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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. And Internet Service can be very flaky at times.
It's hard to understand as an American how important this maneuver is to BT. Unlike the States, The UK and other EU nations prefer mobile phones over landlines to such an extent that telecos are losing money. The only source for revenue for this redundant system presently is DSL service, and even that is being offered at reduced rates.
The American business model for telco service has always been charge a little extra for flat rate local calls and save thousands of dollars in not having to itemize billing for something that costs jack squat. BT has clearly acknowledged that this is the only way to compete with the booming mobile phone industry is to go VoIP and following the American standard but because it's a new technology they don't have to say America was right.
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.
We have free national house-to-house VoIP phone for about a year or so in France. And you don't have to use your computer: just plug your phone in the 'Freebox' given with your Free.fr subscription. You also get broadband internet (up to 15 mbits in some areas) and TV (not everywhere), all for 30 euros/month. For once that France isn't years behind technologically, I thought I'd mention it...
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
To put it another way:
Qxe4