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AOL Canada To Offer VoIP

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the mountie-to-mountie-now-obsolete dept.

Lev13than writes "The Globe and Mail reports that AOL Canada will today announce plans to launch a VoIP service, starting with Toronto and expanding to the rest of the country by the end of March. It will be the first AOL unit to sell VoIP anywhere in the world. "TotalTalk" will sell for $30 a month after a three-month discount, including unlimited local calling, 60 minutes of North American long distance, call display, call waiting, three-way calling and call forwarding. A premium service that includes 1,000 minutes a month of North American long-distance time will sell for $45 a month after a three-month rebate.
In comparison, Bell service in Toronto costs about $50/month for similar features and a few hours of Canada-only long distance. I wonder if this will be available over AOL Dial-up?"

6 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. In what currency, though? by kngthdn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Are those in American or Canadian dollars? 30CAD is only 24.39USD.

    $24USD sounds more in line with what US based VoIP companies like Lingo charge.

  2. AOL Dial-up? by Fr05t · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not likely. One reason they probably picked Canada was because we have a pretty high % of homes with DSL/Cable. Sure it's no Korea, but I don't know too many people here that still use dialup.

  3. Re:Costs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    you can't claim that the difference between 500 and 700 minutes costs them (and hence, me) another 40$ a month.

    If I make a phone call from my VoIP phone to a regular land-line phone, then at some point my provider has to dial a real number on their end and connect me. The more I talk, the more I'm using one of their modems, or PBX cards, or whatever (I'm not an expert), which means they have to have more equipment to service my needs. Multiply this by thousands of users and it does cost them more.

    Charging me based on usage is reasonable.

  4. How about inf minutes for $0? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I guess some people might get excited about this because they want this service for their regular phones, but I prefer to use Skype or SIP clients on my PC with a headset.

    I'm also considering buying an IP phone. Both options have a $0 monthly subscription cost and $0 for infinity minutes if I make calls to other IP phones or PC clients (as is the case for most of my overseas relatives).

    The tech "savvier" will always beat the curve.

  5. VoIP over dialup... umm, NO!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Lets see, I'm going to make a phone call by dialing my ISP over PSTN and then "tunnel" VoIP on top of that? So what the hell is the point of VoIP then!? I might as well get dial-up over my high-speed internet connection. The point of VoIP is to get rid of PSTN, not layer on top of it. If you want to make phone calls over the internet, you can use a 1995 application called Internet Telephone. You obviously don't know what VoIP is or what it's about.

  6. Re:Costs by f()bz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    the local call with voip is not that arbitrary. in clauses for both vonage and packet 8 they note that if they deem you are using your voip from a non-US or canada IP addy they can and will switch you to a more costly plan than the unlimited plan. i have been the victim of this because i live half and half in nyc and paris. my use of non-US based IPs for calls was against their policy, but you must know that they CHANGED their policy to include the non-US IP clause after i already had service with them for five months.

    therefore, local to anywhere does not apply if you are outside the US or canada.