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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"
Hmm, last I check through almost every major emergency the phone lines are about the last thing to go out, heck even power loss doesn't effect corded telephones. Cell Phones while improving, simply don't have the same reputation.
Power loss doesn't really effect cell phones, either. Hell, there could be a complete cable, phone and power outage at your house but your cell phone would still have reception. I'd think that they'd have the best reputation!
- dshaw
leaving on a 300 watt computer for use as a phone is over kill. there's got to be some sort of stand-alone solution that basically replaces the phone altogether.
Minimum requirements -Microsoft Windows 98/Windows 2000/Windows Millennium/Windows XP operating system (XP recommended) -Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.01 or later not so sure about the latter, because i bet it just requires flash and so would work in firefox. but it probably doesn't work in linux since it specifies: Please note that BT Communicator is not Mac compatible. All in all, how many windows users want to use something possibly IE-based so that they can talk to hardlines and such for free?
no, but living next to the wrong building(my sister's apartment) doesn't make your cell phone almost useful. and for all my experience, land lines give the best and far and away most consistent reception to be had.
Why can't people realize there are advantages and disadvantages to both types of phones. I will not make many important calls on my cell phone in certain areas(my dorm at my school for the last two years) because reception is just that bad at times. Its never at a dependable level. But that is what I have where I live so land lines are the best option. My friends in UF only have a cell phone because they are rarely in their apartment and reception is near 100% no matter where they are.
Slowly though, cell phones are moving to replace most land line uses, but for now, cell phones aren't the end all answer for everyone out there.
I'd think that they'd have the best reputation! ... except when they drop out unexpectedly in the middle of a call ...
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
What's next? Free web access if you pay for broadband. Free email if you pay for broadband. Free virus protection if you pay for broadband.
Might as well go wild and give free access to Slashdot.
Right here in Cincinnati, Ohio a cable company (no names) has hired and trained installation and support personell for a VoIP roll out. They plan on offering unlimited service to those who are more than delighted with their digital cable and *oad *unner Internet service.
Considering the amount of low key recruiting they did I'd say they plan on it working. They actually plan on kicking normal home phone service out of their homes completely.
Not bad for a city that is said to live twenty years behind the rest of the world.
Get your Unix fortune now!
When I can tie Skype into my home/homeoffice PBX, then I'll look at it.
Until then, I'm happy getting service from NuFone and letting Asterisk do all the work.
Doing it for only the first X makes it just a gimmick. [spits]
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
if you can't get cable and can only have ADSL, use Demon.
I have found DSL to be much more reliable than (NTL) cable, although it is true that trusting BT to do the ISP side of things is a very bad idea (they seem just as clueless as NTL). I used to use Demon for my dialup, but when I switched to DSL a couple of years back their network was in pieces and was generally quite flakey so I moved to PlusNet who have done a excellent job of running a very stable DSL line. I think it's gone down a total of twice in 2 years - once was a very short outage caused by an equipment failure at PlusNet and the other was about 4 or 5 hours which was BT's fault (and also took out most of the DSL lines in the South-East of the UK).
Admittedly I only use them for the connection, I run all the services (mail, DNS, etc) myself because I frankly don't trust any consumer ISPs to know as much as me about networking.
I have also heard good things about Bogons if you want an ISP with a clue and they're aparantly happy to do almost anything with a DSL line (moving portable IP addresses onto it, multi-channel bonding, etc).
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Ok, except that BT's service is considerably better than Telewest or NTL, and other ISPs (Eclipse, Nildram) etc are used by any techie types, noone technical really uses BT for ADSL afterall, it's for the normal people.
Absolutely.
I have a land line with BT but it's really only there as a way of getting ADSL in to the house. I seem to remember that the actually cost of calls on that line last month were around a couple of dollars. In fact the usage of the land line has just increased a little as I recently invested in a set of cordless (DET) phones for the landline which means I can wander around the house (and the yard) and use the landline instead of my mobile.
But even then I have an free off-peak call quota bundled with my cellphone contract which means that if I'm calling another landline or someone else on the same cellphone provider it's still cheaper to use the cellphone. Also here in Europe texting is for more prevalent than the US and I have some many free texts bundled in my contract that I never use them up.
Basically I wonder how the phone companies make money. I pay a monthly cellphone contract. I got a free phone (Sony Ericsson T610), most of my calls fall in to the contract's bundled allowances and I pay a monthly land-line contract and hardly use it for calls. In fact both my cellphone and my land-line are used more for data than for speech and that's what I end up paying extra for whether that be a monthly ADSL cost or GPRS charges.
... send UDP or RTP or RTSP packets through the Internet if I sign up ?
.... I had to phone them 3 times to get the password to access their ADSL router to start it up and endure sniggering adolescent tele-plonkers who seemed to think I was *mad* as a hatter for even trying to do it without using the free windows software (read browser page).
I should bloody well hope so.
I remember working at one company where we ordered a BT business ADSL line
And then we discovered BT blocked *every* incoming port to the ADSL router. Very useful that was.
HOW-TO setup a soft-VPN system:
1) rent ADSL service from ISP that know's the f*ck what it's doing
2) connect penguin box
3) install, configure, start service
4) go for a cup of tea
5) fire twat who ordered BT ADSL Busy-being-idiots Service.
BT is an ISP?
My arse.
"So our calls are happily sent across the country through random strangers?"
Actually, that's true.
Skype's NAT traversal works by using a non-firewalled 3rd party... which means (in real terms) anyone running Skype who is not firewalled is a candidate to act as a "server" for the two firewalled people talking. I assume these servers are chosen randomly among Skype users, or are those with the best bandwidth / least latency.
any major outage of any type usually downgrades cell phone performance. reason being, each cell can only handle a relatively small number of simultaneous connections, and at the first sign of anything odd happening those connections will all be used up by people phoning their friends to tell them about it. if you're ever unlucky enough to see an accident on a motorway, just try using your cellphone then.
handily, under GSM emergency calls are meant to get priority and disconnect plain voice calls, but this doesn't always work...
To characterise this move by BT as related to charge rates (&billing) on local loop phone calls is to miss the point.
BT operate huge trunk routes AND have a mobile phone network to run as well. So they generate turnover from *all* segments of the market.
It's been widely recognised that every major telco carrier has to move *all* their traffic to IP else they will go the way of the dinosaurs. Currently BT are running older digital voice switches along side new IP switches and in terms of capacity and future upgrade (to improve bandwidth, volume pricing etc), they need to reduce overheads and so will go completely IP (one day!).
This is more market testing from BT. A proof of concept if you will.
They're prob testing the QoS side of things and of course some IPvoice gateway stuff.
And the faster they convert the better.
If US telco's aren't doing this as well, expect to see closures in the future as newer smarter soft-switch enabled pure IP networks take over from older trad bells with decrepid digital voice switches that can't be maintained anymore.
After the free period, the pricing is the same as your standard BT landline costs.
To have BT Broadband you must have a BT Landline
I have a walkabout phone for round the house so i can be in any room, in the garden, garage etc. But my PC is tied to the wall. Even if you had a laptop do you really want to lug that around?
So I pay the same for a net call and get less 'features' than my landline. Sounds like a bargain!