FAQ and Help
Voice over IP (VoIP) is a set of technologies that allows you to make and receive telephone calls over a broadband connection. You don't need a dedicated phone line to do this.
Miso works with the major broadband networks in the UK like BT, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk and so on. If you're using a more unusual solution you might have some problems. For example, if you're on satellite broadband, you'll probably experience a time delay in your phone calls - just like calling internationally back in the day, because your call is being beamed way up into space and back. For this reason, we wouldn't recommend using Miso in conjunction with satellite broadband.
When you travel overseas, Miso should work in most places with a decent broadband connection. Be aware that a few countries block all VoIP traffic so their telephone companies can carry on charging whopping rates for international calls. Also, if your connection speed is very slow, you might notice a degradation of voice quality: although VoIP doesn't use much bandwidth it doesn't like being pushed around by other traffic competing for a small amount of broadband capacity. If you're connected to corporate LAN and having problems, have a word with the systems administrator to see if they can help you.
It is possible, but unlikely unless you are on the phone for hours on end and have a broadband package with a very low usage allowance.
As a rough guide, assume that each minute of conversation results in 2 Megabytes of data transfer. Thus, even if your monthly allowance was only 5 Gigabytes, that would equate to 2,500 minutes of telephone calls!
First of all, check that your broadband connection is working OK by opening a new web page. Try something other than your normal home page, because this might be cached in your browser and come up OK even when your connection is down. If your broadband is down, contact your broadband provider or your LAN administrator, but check you've got all the cables plugged into the right places first (if you're using cables).
Assuming you're broadband is working OK, check our home page - if there are any major service outage problems with Miso we will post information about them there.
Next, check your emails to see if we have sent you a message, for example about your credit levels, any planned maintenance or unusual activity on your account.
Nothing in your inbox (or junkmail) from us? OK, if you are using a SIP phone (an IP telephone handset), check that it's working OK. Have a look at the manual for the handset if you're in doubt about how to do this. You can try the sophisticated engineering solution: turn it off and on again. It's surprising how often this works.
If you're using a softphone (that is, a VoIP app on your computer or mobile phone) or a fax app, try restarting the app, and if that doesn't work, re-start your computer or mobile phone just to be sure.
If you have access to the broadband router on your premises, try re-booting that too. But don't get into trouble for doing that without the permission of the administrator, if you have one.
Right....if none of that works, it's time to get in touch with us and we'll try to figure it out. Please be sure to tell us about anything out of the ordinary that you may have done or noticed before the problems occurred.
Miso won't carry on working if there is a power cut to your premises unless you have a backup power supply for all the electronic equipment needed by the Miso service - i.e. for your handset/adaptor/computer, plus any broadband routers on your premises.
If your credit runs out, you won't be able to make or receive phone calls. However, it's very easy to top up your credit online, and we'll get you back up and running in a jiffy. If you like, we can email you when your credit gets low, and hope to soon be able to automatically top up your account if you wish.
If your balance has grown to over £50 net of vat, then you can withdraw funds by submitting an invoice to us. If you are UK VAT registered, then you can add VAT to the amount invoiced.
If you bought your handset from us, we'll send you detailed and simple instructions on how to get the handset working with Miso and/or you will be able to view them in our customer portal. If you're using your own handset, check to see whether it's one we sell, and if so, you can download/view the guide for that handset and set it up. If it's not one we sell, we may well have a generic guide that we can send you.
If you're using a softphone or fax app check to see whether it's one we've tested on the network. If it is, we will have a little guide to using it that you can download/view again from our customer portal.
However, please be aware if it's not on our list of devices or apps that we sell or have tested, we can't say for sure whether or how it will work with our service.
You don't have to, because we never see them! We only use pukka payment gateways such as PayPal, who will never pass your card details to us. No one from Miso will ask you for your credit card details for any reason, as we do not take card payments over the phone or via email.
We have now got Emergency Call Handling operational for around 90% of our customers. We are also working on providing this facility the remainder of our customers in the near future.
All new customers will now automatically have Emergency Call Handling available to them as soon as they have completed and uploaded the relevant name and address details via the Customer Portal.
Please note - since VoIP requires a working broadband connection, we would always recommend that you maintain an alternative means of contacting the emergency services (such as your mobile phone) should you need one.
Please send us an email and we will do what we can to provide you with the answer. If we think the answer will also be useful to others, then we will add it to our FAQs.
More Questions?
If you can't see the answer to your question here, drop us an email. We'd love to hear from you!
