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BT to Offer Free Internet Calls
gnoos writes "The BBC is reporting that BT is to start offering customers free internet telephone calls if they sign up to broadband in December. The offer will be limited to the first 50,000 people who sign up and users will need to use BT's internet telephony software, known as BT Communicator"
Yes.
It's a Windows only service. But look at it this way: Good use for an old P-3 box. Use your Linux box for real cutting edge apps!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Just so you don't have to go down a whole thread, the requirements are listed below.
In short, Windoze only, and needs Internet Exploder and Flash as well. So tough if you're using any kind of alternatives with, say, a better security record.
Thanks BT, but not very much.
Minimum requirements
Multimedia PC with 700MHz processor or faster *
Microsoft Windows 98/Windows 2000/Windows Millennium/Windows XP operating system (XP recommended)
Minimum 128MB RAM (256MB recommended)
256-color VGA or higher resolution graphics card (SVGA recommended)
Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.01 or later
Macromedia Flash version 5.0.25 or later (Flash version 6+ recommended).
That was the good old days of 1993. The market has changed since then, and BT is no longer quite that profitable.
With a smile, I wonder why you didn't get modded flamebait.
It's dropped because they've spent money on acquisitions and on upgrading their infrastructure. Just last month they spent £1 billion (might have been $1 billion: I'm not that sure off the top of my head) on buying into the US market.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
BT, together with their mobile subgroup O2 really are the worst company in the UK. I was ripped off by O2 on a mobile telephone bill to the tune of several hundred pounds and I know many others who have similar tales of woe. We also have an ISDN from BT themselves the service on which is truly dreadful.
Of all the corporates I've ever dealt with in the UK BT are by far and away the worst, and that includes the various rail companies. No other company comes close for their attitude of not giving a toss about their customers, indeed they are the only corporate I know which actively seems to go out of their way to treat their customers with contempt.
Avoid.
Their ADSL service is fine up until layer 3, at which point it becomes crap
I absolutely agree. I don't know what layer 3 is to be honest however my old job had ISDN 64k and then BT Broadband 512k. They charged £80 a month(!) for the 512k and it would hang on for about 20 mins then die, and even when hanging on the datarate was appaling, listening to even low bw radio was just dire.
It frequently needed a router (modem) reboot.. repeat for several times during the day.
Even the 64k managed to fall off several times a day - and not the idle-cutoff, it would just die at random intervals.
BT's adverts stating they are "reliable" are just bollocks. And this isn't a one off either, I know a guy who's signed up for BT (no idea why) and he keeps getting cutoff at random.
There are loads of alternatives out there, telewest is good but as stated the upload is low. I personally use Zen internet, it's a little more expensive than the rest (but you get a gig of webspace) and I can stay on 24 hours and get 5 gig a day every day. I believe plusnet and others are good too.
But seriously, stay away from BT, you might get free calls but you'll pay for em in service.
Get paid to search..It's geniune and
There's a large number of posts further up this discussion just not getting it. Here is my summary of what is different about this:
BT communicator is just Yahoo messenger with VoIP software in it, that's nothing new. BT offers a gateway to the real phone network that they have been charging to the customers household phone bill at standard rates. That's nothing new either.
What is new here and news worthy is that BT is giving away FREE PHONE CALLS TO THE REAL PHONE NETWORK from the VoIP phone until the 31st January 2006. That is what makes this story interesting.
Steve.
A latent existence
No they don't. BT Mobile is a re-branded service, just like Virgin Mobile or Tesco Mobile. BT Mobile do not operate their own network; they rebrand another operator.