VOIP, Discussion, questions and answers

buglawton

Doubt it. VOIP in general seems to suffer these kind of drop-outs for everyone and anyone.

What does work well by contrast is direct computer to computer comms, e.g. 2 devices both using Skype via WiFi, bypassing the phone system altoghter. This is the real future of voice comms.

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Rev wrote: »

Thanks.

The Internet is with virgin media, I pay for that (I'm het carer so live at home). I don't need a landline, I use my mobile. But she wants (and because of the lifeline) needs a land line. I called virgin media but they won't offer anything to bundle with the Internet. World out no cheaper than using BT's line rental saver.

I can set it up, but it needs to be as easy to use as a regular phone and needs to be able to default back to the landline should the Internet go down.

Is it possible? Or am I asking too much?

Thanks.

Gigaset VOIP phones can fall back to landlines if the VOIP/internet is down. I use a Gigaset N300A IP base station with a S810H handset. It takes some setting up to get it working because the VOIP calls need to specify 0044 before UK calls but once done it all works very well. The settings do allow that for VOIP calls so that the phone book, 500 entries, are listed normally. Then if you want to, you can have the phone ask where you want the call directed to when you make a call or it can automatically go to one service and fallback to a landline if necessary. I have it ask me before each call whether I want to use VOIP or BT, because some rare calls are cheaper via BT. Emergency and 0800 need to go via BT really.

However, I still haven't got the SMS texts working via the phone to the VOIP account, a service centre number is required to be entered and I don't know what to use. The VOIP does support SMS but gives no details about how to do it. The PC software works but not SMS via the Gigaset phone. Not yet anyway.

Gigaset VOIP phones do have their own VOIP service called Gigaset.net but it only works for calls between Gigaset.net users and not to landlines. It's like the free VOIP PC to PC services.

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sjaddy wrote: »

I feel that I must defend voipgain here. I have been using sipgate for incoming calls and voipgain for outgoing calls fully since January 2011.

I have moved to a Siemens Gigaset handset (in fact 2 of them) which plug into my broadband router with virgin (only 10mb) internet.

To the other half it is exactly the same as a "normal" phone to use except we actually get the CLI being displayed whereas Virgin would have charged you.

Yes you have to put €10 of credit into your account for 90 days but I have just checked my January calls outgoing via voipgain and for the month I made 111 outgoing calls which between them lasted a total of 10 hours 5 minutes and I got charged €1.42 (so about £1.18 in real money) but that £1.18 was deducted from the €10 I had put on to get the "free days". Once my 90 days of "free days" runs out you let the existing credit on your account run down and then put another €10 on it.

In 13 months I have only put €40 credit in (so about £33.50) and I still have €11 in credit.

I have saved the £3 a month by not paying Virgin for the line rental (since I have BB with them they would have charged me only £3 per month line rental) which would be £36 plus all the call costs. Admittedly most of my costs are to landlines in the UK and the USA (landlines and mobiles) but a 2 minute call to a UK mobile costs me €0.17 (£0.14).

The only time that there are issues with the call quality are when I am hammering the link from Virgin downloading MS updates!

You might be able to set your router to give priority to the VOIP port number so that anything using that port, such as VOIP, is given priority over other traffic. You might need to tinker with your router settings to set that up. Start by reading the router settings manual.

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1jim wrote: »

We have VoIP, every now and again we seem to have issues with call connections,
At times when we dial number there is no sound on our line but it has connected through to the person we are dialong
Another issue is that at times someone phones us, on answering there is a dead line, the caller has been connected but can't hear us.

We are connecting through a dect cordless phone via an adaptor. Do you think this would be improved if we used a corded handset or a different cordless phone?
Cheers

It will be affected by your internet usage. If your doing heavy downloading then the call could be affected, just like normal browsing can be affected.

Prioritizing VOIP traffic via the router could help to some degree to lessen the effect, but making calls while making heavy use of the internet is best avoided.

Normal POTS calls don't always work successfully either. I've had many calls where the call quality was poor, too quiet, or could not be heard. Those, at least from my end, were not VOIP calls. One call recently in particular was very unlikely to be VOIP based from the other end and certainly not when I received the call on my regular phone line.

What you need to understand is that VOIP services are usually based outside the UK so traffic routing can play a big part in call quality. If the traffic is travelling half way round the world, it could badly affect the call quality. Try doing a tracert or visual tracert to the VOIP provider to find out how far the traffic is travelling and whether there is any packet loss. Internet traffic routing and packet loss could have a big impact on your VOIP service. You might of seen recently that a fibre optical cable underneath the sea was broken which affected internet traffic between the UK and Europe. Anything like that could affect VOIP.

Overall my VOIP calls are indistinguishable from regular POTS calls and no one knows that they are VOIP. I have had problems in the past when I used a speedtouch 716 router to provide VOIP where caller id never worked with a panasonic dect phone and calls would sometimes break up but I have not had any problems since replacing it. The caller id on that speedtouch router and panasonic phones are known not to work together.

Wammer

Has anyone heard of this company or have any comments on them?

https://www.freevoipdeal.com

I receive an email from them and can't decide if it is spam or not. I am registered with about 3 Voip companies and this one looks cheap, but I'm sure there must be a catch.

PJB

Hi All
even with 900 mins I still manage to go over, and the fact I have 2 daughters was looking into putting VOIP on our phones.

I have a HTC Sensation on Vodafone and the others are Wildfire on Orange and Desire on TBC! The first 2 have data and BT Openzone type thingy and we have wireless at home.

Can anyone recommend a good VOIP or similar app, we'll all be calling mainly, if not solely, UK mobiles and landlines.

Thanks in advance

buglawton

Calls to mobiles are not especially cheap via VoIP. Many people have a mobile contract with included 'any mobile' call, are you using yours?

With young people, train them to use chat and voice tools that go via broadband and bypass the phone system altogether. Eg MSN, Skype etc.

And if you really need a lot of landline minutes, get a Skype Out unlimited calls plan for a handful of £ per month, works on iPhone or Android no tech configuration or extra equipment apart from smartphone needed.

diamonds

VOIP mobile calling can be cheaper than landline to mobile or mobile to mobile.

http://progx.ch/home-voip-prixbetamax-3-4-2.html

buglawton

Ughhh! Betamax again!

redux

buglawton wrote: »

Calls to mobiles are not especially cheap via VoIP.

Wholesale termination rates to UK and other European mobiles are now below 2 pence a minute, and retail not much more than that.