Voip - useful tips and suggestions?

[Piglet]

As we seem to have a number of tekkies around, does anyone have any useful hints about using voip sensibly?

I kinda feei that I'm fumbling around at the edges of it all and probably missing some of it's functionality.

At the moment I run Skype on my main PC, that's useful as I can Skypeout to my sister in Germany for virtually  no cost (she only has ISDN and can't run Skype).

We also have a couple of BT IP phones that run off the home hub, we only use these for outgoing calls when it's free!

We're still stumping up for BT line rental on our landline - is the new technology good enough to replace this or do we have to keep a fixed line to get broadband? 

We also need to keep the Sky boxes connected to a phone line so how would we get around that?

Please post anything you think is useful!

[dukla]

Will be interested in any other comments - me feels it is a bit like sex when you worry somebody else is doing much better than you 

IMHO it is near impossible to ditch the landline. Although in fact I do not have one - broadband (& Skype) are via Now but they have a very limited coverage (Thames Valley) area and I don't know of other similar options elsewhere in the country. There are packages via the mobile networks for data but as far as I have seen they are still very expensive as they are charged per Mb. Or there is satellite - have no idea of pricing but my waters say expensive.

So you need to stick to a landline - you could swap to cable (TV) but unless you catch a lucky deal again my waters say pricing is similar to a BT line. Of course you could swap to some alternative suppliers who still use the BT copper - in general I figure this is to be recommended as for around £15 you may get a bundle deal of line rental, broadband and 'free' national off-peak calls (e.g. Tiscali). By the time you pick a provider who actually delivers customer service you may well be above £20 though, and again there are all the broadband usage limits to be considered - I haven't checked these out for a while.

VOIP itself: a while ago when I was with PlusNet I figured Skype was a proprietary scam. However PlusNet VOIP was limited to other folks on VOIP who had joined that consortium. Now with SkypeOut I figure Skype is hard to beat and it works fine for me.

[Piglet]

Will be interested in any other comments - me feels it is a bit like sex when you worry somebody else is doing much better than you 

That's exactly how it feels - I'm fumbling around and surely everyone else is managing better 

We can have cable in our area but I've so many horror stories about it (was formerly Telewest  )I'm happy to stick with BT, they gave us a free BT vision box thingie the other day so we've got that as well as Sky at the moment - if we could get Motors on BT Vision we'd probably dump Sky and save some pennies that way.  As long as you bully BT and keep complaining they are not too bad.   Sounds like we're stuck with a quarterly rental at the moment though. 

I've just Skyped my sister for around an hour at £0.012 per minute - it's quite incredible, she's been in Germany for 25 years plus and talking to her and the kids when they were small (to practice their english) used to cost us huge amounts of money.  The line was a bit noisy but I think that might be my £5 Maplins handset!    I've just ordered a Plantronics headset to use for work so that should work a bit better. 

Really would appreciate other folks views and solutions? 

[jpchenet]

Will be interested in any other comments - me feels it is a bit like sex when you worry somebody else is doing much better than you 

I've just Skyped my sister for around an hour

Sounds like fun!! 

[jpchenet]

On a serious note Piglet. To get Broadband you need either a landline, cable or a wireless/satellite connection connection.

If you want to run multiple PC's (which I'm pretty sure you do) then as I am sure you laready know you need a router/hub) This pretty much rules out the wireless/mobile devices as provided by the mnobile telephone networks as they connect by USB to an individual machine.

Satellite connections are ridiculously expensive! 

So it's basically cable or landline. As you prefer the idea avoiding a cable connection (although you would probably be able to get most of the Sky packages through them as well so could keep Motors TV) then you will need to keep an analogue phone line to have your Broadband connected through.

I'm in a similar dilemma with Sky, in that if I ditch it and go to BTVision or Freeview that I'll lose Motors TV. The problem I have is that my area is "cabled" so I have even less of a choice! 

[Piglet]

It occurs to me that I have no idea how many pc's we have in the house!    In the dark KK's office looks like something out of Star Trek, with flashing lights everywhere!   

It sounds like we're probably stuck with what we've got for the moment - I am reluctant to go Cable, although I'm pretty sure it's in the road.  We are planning to move in the next twelve months so don't want to get involved in new contracts.  It also appears that where we're going is only served by BT Broadband and is never likely to have cable so on that basis we're probably sticking with what we have and keep paying for the BT landline that we now don't really use

Having looked around different Voip providers, it seems worth having a couple of accounts as they all seem to have different set ups for different types of calls - you also need to read the small print carefully as I found a number of FREE CALLS*   *subject to extortionate connection charge, I also found a send free SMS messages where the recipient then had to pay a fiver to read the message!!!     Skype is pretty middle of the road although their calls to mobiles still seem a bit pricey but I think that might be the nature of the UK mobile industry.

[Petra]

I don't know the situation in England, but here in Holland you need to pay for a landline to have DSL. But it is possible to only have an internet connection without telephony, wich is cheaper than having both. I only have DSL through KPN, and use VoIP and mobile for phonecalls.

There are definately differences in VoIP providers. One thing is that Skype is not like others, they use their own standard and technology. This means only Skypers can call eachother for free. With a lot of other providers it doesn't really matter who your provider is and VoIP to VoIP calls are free. Also, I don't know if Skype gives the possibility to 'buy' a normal phonenumber. People can call me on a normal phonenumber and pay normal charges for that, in stead of paying up bigtime when they call me on my mobile phone.

I think calls to mobiles are expensive with any provider.

Voipbuster lets you make free calls, but there are (how surprising :p ) some limitations. First, you must buy some prepaid calling money (how do you call this in English??) to get 120 socalled 'freedays'. I don't know what the minimum amount is. Second, the free calls are limited to 300 minutes per week, looking at the last seven days. After that, calls will be paid for with your prepaid account. But even with those limitations they seem to be pretty cheap.

[Petra]

There's one other thing: using VoIP needs some of your internet bandwidth. Depending on the amount of bandwidth you have, you might get in trouble using VoIP while up- or downloading. To get around the problems while uploading you could set QoS in your router, giving VoIP priority over other connections. You cannot use QoS with downloading, so if you have problems calling while downloading you either have to cancel all downloads when calling, or assign a portion of your bandwidth to VoIP. This bandwidth will then not be available for other connections, even when not using VoIP.

[smokie]

Bit late to this one, and I may have misunderstood it. I have a Vonage line for £7.99 a month - uses regualr phone pluged into a Vonage box plugged into my router. Call quality is usually OK but sometimes the other end complains I'm breaking up (probably true...). Free calls within the UK and to a number of European countries  - which ones depends on your package - and to the US, including mobiles. Apparently their costs to other countries are cheap too. £7.99 a month.

www.vonage.co.uk