VOIP, Discussion, questions and answers

buglawton

Just don't forget that with haggling you can have Virgin (cable) 10 meg BB + a Virgin landline for £22/month all in - handy for incoming calls!

bluedove

Can someone advise me please? We have a voip phone and get inwards calls from sipgate. we used to use Vyke for outwards calls as it was about 2p per call (to UK landlines). However this then went up to about 6p per call and now my credit has run out I want to find a cheaper provider.

We only call UK geographical numbers (have minutes on our mobiles to call mobiles) and do not make many calls. Purpose of the voip line will just be to save our mobile minutes (we get 300 each per month).

It looks like voipcheap may be our best bet - for £10 will get 90 days use plus however long it takes us to use up the credit. Would you guys agree or am I missing a good provider? Would ideally want to get something pike what Vyke used to be - 2p per call for up to 1 hour.

Sign up to VOIPGAIN www.voipgain.com, i have been using them since last august for all my o/g calls, top-up 10 euro which is about £8.90, you get free 90 days calls to UK, USA and most EU states landlines.
Calls to UK mobile is 3ppm with 3p connection charge and you can also accumulate free calling days with your top-up.
EG if you buy credit, you get 90 days free, then if you buy another credit 30 days later you will now get 90 days free plus 60 days remaning from your first credit, hence you have 150 days free calls.

bluedove

this has been informative and i am in the process of changing to VOIP for all calls and had looked at (and set up the free account) with SIPgate.

Since I am on Virgin I can cancel the phone line and save the existing £12.50 a month that they charge for the phone line so can see additional savings ontop of the OP's savings.

I dont like the idea of Voipbuster charging a connection fee per call and also only allowing 300 minutes a week of "free" calls. When you have a wife at home that would soon disappear.

Has anyone tried Vonage and their unlimited package at £5.99 a month even though there is an extortionate set up cost?

I was in the same situation last july, where i have to pay BT for my line rental and calls. I use virgin for my BB hence cancelled my landline, signed up with SIPGATE for a free incoming landline number, then with VOIPGAIN for my outgoing calls, this have saved me loads in line rental fee and cost of calls.


PM if you need any help with the this, as i wrote a guide about it here

sevlow

I have just set up skype mainly to keep in touch with my daughter who is working abroad. For that we will use the free PC to PC.

However I have then started to think about using skype for pc yo landline/mobile calls. Would this be cheaper than using say BT or Sky?

For example the cost of calling an O2 mobile on Skype PAYG is about 17p a min

luci

With Voipcheap calls to UK mobiles are only 6.9p/min.

buglawton

Skype don't feel the need to compete on price for mobiles - it's still the first choice for Brits travelling abroad to use WiFi to make the odd call home/to worldwide numbers/to UK mobiles etc due to sheer convenience.

I use Skype for worldwide landlines/USA and other countries' mobiles that are charged at landline rate - 0.0p/min once you've paid the flat rate monthly charge of about £9.

stphnstevey

Would appreciate some advice as there appears to be a lot of experienced people on here

I run my own business from home, working for different clients. I use the clients laptop, so am limited to what I can download and install (there often admin rights protected so don't allow you to install stuff).

I currently have Virgin broadband and telephone, but would like to replace the telephone line rental.

I can bill calls to the client, so would need an itemised bill, unless calls are free.

I also have family in France, so would like to be able to call them for free.

Mobiles for free would be useful, but not essential as I have a contract mobile.

My mobile allows me to download the VoipStunt application, but can't test it without registering and I assume adding credit. If I used my Wi-Fi and had the mobile app constantly on, could I use it like a cordless phone?

I would ideally like to connect up a normal landline. It seems you can use a ATA on a normal phone? A LINKSYS PAP2-NA UNLOCKED seems to be recommended.

I would need a incoming number, but VoipStunt seem to provide these for 1 euro, so combined with free calls to UK and French lndlines for 10 euros every 120 days doesn't seem bad.

Any advice greatfully rececieved!!!!

sjaddy

stphnstevey wrote: »

Would appreciate some advice as there appears to be a lot of experienced people on here

I run my own business from home, working for different clients. I use the clients laptop, so am limited to what I can download and install (there often admin rights protected so don't allow you to install stuff).

I currently have Virgin broadband and telephone, but would like to replace the telephone line rental.

I can bill calls to the client, so would need an itemised bill, unless calls are free.

I also have family in France, so would like to be able to call them for free.

Mobiles for free would be useful, but not essential as I have a contract mobile.

My mobile allows me to download the VoipStunt application, but can't test it without registering and I assume adding credit. If I used my Wi-Fi and had the mobile app constantly on, could I use it like a cordless phone?

I would ideally like to connect up a normal landline. It seems you can use a ATA on a normal phone? A LINKSYS PAP2-NA UNLOCKED seems to be recommended.

I would need a incoming number, but VoipStunt seem to provide these for 1 euro, so combined with free calls to UK and French lndlines for 10 euros every 120 days doesn't seem bad.

Any advice greatfully rececieved!!!!

I am doing something very similar at the moment and have just arranged to port my number from Virgin to my new provider.

I am using sipgate.co.uk to get an incoming number (they provide you with a local one on the free account). I am due to get my number ported to this from virgin in a week's time. Sipgate so far has been great quality - though at some times the call might for a few seconds sound distorted.

their call charges are 1000 minutes for £5.90 a month but these dont include calls to mobiles or to 0844 numbers etc. The calls to Orange mobiles are 9.9p per minute as opposed to 27.7p per minute on Virgin.

I have used this service for the last month and works well, though you will have to pay for calls to foreign countries etc.

The itemised calls on your web logon show who you called/who called you - what time - how long so you would be able to bill based on that.

I am about to try my outgoing calls on voipgain which give you the 90 days of "freecalls" to most countries (France landline is free but mobiles are €0.05 a minute i think).

I use a Siemens S685IP which is a physical phone that has both an internet and phone connection on so you could still have this plugged into Virgin line and your broadband connection. This one allows things like bluetooth headset connectivity etc.

if you are using Virgin Netgear WNR2000 router then be careful not to update to the latest firmware because you will find your outgoing call likely to cut off at exactly 20 seconds - you will need to downgrade to an earlier version (not in front of home pc at the moment so not sure which version) to allow the calls to work flawlessly.

Hope this helps in some way.

stphnstevey

Why does everyone seem to use sippgate for incoming and a betamax (?) company for outgoing calls? The betamax companies only seem to charge 1 euro for a line - is that a one off or monthly fee?

sjaddy

stphnstevey wrote: »

Why does everyone seem to use sippgate for incoming and a betamax (?) company for outgoing calls? The betamax companies only seem to charge 1 euro for a line - is that a one off or monthly fee?

i have used sipgate for outgoing the last month and it has been great but has cost about £9.30 (the £5.90 for 1000 minutes, we used 905 minutes) and all the mobiles and 0845 costs.

I want to test the voipgain because i think that could be cut even further - also sipgate gave me a local phone number whereas some of the other providers only have a range of numbers for London/Leeds/Nottingham rather than all exchanges.