Low(ish) cost VOIP on SIP hardware: Reviews Comments Advice?

seth

I've recently been given a VOIP capable ADSL modem by BE internet. This unit comes with 2 ports for plugging 2 regular phones.

I signed up with www.SIPGATE.co.uk and got 2 0207 London numbers for free. And this works fine. I registered the numbers with 1899 to get cheap call 1p per minute and 3p connection via there 0808 freephone access which sipgate carries at no charge!

While this approach has no running costs (except my BT Line rental and BE Broadband which I'd pay for anyway) it is fine if you make a small number of calls.

I had a look at the VOIP/SIP providers and found the cheapest to be the ones run by http://www.finarea.ch/

This is a nice summary of their offerings updated with free destinations

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Finarea+SA

So which one to choose? Well it depends on your calling habits, and remember the free destinations change as does the life of your credits, but if you top up before it expires your credit lives on, so yuo can burn it up on UK mobile calls, though they are not the cheapest.

I wanted a seperate outgoing line to make call cheap or free during the day, mostly to the UK, but also a few to the USA, Canada and Australia.

http://www.voipcheap.com/ would only give me 90 day for my credit perhaps this is the shape of things to come? So I looked for the other providers...

voipbuster had no free UK call

http://www.sipdiscount.com/en/freetrial.html looked ok with a free trial and SIP account details to make 1 minute free calls (I'll test this and see how the quality is with my Speedtouch 716) Not sure how long UK calls will be free as they are tagged superdeal (which tend to change!) I tried the free test account and the modem registered with the username password so I got a dialtone I could not dial out I tried 0044 208... and 0208... but no luck getting connected

http://www.internetcalls.com/en/sip.html looked nice and although it has a small number of countries it seemed to have all the ones I'd want. Again not sure how long UK calls will be free as they are tagged superdeal (which tend to change!) also no test account

The UK http://www.voipcheap.co.uk (this is NOT the same as the .COM looked quite spartan compared to the .COM but I've used them with their softphone client without problems. Again moderate coverage of free countries, and a free test account. I could not get this to work with the VOIP on my modem for outgoing calls. The ring tone to the caller was also a US not a UK ring tone, very poor compare to the free SIPGATE number. Again I was unable to make outgoing calls with my account that has no credit my £5 expired!

http://www.voipstunt.com/en/sip.html has sip support but no test account

So I'll keep looking for free SIP test accounts to see what works with my 716 modem.

If anyone has experience with using SIP (not softphones) with any of these providers, good, bad or indifferent please let me know.

This is all a bit new to me and I still feel that VOIP is not quite ready for mass adoption, but it is getting closer each year

Seth

PS I Noticed the 716 has dial plan support so if say you dialed a UK number it can automatically strip the lead 0 and add the 0044 dial code etc..

I used it to program the * to dial the 0800 access code for 1899 and registered my Sipgate number with 1899, as 0800 calls are free on Sipgate (!) this lets me dial out for 3p + 1p per minute fine for occational use and testing!

The code for the dial plan I entered was

voice dialplan add prefix=* defaultport=FXS1 fallbackport=FXS2 priority=NA fallback=enabled minimumdigits=1 maximumdigits=1 posofmodify=1 remnumdigits=1 insert=08081708708 rescan=no action=none

This simply means pressing * gets you the voice prompt at which poihnt you dial out.

This command automatically converts 6 digit UK numbers 87474747 into 00442087474747 useful for some of the SIP providers that need international formats.

voice dialplan add prefix=2-8 defaultport=FXS1 fallbackport=FXS2 priority=NA fallback=enabled minimumdigits=6 maximumdigits=6 posofmodify=1 remnumdigits=6 insert=00441234 rescan=no action=none

For people who are interest the dialplan seems to work on the FXO port so calls out on the VOIP connection can be sent to the analog line, but there seems to be no way to tone dial on this with the 716 you seem to be dropped out on the dial tone!

Only had the modem a few days so all this VOIP stuff is new advise on good quality VOIP on hardware like the 716 is welcome!