]

I agree that there are growth issues that contribute to the inability of VT to maintain a stable environment for it's customers but as always techinal issues in a techs eyes always go ahead of customer service issues because their focus is on fixing the technical problem.

Where is VT management?? I for one want good basic service I can count on and added features come later.

Right now I think stabilility of service and customer support stinks and will eventually cause many of us to have enough and leave for more conventional types of phone service. I for one am very close. It isn't all about savings.

[GregM]

I agree. Function and stability first, features second. If basic functionality is hit or miss, all of the features in the world won't save you.

I was very satisfied and recommending VT to friends. After my and others recent issues with inbound calls not completing, I just can't recommend them, until the issues abate and I see some stability for awhile.

[sbradshaw]

I agree. Function and stability first, features second. If basic functionality is hit or miss, all of the features in the world won't save you.


I agree that something is going on right now that is affecting service. But like the company I work for...you have staff that do different functions. VT does not need to stop working on one aspect of the company while other staff members resolve these issues. So the development of new features should continue, IMO, while others work out these problems-of-late.

[littleminx]

another vote for stability over features.

[sbradshaw]

another vote for stability over features.

As I said in my previous post, a company does not have to do one over the other. They are not that small of a company that they do not have enough resources to handle issues while continuing to grow/develop the business.

[samej71]

As I said in my previous post, a company does not have to do one over the other. They are not that small of a company that they do not have enough resources to handle issues while continuing to grow/develop the business.

In addition to what sbradshaw said, I think it's worthwhile to mention that throwing more developers at a problem (handling issues) doesn't necessarily help resolve them any more quickly. Sometimes too many people looking at a single problem is actually a hindrance.

I don't know where the quote came from, but it goes something like "10 women cannot produce a baby in one month" (versus the normal idea that biologically it takes one woman takes 10 months to have a baby). If something is going to take X hours to design/develop/fix, you can't simply take those hours and divide them up equally between a number of developers to get finished in a short chronologically time period. Some tasks for a project (or resolution) block other tasks and must be completed sequentially. When troubleshooting problems, sometimes fixing the current problem exposes an underlying problem (or the problem becomes a moving target), which can delay a satisfactory resolution.

I guess what I'm trying to say for a staff of over 5 people, that if all staff were solely focused on resolving some issue, it wouldn't necessarily mean it would be resolved more quickly. It's just mean nothing else was getting done while everyone was redundantly working on the same thing. :)

Yes, I know there are plenty of exceptions given the size and capacity of the staff compared to the overall amount of work, the components/breakdown of the issue, development/resolution theories, etc., etc., and I'm not saying anything about VT's resources or their allocation (since I know nothing about VT's structure) but I wanted to bring up this idea just the same for those who haven't been exposed to it before.

--James

[GregM]

As I said in my previous post, a company does not have to do one over the other. They are not that small of a company that they do not have enough resources to handle issues while continuing to grow/develop the business.Stability is the foundation of the business. Building features on top of an unstable foundation is counter-productive and more difficult to resolve later. I can't count the number of times that I've seen changes to fix underlying foundation systems break "features" that were added while the entire application wasn't working properly.

How many of us have been burned by something that doesn't work correctly? I'd bet just about all of us. How eager are we to make that gamble again? There is a basis to the idiom, "Once bitten, twice shy." Over my lifetime of experiences, I have a long list of products/services that I make an effort to avoid. If you can't promise reliability, there's nothing that customers can rely on to keep their business with you.

You also only have one chance to make a first impression. If the service was having a once-in-a-lifetime stability problem when new customers are in their evaluation problem, don't expect them to keep the service or ever have a desire to come back. They will also likely share their bad experience with anyone willing to listen.

Yes, multiple projects can run in parallel, but there's also the issue of priority. As an investor and/or customer, getting features without stability tells me that the company has either lost its focus or mis-identified its priorities.

[sbradshaw]

Stability is the foundation of the business. Building features on top of an unstable foundation is counter-productive and more difficult to resolve later. I can't count the number of times that I've seen changes to fix underlying foundation systems break "features" that were added while the entire application wasn't working properly.

...

Yes, multiple projects can run in parallel, but there's also the issue of priority. As an investor and/or customer, getting features without stability tells me that the company has either lost its focus or mis-identified its priorities.

Who said the entire application wasn't working? What if it is found to be a hardware or network issue? If so, then why should coding projects need to stop?

I'm just a VT customer and do not feel that the company has mis-identified its priorities.

[GregM]

I never said I was speaking specifically about Via:Talk. Somebody is being a little defensive.

[sbradshaw]

I never said I was speaking specifically about Via:Talk. Somebody is being a little defensive.

Then, I'm a little confused as your earlier post in this thread directly addresses VT.

I agree. Function and stability first, features second. If basic functionality is hit or miss, all of the features in the world won't save you.

I was very satisfied and recommending VT to friends. After my and others recent issues with inbound calls not completing, I just can't recommend them, until the issues abate and I see some stability for awhile.

I'm not being defensive. My whole point is that a company can easily work recent issues and continue to have people working on development simultaneously.

[GregM]

My statement regarding VT was regarding my current situation with reliability. It seemed by some responses that some folks were getting their undies in a knot over my comment. Therefore, my follow-up was a generality. Let me try this again;

If I'm paying for a service, reliability is key, whether it's for a telephone or my pay TV. If my satellite provider comes up with a nifty new way to record programs on any channel, at any time, with a certain word in the program description, and most of these end up being recordings of a "Searching for Satellite Signal" message, the new feature has no value to me.

If this new feature is implemented, even if I don't want it, and it causes my satellite receiver to randomly lockup while I'm watching live TV, I'm also not a happy camper.

If this or another new feature makes resolution of a reliability problem affecting basic function more difficult, where I'm not getting what I'm paying for over a longer period of time, I'm probably moving to another TV provider.


Specifically referring to my situation with VT Service;

If you want to plan for a new feature while current customers are having a problem with basic function, you had better keep it to yourself. Many of us have paid up-front for a long-term service arrangement. I don't want to hear about a new widget on Via:Talk's owned & operated forum while the basic function of the service isn't reliable and being discussed openly by one of the company's owners on another forum.

[Chulo]

Ah the English language.

Greg was talking about VT.
Bradshaw responded about VT.

Greg responded to a different Bradshaw post about “a company” and the topic was changed.

The bottom line is we all just want the service to work right.
If they have the resources to develop features at the same time, great. If not, who cares as long as the damn phone rings...

[GregM]

The bottom line is we all just want the service to work right.
If they have the resources to develop features at the same time, great. If not, who cares as long as the damn phone rings...We have a winner!:D

[Agrajag]

Stability always must be monitored, corrected and improved at all times. However, features can't just vanish into the ether during that period. Both are essential to success. Stability without features will get you no customers. Features without stability will get you a lot of churn and angry customers.

If stability is all that mattered we'd all be back with POTS service so you're lying if you say that's all you care about. Price is a feature.

[GregM]

I may be willing to pay a higher price to obtain specific features, or pay a lower price to give up certain features that I don't feel are necessary. If lower price is a "feature", then the opposite would be the lack of a "feature"? In other words, higher price may be an obstacle to customer adoption, so I can't say that it would ba a lack of a "feature". Price is more a component of competitive advantage in the marketplace, not what I'd call a "feature".

"...as long as the damn phone rings...", features are nice to have. If it doesn't, I could care less.

[gsquare]

It appears from my vantage that the smoke has settled and I again have the service that I grew to expect. For about two weeks it was nagging problems where I just wasnt sure what to expect. I would think that VT has learned a lot from this. VT certainly has completed or is somewhere on the back end clean up of a major network upgrade. It appeared that the system was under some stress before they got into the upgrade and what ever plan they had layed out had to be adjusted along the way. I think it interesting that during this process, VT pulled Dynamic Routeing off of the control panel. They pulled a feature. We can only guess that while migrating large customer sets to different servers, either for trouble shooting, upgrading, or both, they had to deal with either customers pushing buttons, or the dynamic feature somehow was getting in the way. At some point it was bothersome enough were someone said "Pull that Dynamic Routing". A well designed upgrade has a Risk Assesment process and Risk Mitigation. You can bet that if VT upgrades to this degree again, they will have a bench mark where they will pull dynamic routeing prior to the upgrade. Who knows, we may never see this feature again. No problem here. They probably learned a whole lot of similar things; its just the dynamic routeing was the one visable to everyone who looks at their control panel. My assesment is that VT is more tollerant to risk than most or possibly all VoIP providers. As they mature they may change or stay with the one who took them to the dance.
I think it equally interesting the cable voice industry, COX, Comcast, and to a degree Fios have all gone with digital telephony where they put the phones in front of the home networks. They could have gone with PAP-2's; however, decided to change out their cable modems with their new telephone customers. There are probably a lot of reasons for this however, the risk mitigation of keeping their Customer Support out of the home network troubleshooting is a big big plus. No DMZ, port forwarding, QOS. or just funky home networks to deal with. The traditional Voip providers have to accept this risk because they are not carriers.

[gsquare]

I started this thread to dialog some on features vrs stability. It’s a good argument. I happen to be a stability guy. When I started it, I didn’t have any issues, just some concerns down the road. I went with VT for price and the feature set seemed nice. However; I have to laugh at myself now to think I would not be sensitive to a service which is aggressive in new features and has in my opinion, a low tolerance to risk. Of course, until something bad happened, I really didn’t have to face it.
Something very bad happened in this network. It appears to have been corrected to a large degree, but the Upgrade couldn’t have gone to any pre-planned method. It definitely wasn’t any little glitch at midnight. We will probably never know, if the feature set which VT offers made a required network capacity upgrade more difficult or not. We do know they pulled dynamic routing off the control panel for some reason.
I would think that Cost/Stability/Features; “I can give you any two” would be a good rule for this telecom business. I would also think that those who would pick Cost/Features would be challenged when a happening occurs like we have been through. Of course I’m just a stability guy. However, a lot of people might have decided they are as well, now.
Why am I baffled after receiving a global notification to invite all my relatives, friends into a portal where they can make unlimited 10 minute free calls via the VT network. Quite a good marketing ploy and probably a low impact feature which would take some time to ramp up. We also have new voice mail under Beta test and 2 Line/One number under Beta. New customers are getting the 2 line at start up which seems to be in conflict with Beta Testing. We noted yesterday on BB that VM was having problems; however, not sure if it was just the Beta people or more global impact.
So I am going to adjust my expectations to a degree. We shouldn’t see another upgrade or capacity increase for a time, I would think. So long term stability will hopefully be back at levels which I can tolerate.

[Chulo]

I’m also for stability over features. But I gotta give credit to VT for providing both at the present.
I was harsh when I was frustrated, but it looks like everything has calmed down. I’m starting to feel good about VT again.

I don’t think the dynamic rollover is a necessary feature anyway since they can manually adjust proxies.

[gsquare]

I would probably like to re-name this thread Risk Assessment, but this recent happening with the Rocketeers seems associated. Following the recent Network Upgrade and its problems, then the influx of Rocketeers, VT people, particularly at the grunt level, probably need a little break. However, much of it can be traced to the Risk Tolerance of the company in whole. Offering Rocketeers BYOE must be putting troubleshooting pressure on tech support. Also the new 2lines1# is also generating many angry posts from provisioned and BYOE alike. As a pre-Rocketeer VT customer, I find this painful to watch play out. I understand that BYOE gets customers up in a hurry, in theory, but Tech Support still pays a price, getting these Gizmos up and working. Would offering Rocketeers provisioned, single line service, been a better way to go? They may have lost some prospective customers, however, they may lose them in the long run anyway and with a lot more heart ache and beat up CS people.