my question is, and I guess I expect to get flamed here but, why even do it today if one isn't going to drop the phone line and simply use it at home?

most carriers offer a flat rate domestic LD plan 15$ a month, sometimes 20$. Some offer even less at 10$. That is ALL you can eat.

Then, to cover the international componant, just add a quick dial calling card product like onesuite.com for international long distance. I pay like .02 to Europe, UK, China, HKG, all the VOIP providors are higher than that.

Granted, I DO use vonage but for just some services. pretty much just so I can take the box with me to Europe in the summer or Cabo in the winter and others can reach me just as easily as they normally would.

Here a couple of reasons:

(1) I'm really cheap and fractions of a penny can really add up, and with Voipstunt, most of my calls are FREEEE (except for amortizing the cost of an ATA, but that's another issue).

(2) I'm a techno-nerd and fussing this stuff is really fun.

(3) But the real reason is that when I travel abroad, the savings are very significant. In the worst case I got hit with $11 per minute calls from China to the US several years ago using an AT&T card. Today I use Voipstunt for free.

[Truth: I do what you suggested, haven't bought an ATA, use cheap phone cards (which are far better audio quality) and have only bought call-in and call-out numbers because my daughter is in Turkey and this works really well for us and for her. What I use: Gizmo because it also works on her Mac, and Voipstunt because it is free to most of the countries I call.]

I have this "phone": http://www.vonsupply.com/VONDOO-V2100-USB-Phone.html

It's very small, smaller than it looks on the picture.

Can anyone name a VoIP provider that will hae an offer such as free international call from US to XXX (XXX=country of choice). Someone mentioned free calls to Turkey. How does it work? A plan of that type is exactly what I need to make frequent calls to family abroad. I don't even care so much about recieving call, just making them, but it would be nice. I appreciate the advice.

Free calls to country XXX
 

I use Voipstunt, and they are more or less identical to Voipbuster and a couple of others. Go to their site and you'll see the (current) list of free call countries, which seems to change pretty regularly.

These are for calls FROM your computer (or ATA) TO real phones in the various countries. As with all of these providers, PC to PC is always free, and calls to cell phones, even in the free call countries, are expensive.

Right now the free call countries include UK (my wife's family), Turkey (my daughter is there), and Japan (friends), and U.S. (great for calling back to home). Works great for me.

UPSIDE: Free calls.

DOWNSIDE: You have to deposit 10 euros to get this.

I also use Iconnecthere.com (lots of local numbers in various countries, so you can use it as a phone card), which seems to have the best sound quality; Gizmoproject (includes IM and has Mac and Linux versions); and a couple of others.

Check out a bunch. They all seem quite similar, sound quality varies from very good to poor, and many will disappear in short order.

I was just looking at VoIP stunt. Do you get an incoming number with that or is it only good for outgoing calls?

I am looking for a new VoIP provider, my current provider is freakin awful.

Thanks for the tip, SSM-SLT. I checked them out. The dilemma I'm finding is the country I need to call. Slovakia. I know they're the forgotten child of the Velvet Revolition, but what's so obscure about that place that they are left off the list, hmm? No free calls to where I want to call, but according to VoIPstunt I can sure as heck call Mongolia for free. Again, come on - Slovakia just hosted the freakin' Bush-Putin summit! But as long as I can call Mongolia...

Frustrating.

This may be more of a regulatory/logistical issue than anything else. If the VoIP providers can't get inexpensive/free termination in country you're sadly out of luck. Last I heard, Slovakia wasn't exactly on the progressive side of taxation so they likely slap some onerous telecoms taxes on which would jack up the per minute fees even on a wholesale basis.

phone cards
 

Date posted : 27/02/06

You may also check on talkloop cards. They don't charge any fees at all, no connection fee, no monthly/biweekly fee, no service fee etc. The voice quality is pretty good. Also they give free credits for new sign ups and referrals. International web call back facility is also available.


Menee

Unfortunately I have to agree with you here. Their govt. creates more problems for itself that way than anyone would like to admit. They lost several major deals in the past couple of years for just this reason. For the want of of few extra tax dollars they cost the nation 10's of thousands of jobs in lost foreign investment. That's another topic, though. For now I'll go on paying $1.25/min to call there.

I've enjoyed Sunrocket at my office the past month. Ran into a few issues with faxes, but they resolved once I moved the Sunrocket "Gizmo" before our router. Good customer service so far... only complaint is changing the outboud caller id to the home business, rather than my personal name.

That's quite expensive! I took the liberty and checked out the Pincity calling card rates for calling Slovak Republic. It's 6.4cents/min with local access numbers and 8cents with 800 access. Do you like their rates? I probaly still have some 15% or 20% discount promo codes somewhere. Not sure if they are still valid though. I used to use Pincity calling TPE and was happy about it. I let my account expired with 1 cent balance on it, due to the change of my calling needs months back.

Pincity's terms is quite reasonable. Your credits/minutes won't expire as long as you keep recharging your account every 6 months ($10, $20...etc). If you plan on signing up with Pincity.com after checking it out, I guess I can still refer you so both of us will get bonus. just PM me :)

Yes. I have a number in Manchester, England. Makes it easier for my wife's family to call.

However, don't expect really high quality on these call-in or call-out voip providers. They often use lower quality encoding schemes, and the interface to the PSTN systems is often poor.

I have gotten pretty heavy into VoIP in the last year...
At home I had two traditional POTS lines: one for our personal use and one for my home office.

My uncle has a very wired house complete with a traditional PBX - as VoIP was not really around when he built in the late 90's. He's not a techy guy at all, but he's got a great phone system. I love that each room has a office style phone that can call room to room or intercom, etc. While I was there I was surfing slashdot and saw Asterisk@home mentioned for the first time...I was determined to set up my own PBX.

I've been running Asterisk@home for a year now and have gone through a few versions... I can say two things with confidence:

A) VoIP is amazing and assuming the gov't and ISPs don't screw us over it will be the downfall of the telcos as we know them
B) VoIP is not ready for most people

To lay a foundation here: Asterisk@home is a full featured PBX and is quite powerful. Its bascially like being my own phone company. Services like vonage and callvantage are more similar to traditional POTS service except you use broadband for the transmission. Asterisk@home is capabale of working with POTS lines, SIP and IAX trunks.

Currently I have a pretty complex set-up that I am trying to narrow down.
Lines into my Asterisk box:
2 POTS lines (home and office)
2 broadvoice SIP accounts (again one for home and one for office) - i use the BYOD lite accounts that are unlimited incoming and 100 free minutes outgoing then a very inexpensive rate (like $.02/min...not sure).
1 French DID (incoming online) number from Voxbone - $15 set up then $8/month unlimited
1 Irish sip line from Blueface - pay as you go
1 Nufone IAX line - pre-pay...think I have a $10/charge and it burns at a rate of $.02 / min...Nufone allows the setcallerid() string so I really just use this for pranking my friends and family

I'm in the process of porting my POTS home number to Broadvoice's $19.99 unlimited account. If that goes well, I'll do something about my office number. Currently my company pays my office line but it has to be billed directly to them not a credit card...cannot find a VoIP provider who will do that yet.

I have my POTS lines set to call-forward-on busy to my Broadvoice numbers, which both allow unlimited incoming instances (IE as many incoming calls at a time as I want)...(only one outgoing FYI).

The beauty of this set-up is its utter flexabiility. ALL of my longdistance now goes out over voip automatically. I can route international numbers through local (to the country) accounts, I can set it to say "Donal Trump" when I call a friend's cell...I can call my house from anywhere in the world and get a dial tone like I was in Virginia and make calls to anywhere else in the world based on my routing rules. Its quite amazing.

Hardware: in my house I went overboard... i was already wired with AT LEAST 3 cat 5e drops in every room (my office has 8 as do some other areas) so I bought 3 cisco phones on e-bay, 2 wifi sip phones (ebay and voipsupply.com) and one linksys phone from amazon.... The hardwired phones work great...the wifi phones are still a work in progress to say the least. None of them currently supports 802.11G (only B) and most only support WEP if anything. Since I wasn't willing to lower my RADIUS WPA2 security on my accesspoints, I created a 2nd subnet for wifi phones (and guest laptops) that is cordened off from my main LAN but allows me to run basically an open access point. They work pretty well, but do drop out from time to time. We are remodeling and putting in a new master bath...i couldn't resist, so I have a phone in there too... since Asterisk is running on linux it can do a lot, so I have scripts set up so that I can control the sound (coming from iTunes via an airport express) via the phone. I have a sound zone for the master bath, so I can dial *55 then I get a voice menu and I can press 1 to play, 2 to pause, etc... Do I do any of this while on the can? No thats just weird...but I COULD!

Like has been mentioned previously, there is NO GOOD REASON to run VoIP at the same time as a POTS line. Which is why I'm getting rid of my POTS home number.

Also like has been mentioned, a cell is a good backup. All cell phones have to be able to call 911 even if you have NO SERVICE. So We keep an old cell (wtih no service contract) plugged in next to the bed. If the power went out, it would have a charge and could call 911. I'm not as worried about natural disasters... last hurricane we had in Va in 2003 knocked out the physical lines but not the cell towers.

As for e911, broadvoice does not currently support 911 (I think) so I have 911 routed to go out over the POTS line then if the POTS is down or busy, it dials the standard emergency number (remember before 911?)...you can still dial a regular number to get connected to the 911 service. Granted they may not know you physical location which could be bad.

My advice (after all that mess)... for most consumers Vonnage is a great value and works 90% of the time. Its that 10% that you'll find yourself cursing Alexander Graham Bell. I have recomended Vonnage to many friends who are quite happy with the price. I also like Broadvoice's plans for ATA devices (AKA like Vonnage)... they are a great service for the price. You can add 1-800, UK and other state numbers.... control it all online.

For the geeks out there, e-bay a 1ghz box, download Asterisk@home and e-bay a ATA (analogue telephone converter - its what Vonnage sends you, the linksys PAP2 for example). You can also e-bay an POTS card like the old x100p or newer TDM cards. Then peice a few services together, and I bet you end up paying less than $15 for phone service a month. You can get nubmers for every person in the house...control the times your kids can and cannot use the phone...control what numbers they can call or call them...total big brother stuff!

My proformance with Broadvoice is acceptable, but I get some 'jitter' and I have a 30mbs/10mbs fiber connection.

I think the real worry is the ISPs taxing VoIP traffic since they aren't making money off phone services anymore....but thats another rant.

-N

I was kinda kidding about that rate I"m paying, kinda not. Currently my only phone is my cell phone and I do pay $1.25/min for calls. I know I can get a better rate (MUCH better rate) elsewhere, but I have until now either been unable to get new service or unwilling to. My calls until recently have been infrequent enough that I just paid the absurd amount of money required to make a few calls. Thanks for the tip, but I think I'm gonna go with Skype, as the person I call is familiar with this system and we would (when the other party cooperates) be able to talk for free. We'll see how it goes... Again. thanks for the offer. I appreciate it.