VoIP Telephony ROCKS

[MarkB]

I just called the USA for 30 minutes and Australia for 10 minutes with my new USB phone, using Babble, and it was FREE - and both were to landlines.

This is SO going to save me money calling friends and family :)

[Cutter]

I'm using Vonage here. Works great, caller id, voice mail, and a whole bunch of other stuff for like $20 a month.

[Billyray]

I hear you Mark. I love the fact that you can get a phone number in the US or UK or Aus and let your friends call you for the cost of a local call. Or like with Vonage you can take your phone with you overseas plug it in and pay the same rates as you do at home. Or put a toll free number on your website for your customers to call you. Its good stuff. I won't be buying any traditional telco shares in the near future.

[MarkB]

Which service gives you local numbers, Billy? I'd love to get an Aus number so my mother can call me.

(BTW, I'm from Brisbane too - where in Brissy do you live?)

[Billyray]

Off the top of my head I think www.voipfone.com.au which is based in UK but has got a presence in Aus has some options or Oztell for $1.90 pm but you could also look at my site www.ozinternetphones.com for others. Oztell are good but their website is atrocious. A lot of the companies offer DIDs (ie virtual or real phone numbers) but mainly in the capital cities. If your Mum lives at the Gold Coast then look at Faktortel - $6 pm special at the moment.

PM me if you need any info.

[Actually my name's David. Why Billyray... cause people with Mullets like Billy Ray Cyrus crack me up. And David is such a common name that some other b.stard called David usually has taken it already when you sign up for a forum. :rolleyes: (no offence to all the other Davids). I'm at Rochedale on the southside]

[MarkB]

Cheers :) My mum's in Taigum, but thanks for the links!

[Emancipator]

very cool markb I am going to check this out!

[ozgression]

Off the top of my head I think www.voipfone.com.au which is based in UK but has got a presence in Aus has some options or Oztell for $1.90 pm but you could also look at my site www.ozinternetphones.com for others. Oztell are good but their website is atrocious. A lot of the companies offer DIDs (ie virtual or real phone numbers) but mainly in the capital cities. If your Mum lives at the Gold Coast then look at Faktortel - $6 pm special at the moment.

PM me if you need any info.


Billray, what company would you recommend for someone who lives in Melbourne and makes most of their calls as local calls or calls to mobile (cell phones)?
________
colorado dispensaries (http://dispensaries.org/)

[Billyray]

Oz I reckon you should look at siphone (not sipphone) for local calls (1c pm is by far the best) and also them for mobile calls - 25c pm (they have a monthly fee of $5 pm though). If your local calls go longer than 10 mins you could look at Curl (10c flat rate - monthly fee of $19.95) or Astratel (10 hours free pm for $29.95 not including mobile calls).

Of course you can sign up with multiple providers and mix and match. It depends on your call patterns.

Oztell are also pretty good.

[moonshield]

is the quality actually decent or good now? When I tried, back like 3 years ago, it was like a walkie-talkie or shortwave radio! Two people could not talk at the same time.

[Billyray]

Voice quality for most people is indistinguisable from normal calls. But it can depend on the compression used and the bandwidth of your connection. A 64k upload speed is usually enough to get good quality calls and if you have 256k upload then you can have multiple calls going at once (ie you and the Wife/partner and the Daughter/Son). There is also software to ensure that the quality of the service (QoS) is not affected by other internet activity at the same time.

But you can also try it for yourself free by downloading a softphone (software phone) and get a buddy to download it too and talk for free. See www.xten.com/index.php?menu=products&smenu=xlite or www.freshtel.net.

Obviously you need a voice input device such as a microphone but you don't need an IP or USB phone (although voice quality would be better).

[MarkB]

The last two times I've called my mum there've been slight lags, but no worse than what I had to put up with using call cards. However, when I called the US and when my mum-in-law used it to call Ireland, it was perfect.

And when I called up the road tonight to order an Indian it was like a normal phone :)

[ozgression]

I called up the road tonight to order an Indian

You ordered an Indian? What is his/her name? :p
________
vapor genie vaporizer (http://www.vaporshop.com/vaporgenie-vaporizer.html)

[MarkB]

Chicken Pasanda... weird, I know :) She was lovely though :p