Dixons to launch cut price phone service. (Freetalk).

pricefighter

Dixons are to launch their cut-price internet telephone service next week.It will be called Freetalk.

For further details see

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/23/dixons_voip/

At £6.99 a month you would have to be a high user for it to be cost effective, as this would give you approx 53 calls to 01/02 numbers a week on 1899.

I await to see the final tariff with interest. :cool:

santana-mx3

Did you hear Martin's broadcast on Radio 2 yesterday. He said there would be something to beat 1899 soon but that he couldn't tell us about it yet and in the meantime 1899 is cheapest. Presumably the upcoming better deal is not the Dixons one, but I wonder what it is/will be?

pricefighter

santana-mx3 wrote:

Did you hear Martin's broadcast on Radio 2 yesterday. He said there would be something to beat 1899 soon but that he couldn't tell us about it yet and in the meantime 1899 is cheapest. Presumably the upcoming better deal is not the Dixons one, but I wonder what it is/will be?

Some sort of VOIP offer i guess.

bbb_uk

Am I the only person who isn't using VoIP yet?

That Dixons tariff is a VoIP. I wonder if they'll do it via CPS as well? I guess it wouldn't be that cheap though if they did!

pricefighter

bbb_uk wrote:

Am I the only person who isn't using VoIP yet?

No i am not using it yet either outbound.But i have just got myself a couple of incoming only Sipgate Geo numbers for a project i am working on.

charlie12

Hmm. £6.99 a month for a VOIP service sounds rather high to me - if we compare to providers such as Voipbuster that offers free calls to landlines (and some destinations in Europe) with no monthly fee.

Or is there more to it than that? (I'm not very clued up on this VOIP malarkey )

Steve_xx

I've just read about a new service to be launched by Dixons group. Some of you may be interested:

Internet call service launched
This is Money
27 September 2005
A HIGH street retailer today went head to head with major telephone companies by launching a new broadband call service where callers can use a normal handset do not have to switch on their computer.

TALK ABOUT IT: The new service could allow you take your landline overseas

DSG international, the parent company of Dixons, Currys, The Link and PC World, says the launch marks the beginning of the end for traditional land-line phones. It claims its Freetalk service is the cheapest on the market.

Householders will gain access using a small adaptor box which costs £79.99. They then get unlimited free calls to all UK landlines for a year.

Once the first 12 months are up Freetalk will cost £6.99 per month for unlimited calls to UK landlines. The service works using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) which makes calls over the internet via broadband.

Unlike internet phone services offered by Google Talk or Skype - which was bought by eBay earlier this month - users do not have to switch on their computer to make a call. Instead, they plug their existing telephone handset into the adaptor and make calls as usual. But they must have a computer to set up the service and then receive and pay bills.

Simon Turner, divisional managing director of DSG international plc, today said Freetalk was a 'wake-up call' for traditional telecoms companies.

He said: 'This is the most significant development in the telephone market since the launch of the mobile phone and will transform the way we use phones. The days of old-style fixed-line phone calls are numbered.'

Householders can pick their own area code regardless of where they live in the UK. The adaptor retains that number even if it is plugged into a broadband connection at another property in the UK or abroad. This means users can take their home phone number with them without incurring a roaming charge, Freetalk said.

DSG's target is for half am users to sign up for the new service within a year. Users will be charged 5p per minute to call phone mobile phones at weekends, 10p per minute on weekday evenings and 15p per minute on weekdays.

Freetalk adaptors go on sale at % World, Currys, The Link and 50 Dixons stores from Thursday. DSG says its High Street presence of around 1,000 stores across the four chains makes it ideally placed to attract customers to the phone service.

Freetalk will compete with a similar service offered by BT called Broadband Voice. Around 7m homes in the UK already have broadband. A combined offer for AOL Broadband and Freetalk will be announced next month. A Freetalk business service will be announced early next year.

Here's the link:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money-savers/article.html?in_article_id=403972&in_page_id=5&ct=5

pricefighter

The downside of this product is.
1.You have got have broadband to use it.
2.Unlike a normal landline if their is a power cut you cannot use it.
3.You probaly cant dial 112/999 from it.(Have to wait till Friday to find out).
4.Its mobile prices are dearer then 1899/18866/18185
5.For £79.99 you could get approx 2666 calls to 01/02 numbers in a year on 1899 Which works out about 51 a week.
6.Unlike this new offering as long as you register it you can use 1899/18866/18185 from any landline in the UK.You dont need a special box.

It might be beneficial to very high users.But i think the price has to come down a bit before it becomes competitive.

Graham1

I agree, not much to offer cost-wise, but it might appeal to some people if Dixons provides full technical support on getting it set up.

For anybody thinking of signing up - make sure it doesn't use an adapter locked into using that service only (like vonage does with its locked-in version of the Linksys PAP2). Otherwise the box cost gets wasted if you decide to discontinue the service after the first year.

jrawle

One current problem with all VoIP services is that if you use ADSL for broadband, you already have to pay £10.50 a month to BT. Without that charge, £6.99 for a "Freetalk" subscription would seem good value.

But as I have no choice but to pay BT line rental anyway, I might as well use the line to make calls. I'm not going to pay an extra subscription to someone else.

Another point few people are not mentioning is that a lot of broadband services are now capped. If you use the phone a lot, you'll end up reaching your monthly limit more quickly. (I think BT had problems with they - they were offering so many free hours of calls with broadband subscriptions, but it wasn't actually possible to call for that long without reaching the GB limit on the cheapest broadband package).

I agree, not much to offer cost-wise, but it might appeal to some people if Dixons provides full technical support on getting it set up.

Is that intended to be ironic? Dixons, technical support...

pricefighter

Excellent point about capped broadband!!!