Any recommendations re: economy internet phone service- Vonage / Skype ?

They have very different pricing models. Vonage is based on a higher monthly fee that includes a base number of minutes (or, depending on the plan, "unlimited" minutes), whereas Skype is pay-as-you-go.

Also, Vonage uses normal telephones, while Skype uses your computer.

And you cannot receive calls from normal phones with Skype - you need to keep a regular phone line as well.

Another one to look at is Broadvoice, which has a wider range of plans than Vonage but still lets you use a normal phone.

At 3 cents a minute, 6 hours would cost you about $11 a la carte. 12 hours would cost you $22. So a plan that cost much more than the average (say, $16) would of course not be economical in your case.

miguel

There's also VoiceWing and CallVantage, which is a flat fee with unlimited long distance!

It would help to know in which country you are located. Also are the people you call also on VoIP or do you need to call ordinary phone lines..? Do you receive calls from them as well..?

I use

and it has for the most part been excellent. Call quality is no different to a normal phone and with the hardware adaptor (rather than using a PC with a headset) I can plug in a normal telephone and unless you follow the cable when it comes out of the back of the phone you can't tell it from a normal landline. It even has a normal phone number in the same area code as my normal line.

Calls between users of the service are free, there are also agreements with several other VoIP providers to give free calls also. Calls to the public phone network do cost money of course but the rates are for the most part very cheap, although this does vary country by country.

Hope this helps,

Ivor

Where are you calling from? US-US calls on Packet8 is $19.95/month for flat rate residential unlimited calling. If you're not in the US, the rate is $19.95 for 1000 minutes.

They basically all suck. It's not static, it's dropoits.

Go to

In residential you get a box. Plug your phone into it or a key system line and you can hang whatever you want on it.

Carl Navarro

And 3 cents/minute is already kind of high. Heck, you can get POTS long distance for 2.75 cents/min from ECG.

There are quite a few places offering 2 cents/minute, and one or two offering 1-cent-and-change. (off the top of my head gafachi and nufone are 2cents, simple telecom is 1.7 is cents.) The important thing to look for is folks that don't want you to buy a locked-up ATA or phone that you can only use with them.

In my opinion, the best low cost, true voip, phone is the Grandstream Bugetone 101 for ~$70. (While the sipura-841 for ~$85 has a much nicer LCD, the sound quality just isn't there.)

-wolfgang

They are complete devices - basically, physical telephones with ethernet ports.

miguel

Does the "VoIP Phone" you speak of include the TA (telephone adapter or the ATA , analog telephone adapter) ? - RM

If you'd prefer a non-voip, toll-grade LD provider at a mere 2½¢ per minute total (US-Domestic), with no fees, no connect charges, no membership, no lost/unused minutes and NO TAXES, you might want to look into One Suite

Yes.

It's maintained by your network infrastructure configuration. If you do local routing you can prioritize any traffic you like. I would think that in most small local networks this will not be an issue.

miguel

So can you plug them into your LAN and make calls to one another? What happens if one user is transfering large files from one computer to another? (i.e. how is QoS (quality of service) maintained?) -- RM

Pretty cool. And you can move phones with people and not have to make changes in the local exchange. When you call outside, how does your provider 'provision' each phone?

It is like a normal phone but instead of an rj11 for your 2-wire analog phone signal it has an rj-45 that you plug into an ethernet jack.

The advantage over one of those ATA's is you can get better sound quality. Talking between a pair of true IP phones quiet and clean with no far-side echo.

-wolfgang

I use an ATA-486 from the same company and so far the call quality has been excellent. I have had 15+ minute conversations with friends in the US that are indistinguishable from normal landlines in terms of quality.

The advantage over the phone you mention is I can plug any analogue phone into it, such as a cordless handset. I can also plug a normal answering machine or a fax machine in and use it as normal.

Ivor

The down side is that you end of having two ratty-old telephone hybrid transformers in series with hour audio path (one in the phone and one in the ata). Each of them introduces a bit of echo and distortion. With a voip phone you can eliminated all that.

-wolfgang

I've not noticed anything like that here. Works fine, quality as good as an ordinary landline, at least to my ears.

Ivor

Vonage Tec support sucks voice mail from the phone works some times and you can never reach tech support.

The Linksys Phone Adapter ( which I've never liked ) has to be rebooted about every other day other then that the call quaility is pretty good and I do like the unlimited LD. Better then SBC, so I'm dealing with it until a better offer comes around.

michael b

Mitel Lurker wrote:

"anna"

month.(mostly