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How Do You Make International Calls?
Futurepower(R) asks: "How do Slashdot readers make international calls? I know about OneSuite, Vonage, Skype,
and iConnectHere. I know that BigZoo is quitting business. What other telephone, VOIP, or other kinds of services are available? Is there any open source VOIP software that can connect directly through port 80, bypassing firewalls?"
I'm an American!
(It's a joke! Not flamebait!)
I don't ever have to call overseas otherwise. :-)
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
www.mywdt.com They even provide you with an 800 number to use for free.
It works
I use a telephone.
I yell really loudly
I have a linux based Asterisk PBX at home and sign up with nufone.net to provide calling to POTS lines both US and international. nufone is a purely pay as you go so it costs very little to try them. The key is Asterisk, then there are a few options for the VOIP side.
I have a magic box on my desk where I just lift part of it, type some numbers, and I get connected to the person I want to talk to. There's no IM but it's really easy to use. It doesn't even require a power connection, and it's super-simple. Only a "hangup" button and the numbers. Maybe Apple designed it?
I think it works with VoIP, but it's so small and light I don't know where the computer is. There's a DSL wire so it must not be wireless. Maybe it's VoIP over DSL? Yes, that's probably it.
A friend of mine says this is called a "Phone". I think that might be a play on "Vonage", I hope the Phone company doesn't infringe their trademark.
Anyway I use it all the time and I get a bill every month for minutes used. Not the cheapest rates around but I"m willing to pay extra for simplicity and reliability (the other day we had a network problem in my office but the Phone still worked! They must have some good QoS routing).
I send them an email and then they call me. No really.
Free XBox, PS2
I did. I got tired of them billing me $5 a month for a service that I never used, so I fired them (MCI).
When the time came that I did need to place a long-distance call, the local phone company automatically picked the most expensive carrier. I fired them too, and then placed a block on my account so that the phone company could never 'SLAM' me again. Now I just use calling cards. Since I use long-disatnce service so infrequently, it makes the most financial sense.
I make quite a few international calls.
The cost depends on two major factors....
1. Which country you are calling
2. Where the calls are originating
I was a big fan of BigZoo, especially for calls from the U.S. into Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and most of the stans.
Though I don't know why, most of the indepent resellers seem to be ditching the business.
Your local company (AT&T, etc.) always seem to have the cheapest price into neighboring countries (Canada, Mexico, England, and now even Japan.)
For calls originating outside of the US and calling in, callback services always seem to work best, though there doesn't seem to be much difference between them. The internet call back service are tolerance for voice communications.
I know it seems cliche, but I call my friend in Japan often (once or twice a month) and I used 10-10-987. Its pretty cheap. We'll talk for about 30mins and it only costs $3-4 USD.
thelikesofwhich.com
onesuite.com is almost exactly the same as BigZoo. Some of the automated voices are even the same, and the domestic rates (I didn't check international, since we don't need it) are exactly the same. Same available features, etc.
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How do you go to the bathroom?
For help answering that question, I direct you to episode 3, season 4 of Beavis and Butthead: Trouble Urinating.
http://www.google.com/search?safe=on&q=calling+for +deaf
and a little tsunami to speed up delivery.
I use the telephone for long distance...
The best way to get cheap international rates is with a phone card. Try this place, I've had good experience with them. The rates are usually way cheaper than what any VOIP provider offers. Plus, it's convenient in that you can use any phone as long as it can call 1-800 numbers. If you have free long distance, you can use the "local access" (non-toll-free) numbers and save some more. The main things to watch out for with phone cards are connection fees, rounding, and expiration. Unlike a long distance provider, there are no hidden taxes and USF fees.
Not the cheapest, but it's simple, and almost guaranteed to work. Period.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I find it hard to beat phone cards. www.uniontelecard.com has good selection. Pay a little more and get the ones from IDT. Their connections are much better than Entel. IDT phone cards are 1/10th the price of Verizon for calling South Africa and 1/3 Vonage direct dial. You can use phone cards from your cell phone and VOIP phones too.
It works halfway across the globe with slow analog modem on the other end. Even Skype dies in this configuration. Skype also has horrible echo problems (even with echo suppression) which MSN Messenger for some reason does not have.
So despite crappy UI, I have to use MSN Messenger. I save about $20 a month by doing so.
Doesn't everybody?
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Phone/MS Messenger with my parents, skype with my brother
Je ne parle pas francais.
My mom uses those, but she got frustrated about all the bizarre extra charges that you get just for dialing a number, even if no one picks up.
:)
So she started probing with her normal phone service.
If no one picks up on the normal phone call, no charge. If someone does pick up, it's a quarter or so connection fee for a 15 second call consisting of "Ah, you're home. I'll call you right back." Then she calls back on the card, and juices it for every single minute it's advertised to get.
We signed up for an international plan with AT&T I think. It cost something like $3 a month and then $0.06 a minute. It was a ton cheaper than the 30p (58 cents) they wanted to charge from the U.K. to the U.S.
I op divert to AT&T and use generated card numbers. Old school =)
Lingo Insanely cheap and really feature-rich. Call quality is excellent too. Indistinguishible from a standard POTS line.
+++ATH0
Other international rates here http://www.onesuite.com/rates.asp You pre-pay for as many minutes as you want, and access is via a toll-free or local number.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
I use it everyday.... HIGHLY recommended. No downside as of this time.
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
If port 80 is a concern, couldn't one just set up port forwarding on their asterisk server which would take traffic coming into port 80 and redirect it to the port that asterisk is listening on? http://www.asterisk.org
Next On Ask Slashdot: How do you go to the bathroom?
... must I think about that question?
O dear sweet Jesus, and saints preserve us
-kgj
-kgj
For reaching those more expensive places, like Africa, try http://pingo.com/
Phone calls? What are phone calls?
I use email and IM.
Canadian here. I only ever have to call the US, really.
For that, I just use my cellphone. I get 10/min (8.5 US) Canada/US long distance on it, so I just use it because it's convenient.
I have some family in Holland, and I'd likely just use my cellphone to call them too. (Right now I live at home, and they call here a lot.)
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
I've been using Net2Phone's Communicator (desktop based VOIP service) for awhile now and I've been pretty happy with it. They recently removed the adverts that were contained in the desktop which had been my primary annoyance (since the service costs money, essentially, you are paying to see their adverts).
I have run into problems occasionally where it will give a largely useless error stating they are having "Technical Difficulty" and can't place your call. Annoyingly, it seems to do this both when you mistype a phone number and when it is a problem on their end, so its difficult to guess where the problem is.
I also rely on Skype's PC to Phone service a good deal, particularly since it is a good deal cheaper than Net2Phone. Unfortunately, it has problems with NATs, so some (such as my girlfriend, with whom I talk the most) will have difficultly. Consequently, we're unable to use the free PC to PC service, which would probably save us lots of money.
In my experience, no one service is completely reliable (and none close to the reliability of a landline), so its good to have a backup in case one fails.
forma3
I wouldn't use Vonage under any circumstances on the simple basis that their TV ad is annoying as hell.
o ,W oo-hoo-hoo,Woo-hoo-hoo,Woo-hoo-hoo," ad nauseum ad infinitum.
"Woo-hoo-hoo,Woo-hoo-hoo,Woo-hoo-hoo,Woo-hoo-ho
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
My wife calls to Uzbekistan frequently and often buys a phone card. Usually she can get a decent rate like $0.20/minute or something.
and a very long piece of string.
They have integrated support for VOIP and if you can chat you can talk assuming that the other party has a mic.
:)
'Course, I think I loose my geek card or somthing for recomending somthing like yahoo over skype... but hey, it works... so long as you run Windows... I guess I lost my geek card along time ago.
The Code Ninja is swift with his tool, precise in his delivery, and deadly accurate in his execution.
I'm a fan of babyTEL VoIP, myself. They're only available here in Canada, but it looks like they'll be offering service in the US within the next year. Definitely the cheapest long-distance I've seen.
When I was on vacation in 'Nam a month ago, the cybercafe near my hotel was selling eVoiz cards for 70,000VND for 3 hours of talk time.
And while I was there, the exchange rate was about 13,000VND for 1$CA
Your local phone company didn't "SLAM" you. If you would read your TOS agreement with them I think you will find that they acted properly.
You were the one who canceled your former long distance carrier.
You were the one who did not pick a new carrier.
You were the one who placed a long distance call w/o having picked a carrier.
I have a feeling that you would still be complaining if your local phone company hadn't picked a long distance carrier for you and simply refused to connect the call.
"Slamming" is what happens when your long distance carrier is changed w/o your consent. You are the one who dropped MCI, and you are the one who expressed, through your own actions, a desire for the local telco to pick a carrier for you.
Just stop by your local smoke shop (one owned preferably by a foreigner) and just ask them about calling cards. I found a local calling card that is meant only for calls within the USA that has the cheapest rates for calls in Europe that I have seen anywhere. I can call Cyprus for $0.04/minute, which is between 2 and 12 times cheaper than anything I could find online. The calling card is UNI Washington (local access by icallplus) and it actually gives me cheaper rates than the ones advertised in their webpage (as they only advertise international calling cards to international calls).
Remember, the internet isn't the answer to everything all the time.
I would like to be able to have DID (Direct Inward Dialing) however I have not found a VOIP company that supports that.
I currently use BroadVoice which does not. I hear VoicePulse might be able to provide that service but I have not tried yet.
there's an asian market across the street from my office and they have tons of calling cards advertizing really cheap rates. The other international markets I have been to have had them as well, so go find one and see what they have.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
Last time I went to the UK I took my Vonage box with me, plugged it into the ADSL there and used it as normal.
You didn't say how many different people you wanted to call overseas, but if it's just 1 number you could get a Vonage box and send it to them.
Then you'd just be calling a local number, so you'd only have to pay the flat rate each month.
I have a lot of friends and family scattered around Europe that I keep in touch with. I know the calling abroad game as I've been doing it for decades. It is still a royal pain in the arse.
:)
Before VoIP, your only choice other than paying your regular LD provider a ton of money per minute was a calling card. These things are very problematic and inconvenient to use. First, you have to choose one that appears to have good rates to where you are calling. Then you have to read the fine print to see if they charge a connection fee, a maintenance fee, and so on. Usually, what appears to be a good deal isn't, unless you use up the whole amount in one call, or very few long calls. Then, after you find one that appears to be good overall, there's the difficulty of actually placing the call. Sometimes it's hard to very hard to get through, and it's a pain in the ass to keep calling their number, enter your pin, then dial the number. Some/most of these only allow a set number of attempts per call, so you have to keep calling back every X failed attempts. During peak usage of their network, like during the holidays, this becomes a huge problem. Then, if you get through, during peak usage call quality is fair at best, as they lower the bitrate to accommodate a larger volume of calls.
Some providers allow you to sign up. It works the same as a calling card with but you are billed monthly. Sometimes they can read your home phone # so you don't have to enter a PIN every time you call. More convenient, but still inconvenient to use and annoying when you can't get through.
Then there's pure VoIP, like Skype. Very convenient. No more wasting time finger-dialing 30-digit sequences of numbers. Add them to your address book then simply select & click call. Problems: very expensive (compared to the rates offered by calling cards) and sometimes you still can't get through.
The adage of "what appears to be a good usually isn't upon closer inspection" applies here too. Skype, for example, boasts ~0.02/min to Western Europe. Yeah, if you call a land line. But it's pretty much a rule - when you call Europe, you'll be calling a mobile phone. I have friends who don't even have land lines. And the price for calling mobile numbers is much higher. And _not_ competitive with what the calling cards offer.
So, it's pretty much a mess. I refrain from calling, as most of my friends have email and we keep in touch on a weekly basis. Add IM into the mix and you've got even less of a need for calling. Then some of them have broadband and headsets, so we can place calls for free over the net. The problem with this is that we must both be in a certain place at a certain time. When the planets align just right, it happens
For emergency use, I purchased 10 of SkypeOut credit which I use when I need to call someone and express my love toward them I can't deal with the calling cards any longer, and I'm willing to pay a premium price for this advantage for my limited use. If I'd be a heavy user, I'd probably use the cheapest service that worked, tho.
Must-not-watch TV!
Boss phone cards are apparently for use only around Massachusetts.
Phonecards-Prepaid says 1.67 cents per minute from the U.S. to Brazil, for land lines, and 6.67 cents per minute to cell phones, far cheaper than other ways I've found for calling to cell phones in Brazil, where the caller pays the cell phone minutes. There is a 69 cents per week charge, and judging from all the verbiage on the rates page, there must be other charges not openly listed.
I'm skeptical. I've found that when there are a lot of plans, and a lot of conditions on each plan, usually the cost is much higher than the web page would make you believe.
I use www.sipphone.com Use a free softphone package from someone like http://www.xten.com/ and you can have free VOIP or very cheap calls ($0.02 a minute to the US) Have been using it for over a year and its great.
www.phoward.com - www.corrigenda.org
I think world-link is greek owned. It was nice when my parents wanted to sign up and they were able to do so in their native language.
Found them after AT&T royally screwed me with a promotion I signed up for which they cancelled 2 days later resulting in a multi hundred dollar bill. They never informed me about the change so international calls were billed at about $3/minute as opposed to a few cents.
Open Source Java DAO Generator
I bought a phone card from phonecardonsale.com. They never sent me the PIN after they called me to conform my credit #. I sent them many emails for the issue, but they just ignored my emails. Never buy any phone cards from them, or you won't get your money back!!
"Huge amount of bandwidth"? What are you smoking?
A typical VoIP connection uses 2kB/sec. If you talk for an hour, you've uploaded and download a grand total of 7MB in each direction. Big deal. If you talked on your phone 24/7, you'd use 5GB of bandwidth. If your ISP is going to come after you for this kind of use, you need to get rid of them posthaste and use somebody who doesn't suck.
If you think the internet is going to have problems because everybody starts making 7MB/hour phone calls, you have another thing coming.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
1. Set VFO to desired frequency
2. call cq
3. hope somebody answers
Calling through port 80, which Skype does, is a way of calling without hassling with opening ports in your software and hardware firewalls.
Horrible echo problems?
... nor did I run into it on my Dell Axim X30 PDA ... sound quality is clear, no hint of echos at all.
Not on my OS X copy of Skype
Perhaps you have your external speakers turned wayyyy up to "11". ?
I used this site a while back when researching, and ended up using 101 6868 prefix. No monthly fee, and only 7.9c minute to the UK.
Ironically, my family can call me from the UK for less than 4c a minute. I have absolutely no idea why.
All the "10 10" numbers are pretty cheap, but all have slightly different slants. If you're calling one country in particular, shop around until you find one that's best for you.
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
having recently met someone online in canada (im from the US like everyone else) that i have started to stalk and call on a regular basis, and only having a cellphone as my main number I needed to find something cheap. i went with tel 3 advantage its basically the same as a phone card i think, but without the card, and you register numbers you are dialing in from. I still use cellphone minutes, but its an 800 number so no long distance charges (and i only stalk one person at a time, so i never use all my minutes). costs me 1.9 cents a minute compared to the 69 cents a minute cingular wanted to charge me. there is a bit of an echo, but for the most part the service is really quite good. $25 dollar buy in (and they give you an extra $5 for free) and its as simple as dialing an 800 number and then the number you are calling. no pins or nothing. stalking has never been this good!
....................
I notice that you mentioned bypassing firewalls with VOIP software. I've tried that over a course of seven years with no success, or at least not with iConnectHere anyway. Supposedly, some programs like Hummingbird SOCKS can help some programs like IM clients (and maybe Net2Phone) bypass firewalls. Are you accessing the Internet through an ISP that blocks ports? I've known multiple ISPs in foreign countries that do that.
I'm not going to give the complete secret away, but it involves an 800 number and a 2600Hz tone... ;)
--
www.nitemarecafe.com
cans
lots of string
What more could you possibly need?
Is the person you're talking to 6500 miles away? Skype audio is choppy, and there's a very noticeable delay. Skype just doesn't work for such long distances and low bandwidths.
Pennytalk...
After someone tried to scam me for some money, I learnt about,
:->
x -tips. html. htmle rm=pho ne+sex
http://www.sprintrelayonline.com/
Great thing, it's free.
So with the relay operator involved, would it be considered a "threesome", if you had phone sex with your partner?
Here's some tips for ya if you decide to find out:
http://www.gorskys.com.au/ask/need-phone-se
http://www.sexuality.org/l/workers/phonesex
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?t
Huh? I-- I don't know that! Auuuuuuuugh!
I have a very small mind and must live with it.
-- E. Dijkstra
From Canada to NZ is 20 min./$1 (CDN = US $0.83).
I use a service called gorialla mobile http://www.gorillamobile.com/.
They provide me with a 212 - which i diall to get international access at very cheap rates. I don't care that 212 is new york (and not my local dialing area) as I only ever call this number from my cell phone (with free long-distance).
What I particularly like is that this service recogonizes my phone via callerId. It then just gives me an internation daill tone. I don't have to enter any pass-codes, card numbers, or anything like that... simple, cheap, and it works very well for me.
Plenty of competition for long distance cards in this city. I always use CiCi cards -- there seems to be a consensus that they are the most reliable.
"He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once." - Steve Jobs on Bill Gates
Straight off the Skype Website: The minimum requirement is that Skype needs unrestricted outgoing TCP access to all destination ports above 1024 or to port 80 (the former is better, however). I use skype at my school, and they block all ports except 80, 110, and 443. Skype says the quality isn't as good, but I am unable to tell a difference when it uses just port 80.
I've been using them for years. Not sure what technology they are using, but it's hard to beat their international rates. Here's a sampling (this in only about 1/20th of their complete list):
Afghanistan $0.475
Antarctica - Casey $0.600
Antarctica - Scott $0.600
Australia $0.045
Belgium $0.055
Brazil-Sao Paulo $0.055
Chile $0.045
China-Bejing $0.050
Czech Republic $0.045
France $0.050
Germany $0.050
Ghana $0.135
Hong Kong $0.049
India $0.195
Iran $0.159
Iraq $0.520
Israel-Tel Aviv $0.050
Italy $0.050
Japan $0.055
Netherlands $0.038
New Zealand $0.044
Russia-Moscow $0.038
United Kingdom $0.035
Zimbabwe $0.105
Google to find their home page.
as much as i wanted it to be the case, i could not replace my copper with VoIP because VoIP inherently does not support modem-based transmissions. i have several legacy devices around my house including my first-gen Tivo and digital cable box that are modem based. VoIP does not pass the full audio spectrum of a copper line, and modems simply will not work, and it's not cost effective for me to have both copper and VoIP, even if VoIP offers free unlimited long distance.
I bet you can't even send files that way.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
However Skype has a few issues that really piss me off. One: you can't set the port in the OS X version (All version pick the port randomly). Two: It sounds weird on Mac but not on Win32. Three: Their FAQ dealing with this is ridiculous full stop: Ideally, outgoing TCP connections to all ports (1..65535) should be opened. This option results in Skype working most reliably.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
These guys do not lock their hardware, offer and suppott open source software and they offer the best deal and quality. I have switched and I am very happy with them.
About half of my family's in Moscow at the moment, so I'd like to see a straight answer from somebody.
Is there a cheap alternative to calling cards? How well does it work to sign up for US VOIP service and plug the system in in Moscow? What kind of connection do they require?
I use skype regularly to call from Edmonton (Canada) to Germany and sometimes Japan.
Occasionally I have some choppy connection, but even calls to places like Venezuela had pretty clear voice quality (On MacOS X).
I don't think I've made a long distance phone call personally in a long long time.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
My brother lives in Denmark and I converse with him using SightSpeed's Video Phone service (www.sightspeed.com). It has great audio and the best video around (30 frames per second and virtually no delay). Works on PCs and Macs (they say a Linux version is coming soon?) The free version gives you unlimited audio calling (to another person's PC... it doesn't call out to POTS yet) and 15 minutes of video calling per day. I have a subscription ($4.95/month or $49.50/year+includes free webcam) that gives me unlimited video calls! It is defintely a different feeling when you are talking with somebody face-to-face vs. just talking on the phone. And all of this is much cheaper than regular phone or VoIP services!
How do you make an international call? You call yourselves nerds??? #1, visit a phone booth and phreak a dialtone, hook up your MS-DOS powered PBX hunter, start dialing... #2 once you find a PBX, disable logging, #3 mask your CID, #4 dial Taiwan!
disclaimer: don't do this, probably illegal
That doesn't let you make phone calls, only talk to someone else with MSN Messenger. So, it's not a solution to the problem of making international long distance calls.
Furthermore, even if MSN Messenger were technically better than other options right now, the solution would be to create other options that are not tied to a Microsoft service, since the consequences of Microsoft becoming a force in the VoIP market would be disastrous for everybody in the long term.
However, I seriously doubt that MSN Messenger is the best solution right now. There are lots of VoIP systems, many of which have been around longer and have had a lot of smart people working on them to optimize them.
I am very happy with NobleCom.com . Ever since my daughter was abducted, I have been making *lots* of calls to Mexico. Their rates are (still) cheaper than anything I've been able to find on VoIP, and the service and quality are very good.
Please help find my missing daughter: FindSabrina.org
I use Pioneer Telephone [www.pioneertelephone.com] for international and long distance.
I've also used ZapTel [www.zaptel.com] to find calling cards. You can search for the best rate for where you want to call and buy online. You don't have to have a US credit card either.
Better flight searching coming soon.
We've been using vonage, make a lot of calls to UK and Argentina, usually runs 2 - 4 cents/minute, and the quality is excellent. M
mychitchat.com for PIN-less prepaid dialing with good voice quality and no gimmicks, affordable but not rock bottom cheap. Good for cellphone use. Absence of PIN can save a lot of time when re-dialing countries with poor connectivity.
uniontelecard.com for calling cards close to rock bottom cheap with a minimum of gimmicks, but maintenance fees guarantee that ununused minutes will soon disappear. Voice quality ok, not great, typical for calling cards.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yep. I've had broadvoice for quite a while now. For $20/month I get unlimited calling to the US and a bunch of other contries. I can call my sister in Sweden, my wife's father in Denmark, my busines partner in the UK, or anyone long-distance in the US and talk all I want. Sound quality is great, and with their Bring-Your-Own-Device plan, I was able to setup one channel on my Sipura-2000 (the other channel is setup with FWD). I've been very pleased.
-Erik -- --This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
www.lingo.com VoIP, $20/month, unlimited to USA, Canada and Western Europe. I've had the service for two months and love it!
How do Slashdot readers make international calls?
I, um, pay for them of course.
- Icephreak
I use my standard carrier. I have been caught out with shtty alternatives and we use a POTS for almost all calls, and each member of the family has a mobile phone as well.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Nobody spends any dough on long distance anymore, and almost everyone has a computer.
If I can save $240 a year (that's compared to the cheapest available calling cards!) by using MSN Messenger, you can bet your ass I'll be using MSN Messenger.
As soon as MS starts charging for Messenger I'll move on to something else, or roll my own. So I'm not worried about them becoming a force in VoIP market, because I'm sure a lot of folks will do the same thing.
... slashdotters have people to call?
2 tin cans and a VERY LONG string...
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
I checked Lingo to Brazil. It is more expensive than Skype or OneSuite. With Skype, calling from a computer with broadband connection, the sound quality is better than normal telephone service, and calling the U.S. from Brazil is 2.3 cents per minute, with no tricks.
A good friend is married to a woman from Cuba. She can't go back to her country for several years as its only been a year since she essentially defected. Her family has no broadband, it sounds a bit tough to obtain,, and they are not technical. As opposed to standard Int'l rates (ie, my wife is Japanese and we can get 0.05/minute rates) Cuba costs about 85 cents/minute. Anyone have family, contacts in Cuba and know of a way to make cheap phone calls to the country?
I use phone cards : much cheaper.
1 cent/min to europe can't beat that.
www.bestpricedcards.com
lemme know if you find better.
From work:
- on my PC: Skype client and Skypeout account and an adapter-phone, USB-based . This way I talk to friends or clients over Skype (free), if they have it installed, or over POTS, if they do not have Skype
From home:
- setup similar to the above, for my little office, in addition to which - for the reast of the house - I use Net2phone
== With enough Will Power, one could move mountains. With enough Brains, one would just leave them where they are ==
Since I have family in Mexico, I'm always trying to find the absolute cheapest way to RELIABLY call internationally. I've found cheaper methods than what I'm going to describe, but this is what you risk when you go TOO cheap (and believe me, you're talking to the King of Cheap):
- Dropped calls
- Low quality connection
- Recurring fees for doing nothing other than patronizing the fools, which include things like:
- Connection charge ($1.95 usually, but often more, sometimes less, for every call you make--note, sometimes this is really a bad charge because you get disconnected because of a bad connection that they provide you, and then YOU have to pay another connection charge when you have to call the person back again)
- Monthly charges ($2.95/month to be part of the program, etc.)
- Maintenance charges (they subtract money from your account every month/week/day until your account/card is dry)
- Contracts that you have to cancel
- Being on their mailing list and/or having your address sold
- Poor or non-existent customer service, should it be required--and with the poor connections where you have to pay a high per-connection charge, it can be very annoying to find that after two or three dropped connections, your $5 card is used up, and then you call customer service and they tell you "oh dear how sad"
- Etc.
I like simple. I like cheap. I like reliable. I like being able to cut and run if I don't like what they're doing to me. And believe me, there are a lot of outfits out there that will do it to you. So what I'm going to tell you about here is just about the optimal mix that I've come up with (at least to Mexico--I imagine that it's comparable for other countries):
Onesuite.com -- They have the lowest rates within the U.S. and to other countries that I've seen. You can get started with as little as a $10 charge to your credit card to fund your account, and if you don't like the service, you just don't put any more money on the account. Abandon them. You never hear from them again. It acts like a calling card. When it's out of money, that's it. It's all done online, although they've added a toll-free number for recharging your account. Online, you have access to your call history and a bunch of other cool features like not having to enter PIN numbers from phones that you specify, speed dialing, subaccount with their own PINs (give someone else their own PIN so you can keep the calls seperate for accounting), live customer service, etc. It's a great company. I don't know how they do it, but because they DO do it, I'm a customer.
Now, if you REALLY want to go cheap (like me), you can look into www.nobelcom.com. They have cards that you have to buy $20 at a time--actually, $40 at a time because if you buy less than $40 worth of cards they add a processing fee of something like $4 as I recall. That sucks. I'm not thrilled about plopping down that much, but they've proven themselves with me now, at least for the first $10 on my first $20 card with them. The good thing about this card (at least the one that I get for calling Mexico) is this:
- There is no expiration on the minutes
- The cost per minute is 2 (2 cents) cheaper to Mexico per minute than Onesuite, which is as I said, cheaper than anywhere else I've seen
- They round minutes to the SECOND rather than to the minute, to 3 minute or 6 minutes (or more, as some are) It doesn't sound like much, but that rounding can add up to a lot of minutes lost, especially if you make a lot of short calls! And the higher your cost per minute, the more significant this feature becomes.
- There are no maintenance fees at all
- No connection fees
- The card is rechargable
nobelcom.com also has other cards that are even cheaper for calling Mexico, but they have maintence charges and/or connection charges, etc. The cheaper cards might actually be better for some people. If you tend to call, for example, less frequently but talk for a long time, you might want o
If you want to call overseas from the UK, it's cheap and easy, no cards or memberships needed. Just dial 0870 7946078 (weekdays) or 0844 5706078 (weekends) and once it answers, dial the full international number of where you're calling. The above numbers cost the same as a national call. I've been using this for a year or so now and it works great. (The company providing this is called DialSmart, if you want to google for them)
While not exactly what the poster wanted, Ip-relay.com is a pretty cool site where you can call anyone in the United States for free without even talking. I'm really surprised it hasn't been abused to the extent where it was taken down. Give it a try if you have a spare moment.
What shows up on the caller ID of the people you're calling using the masterbell cards? I'd love to be able to make calls from work without people getting that number.
Background: BroadVoice is a consumer-targeted service from Convergent Networks, which offers VoIP gear/services for businesses. They're based around Boston, maybe the Rt. 128 area, I think.
Anyway, the "Unlimited World" thing costs about $20 a month (roughly what I eliminated in terms of other phone bills) and gives me unlimited calls to landlines in the US, cellphones in the 48 contiguous states, and 19 other countries scattered around the world - a fair chunk of Europe, plus Canada, Chile, China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Australia.
For another $5 a month, I could have had their "Unlimited World Plus" plan which includes another 14 countries, but the per-minute rates to those countries are so low anyway (most are under 25 cents a minute) and I know so few people in them, if any, that I don't think I'll use enough time to make it worth it.
Once I got it set up, I picked up a wire junction (plain old boring el-cheapo kind with screws, not a 66 or 110 block) and got things wired together so that the VoIP service is on line 1 and the POTS service is on line 2 of a couple jacks in the house. There are a couple other jacks that are still POTS-only, and one of the dual-line jacks has a single-line phone so it's effectively VoIP-only for now, but it all works! (I did some diagramming in OmniGraffle before I made the changes, if you want to see.)
Being able to call 20 countries "free" is nice (my wife especially likes calling net friends in England) but another big motivating factor was the idea of being able to talk to a friend in Uganda inexpensively. ATT international long distance charged me 4 or 5 dollars a minute to call Uganda - BroadVoice charges me 14 or 15 cents. That's my kind of pricing. :) And most places in the world are about that cheap or cheaper.
Now I'm considering getting a software client for my laptop, to use when traveling. I recently discovered the horror that is "International Roaming," where I get charged as much as $2.29 a minute extra (pretty sure that's what it was in Hong Kong) for using my phone on someone else's turf. VoIP depends on IP availability, so it's not usable as many places as my mobile phone, but it'd be simpler and quite possibly cheaper than getting a SIM and a prepaid plan for every country I visit - and certainly cheaper than paying to roam internationally.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Echo problems are caused by feedback from the earphones or speaker to the microphone. Use a headset to prevent feedback.
For perfect sound quality, in Windows, do Control-Alt-Delete and select "Task Manager". Click twice on the CPU table heading to see what programs are using CPU time. Skype should be the only program using significant CPU percentage.
I make calls from Brazil to France, U.S., and Australia, with perfect sound quality. I'm using a Telex headset, the one approved by Dragon Naturally Speaking.
- They offer VOIP or some other service where one end of the connection is a computer
- Or, the phone to phone connections (what I want) must be initiated in the U.S., by dialing a toll-free or local access number. (I can't dial such a number from out here.)
Do any of these callback services provide for a way to do as I've been doing with BigZoo: schedule a call via their website, ring my phone in China first, then ring the party I'm calling in the U.S.? There must be a similar callback site out there--I hope.http://www.pinzoo.com/
I've been using this service for about 2 years. I call Thailand every night for about 4.8 cents a minute. All of the other providers are about 17 to 20 cents a minute -- complete rip off.
Oh yeah if you sign-up - refer me because I sure could use the extra phonecard. I spent $3000 last year.
I use a Redbox, Duh.
In Soviet Russia, Linux compiles you!
I have heard people talking about the service Packet8... I think they have more local numbers to choose from than Vonage too!
I found a good calling card for both domestic and international call *origination*. Cards like AT&T etc all have ok rates when calling FROM the US, but once you are overseas you get screwed badly. Try www.acculinq.com or www.accuglobe.com (the companies are related somehow since the same PIN and account works with both).
Therefore I would do the only sensible thing there is do do - I'd go to my parents house to make the phone call :)
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
I've had perfect experience with Skype over NAT. We are heavily firewalled. Skype has an option to communicate over port 80 (which is always open, because it is used by browswers). Check that option, and you are good to go.
I do my communication with international relatives by email and on my livejournal. ... what are phones for again?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
My kindred brother!!
Firewalls are configured to permit TCP pass through on port 80 for HTTP.
VOIP does not use TCP, it uses UDP, so using port 80 doesn't help, you still get blocked.
--
Toby
I work as a customer service rep for a long distance reseller. I don't place international calls but I've spent 8 hours a day for the last three years talking to people who do.
Going with a reseller is a great way to save money and get a regular bill, but the international service can be iffy. I mean, for places like the UK, Australia, China, Japan, Germany, Switerland or any place with fairly modern phone service you'll get connected with no issues.
But the biggest problems we're having are with connections to India, Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. Of course since our connection rates are not perfect, they balance it out with a dirt cheap rate and credit any disconnected international calls on the bill that are 1 minute and under.
You think that would be great but people don't want seem to understand this. They want dirt cheap rates, 100% connection rates and 24 hour troubleshooting to boot. My usual response to folks like this is that 2 out of 3 isn't bad.
Still going with a service like ours or one of the evil giants (MCI, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, SBC) is better than prepaid calling cards. The people who use them and think they're saving money are nuts.
You get charged a connection fee just for placing the call. If you use the card from a payphone you get charged the connection fee and a payphone surcharge. If you don't use the whole card by the expiration date you've wasted your money. If your call drops, doesn't connect, has poor quality or the card just plain won't work, very few pre-paid cards have customer service. You're just stuck.
Not to mention that whatever rate you hope they say you're being charged is what you're being charged. And what they advertised is probably the minimum for that country. Like India.
India has a different rate for nearly all 28 states and the 7 territories, with some of the capitals in each state billed at different rates and calls to a cell phone are billed at completely different rates to a land line. So unless you keep a stop watch on each and every call, you really don't know what you're being billed or at what rate. And you won't have detailed call log or be able to dispute it if you feel you were cut off too soon because it's prepaid.
As for the guy in the thread who said he got "slammed" and that his LEC chose the "most expensive" carrier for him as a default carrier, he's smoking serious ganja. He makes it sound like they were out to cheat him when it was really his own fault.
Yes, slamming does happen. It's stupid and it's illegal. But most people do NOT want to take responsiblity for making changes to their own phone service, even after they've changed their phone number or address (yes you should call your carrier and make sure they are aware of the change and not just leave it up to your LEC).
LEC's are REQUIRED to ask people who they want for long distance and I'd bet a dime to a donut hole they get one of two responses. "Well who's the cheapest?" or "I dunno."
If you don't want to pay the highest price for services, do your research, make your choice, and make sure you get what you want or be prepared to plunk down a wad of cash.
The company I work for is PowerNet Global. It's a great place to work and has decent service to boot. Do a google search, find an agent and sign up with us. Also offering local and wireless service in several states as well.
DISCLAIMER *The opinions stated here about the companies listed as "evil giants" are my own and should not reflect on PowerNet Global. The comments are made because I have spent anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours on hold with all of these companies at one time or another trying to help people navigate their voice mail hell and get simple issues fixed.
I personally use Cognidial when I call my mother in England. It's not VoIP or anything sexy - just an 800 number dialaround - but it's cheap. 4.4 cents per minute to the UK. I can't call anywhere in the U.S. for that cheap. Best of all, they don't charge any monthly fees or anything, so you only pay for actual usage.
It depends on whether the destination is a NANP-compliant system (e.g. Canada) -- if so I just dial long distance, else I dial zero and get an operator.
BroadVoice looks interesting. Unlimited calling to 35 countries for $25/Month, it says. I just discovered it.
I changed my long distance carrier to CogniWorld. http://www.cogniworld.com/. Cheap long distance and international rates and no mimimums.
My friends in France are all on cellphones, which means higher rates than calling a landline in France. Its something like 25 cents a minute for the caller, but my friends don't pay a cent for incoming calls (at least as I understand it). I use some prepaid calling cards that have a good rate for French cell phones (15 cents I think it was) and give a decent amount of time to talk.
I live in Vancouver, home of biliions of Koreans, so I searched out the cheapest overseas plans for Koreans. I pay 3.5 cents CDN per minutes, as opposed to the local phone company which charges $1.80 at peak time. The 3.5 cents is to Korea, which I call most, but other countries are equally cheap.
But I've found it to be an extremely inexpensive way of communicating with my wife and daughter (I am in the U.S., they are in Russia) while we are separated.
:). Changing to a different local provider solved that issue.
We've tried the various 1010*** numbers, and several calling cards, but even with their fairly reasonable rates, the time (money) starts to pile up.
They live in Kazan and have only dialup internet access. Their connection is quite good for dialup (usually 50.6 - 52 kbps).
This being the case the quality of our audio connection is very impressive. Usually the conversation starts out with a delay of 2 or 3 seconds, but over 30 seconds or so improves to 1 second delays.
One problem we had was with the internet provided by the local telecom (GTS): for some reason our skype (and msn messenger) calls were garbled and strongly delayed. Perhaps this was intentional on their part... it wouldn't surprise me
We end up paying about 1/2 a cent per minute since Russian dialup providers in Kazan still charge on a time basis, and unlimited dialup access isn't available for less than $100/month. The standard rate is around $0.30/hour.
We've heard that there might be an internet service provider offering unlimited broadband for around 700 RR/month (~$25) but we haven't been able to confirm anything since the company seems to be closed for the holidays. If it's true we're hoping to be able to use Skype for voice, and MSN messenger to exchange video from our webcams.
I checked http://www.phonecardsonsale.com. This bothered me: "Call time is deducted in three minute increments."
Phone companies typically give themselves many ways to take your money without giving anything in return.
I've found that many companies just cheat. They charge more than they say.
My wife and I are planning to use Tlenofon for her calls to Poland. We will also have a local Polish phone number for her family to call.
For other uses, Sipphone will be used.
Tlenofon uses Asterisk and supports linux clients using the IAX protocol. Sipphone supports connections via SIP. Both are great choices for users of Asterisk.
Great rates to Asia. Also have used from Asia to the US. Very cheap.
Too lazy to create a sig...
In the rare event that I actually need to make an international call, or in the event that I'm too lazy to get up from my desk, I've got 10 euros worth of skypeout credit. Works great.
My other Sig is
Ham Radio where int'l calls are cost-free!
(ie, ignoring gear, power & license fees)
Voice:
- Slow-Scan TV (over HF radio)
- Fast-Scan TV (over UHF & above)
- HF (or even LF/MF?) radio
- VHF or UHF repeater near borders, eg,
- Internet-Linked RePeaters (ILRP)
- Remotely controlled HF/VHF/UHF radios (remote base)
- Amateur satellites
Voice & Data:
- multimedia/Internet over radio (eg, Icom'sd DSTAR ID-1)
Data ('cause not everyone can speak):
- Radio Teletype (RTTY)
- Messaging part of Amateur Packet/Position Reporting System (APRS)
- digipeater [again] near borders, eg, in Europe
- store & forward BBS systems (eg, FBB)
- Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) - aka "Moon-Bounce"
- various other ditigal modes (AmToR, PSK31, etc.)
Now, what have I forgotten, here...?
(Of course, CB radio calls can cross borders.)
PS Some will see this as "funny" or even OT,
but that's just a sign of how much some
have bought into the business-only model
of telecommunications...
.."How do you make international calls?" Umm, it's easy. What I have done through two decades of hard NWO struggles with my fellow billionaire conspiracists in congress and big business is destroy the borders, and make it super easy for this "foreign" guy to just move over here and squat,and thereby eliminate that oceanic and long distance middleman that was always such a hassle whenever I needed to speak to...whomever over in whoknowswhereistan. It's funny, too, we heard a lot of squawking about it from our domestic serfs and peons, but because we control the mercenaries with the badges and guns and tanks and planes,and they follow our orders without question, we got all the rabble to just eat it raw and like it. It's hysterical really.
Oh, electronically you mean, to the couple of folks left overseas, our plantation and factory overseers? Why, we just call em on the phone, we are billionaires remember, we own the phone companies and it's a full "tax" write off anyway. We talk as long as we want, and if we really want to, we just hop in our personal jets and mosey on over sipping champers on the way and consulting with our "administrative assistants".. You don't really think we PAY for stuff out of personal profits do you?
MUAHAHAHAHAHA!
I dial 011, then some more numbers.
Here in NZ local long distance is soooo expensive I've found that calling NZ from the Vonage account I kept when I moved back from the US is about 1/3 the cost of local long distance .... only downside is that while VOIP connections are never switched thru satellites (with that tacky lag) the return path can be
Yeah, we're not part of the world anymore. We had an election.
If you are making calls to the same place, I think onesuite is the most convenient way to do it. I pay 5 cents a minute to japan. I dial my onesuite 800 number, punch in my speed dial number for my in-laws which is (55) and I'm connected. It's actually faster than having to remember country codes and their phone number.
It's because the onesuite website let's you setup several numbers to be recognized when you call in, so no annoying calling card number. After that you can setup about 7 numbers to be accessed from a 2 digit speed dial. Their site was so easy. When I run out of minutes, log on, deposit another 10 bucks and I'm set.
There is no setup fee. You just need to either use the minutes or purchase more minutes once every six months, or they consider you a dead account.
I guess if you had 3 bucks left in your account and were inactive for 6 months, they would cancel your account and keep your money. Not a big deal. Just make a call to somebody and keep the account active.
10 dollars goes a long way, it's a much better deal than a long distance monthly fee that you pay wheter you use it or not. If you read the company info, they are really cool and up front about everything too.
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
You're right, UDP. But port 80 is always open.
Skype-out is my main LD method for calls to Eastern and Western Europe. The reason that calls to cell phones are more expensive is that in most of the world (except for the US, and a very few others), the person making the call to a cell phone plays the bill. Occasionally I get a "connection failed" but mostly it works.
I use iChat for audio calls to/from some of my clients. While not currently connected to the PTSN, for calls to another iChat user, it works great.
I'm located in Florida.wherever I go, there I am.
Skype charges .832 euro cents a minute for calls to Cuba. If you pay VAT, it's a little more expensive. I believe that the reason calls to Cuba cost more is the tax charged by the Cuban government on international phone calls, but I could be wrong.
wherever I go, there I am.
With somebody else's phone. Too bad the number for time and temperature in Tokyo seems to have changed. It used to be (direct dial from the USA) 90113117969900
Change is good, but not in a wallet.
CAllVantage from AT&T
/ http://suffocate.us
/ http://johngrayson.com
My wife makes a lot of calls to Germany. Having looked at all the VOIP providers, we finally choose Vonage as if offers the best service for the price. For $19.99 a month we get unlimited calling to Western Europe. That beats the hell out of paying AT&T or Verizon, their high fees.
I have a wife from Britian, and when we used to talk over the landline I'd call her from a calling card I got called Pennytalk, which I heard on the radio once.
.99 cent monthly service) but to me it was worth it, coz ATT used to try and charge me:
getpennytalk.com
$0.01/min US
$0.02 to UK landline.
(.39 cent connection fee and
$0.10 / min and $8/month.
-- LINUS TORVALDS, (cnn): Because their operating systems (Windows) really suck.
I have an asterisk PBX installation. Forwarding phone calls to the PSTN using a VOIP termination service provider. I also leased a phone number and forwarded it to my asterisk server which is configured to ring my voip iax phone at home.
I get very good calling rates and quality and i am planning adding phones/extensions for my family members overseas who span multiple countries.
Their phones would connect to my asterisk server.
Everyone could dial "out" but we'd also be able to call each other internally by extension number for free as we wouldnt be using the PSTN or even a VOIP provider like VONAGE.
I believe that the reason calls to Cuba cost more is the tax charged by the Cuban government on international phone calls, but I could be wrong.
I'd hazard a guess and say that there's not much competition going on in Cuban telecommunications, Communist governments not being too big on deregulation and capitalist enterprise.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Some people use gallows humour to cope, asshole. Go fuck yourself.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
anyways, yeah, i'm a geek and am not ashamed.
We just talked a 25 minute call to Thailand. It would have cost around $50 with major Finnish operators, and $25 with some cheaper carriers, and $15 with local voip operator. Now I spent $3.
I have a setup where I have Asterisk configured to call out to Simpletelecom and accept calls from local voip carrier (for local phone number). Some numbers do not work through Simpletelecom, so I configure those outgoing calls to local operator.
Let's hear it for Slashdot, running a headline which disregards basic TCP/IP networking knowledge.
You cannot "bypass firewalls" by sending traffic to port 80, because although most/all outbound filters/firewalls allow this traffic very few inbound filters/firewalls do. In fact there are NO TCP or UDP ports which are opened by default on residential gateways - that's why they provide such good [decent] network protection for most of the broadband world.
Sadly, the best thing around for this is uPNP - a huge security hole which allows applications to request network devices forward return traffic on different ports, rather than use the standard state table for NAT forwarding. This can be used to pass a conversation off from a Client Server Client situation to a Client Client direct connection.
Is there any way to mod down the original post?
Put their cards to great use while I was travelling around Europe. Calling home or calling friends/family in other countries, connections were always great and they were pretty cheap considering how versatile the card was. (no connection fees, no maintenance fee, access numbers in dozens of countries, could call everywhere at a relatively low rate)
Doesn't the US prohibit direct calls to Cuba? They usually have to be rerouted through a country that *will* let you call Cuba.
Cuba has a lot of problems because of Castro, but some of them are because of our(the US) dumbass foreign policy.
I simply dial 0, 00, country code, phone #.
Couldn't care less because calling whatever country is cheaper than calling a cell phone in my own country. Weird. Just plain weird.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
Here's a similar question I was wondering about: what about software for pure VOIP for linux? Something portable, that can connect to common Windows implementations (I don't know how standardized they are), like AIM or Yahoo chat.
10 10 987
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
I've tried a number of services and providers. The bottomline is that, when I'm calling India, AT&T is the only one that gives me any measure of quality and reliability. Using Sprint, MCI and a number of calling card based services, I've had to dial multiple times just to get through and when I have gotten through, the quality has been pretty pathetic - lag, echoes and sound quality.
AT&T gives me clear connections every time and I get through almost every time (I've had some trouble with them the last two weeks)
Onesuite is very cheap but I usually have to dial several times before I can get through if at all.
After I do make the connection, we usually just both get on MSN IM and complete the conversation there for free.
Mmmm.. Donuts
I used iChat AV for a Berkeley (CA, USA) to Yokahama (Japan) call a few months ago, and the quality of the call was excellent. Apart from the latency, indistinguishable from a local land-line call in Berkeley.
Here's an informative article about VoIP standards: Not your father's VoIP .
It talks about problems that VoIP used to have with compatibility, how they are being solved with open standards now, and how services such as Skype revert us back to the time when one piece of VoIP software - or hardware - wasn't able to communicate with another.
Really worth reading IMHO. Read the comments as well.
From Canada just dial 1015945 (there is no external dial tone or call progress indicator) and then dial long distance as you would normally.
This uses the low cost routing provided by YAK
http://www.yak.ca/en/
Using this service you can unsubscribe to your current long distance plan and drop the ridiculous "long distance administration charge"
For the cost of the LDAC I can call a lot of places using YAK.
For when you're near a phone but it isn't convenient to use Skype:
http://www.telediscount.co.uk/
I've used it, my parents have used it, and my grandparents have used it... in all cases they've had telephone bills as little as about 40p. AFAIK they make their profits off the number itself (local rate or cheaper, usually 1p/min) and then use VoIP to tap into some telephone exchange in Sweden or somewhere like that. Whatever they do, it's cheap, it works, and from a real telephone.
"How big of a monkey?"
English is easier said than done.
VoIP plans... $19.95 per month gives you unlimited calling to US, Canada and Western Europe. They also have a $35 plan that includes many Asian countries, and a $80 plan with more countries. Check them out at www.lingo.com (happy customer for 3 months now).
Nuff said.
-K6GNU
I saw an infomercial about Glophone. Even though I haven't tried it, the address stuck in my head.
I've tried calling cards but beyond being a pain, never being able to hear the other side or they couldn't hear me, running out of time and such, I gave up on them.
I tried different card companies and they were all about the same. I tried various telcos but their fees were too high so, it's back to AT&T.
I signed up for the AT&T International plan that costs about $2.95 a month and we make calls that always go through, the quality is always good and there just aren't any problems. The cost is reasonable so I'll stay here until something better comes along.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
they yell back if they want to answer.
befuddled (noun) 1. Unable to create a pithy sig
For those still stuck with dialup (like me - sympathy please), devices like the IP Star are best http://www.tele.com.pk/
Even my mother can use it without help.
Slashdot comments cannot be considered to be rigorous discussions of all possibilities. Certainly you and I know that it is possible to make very finely designed rules for a firewall or proxy server.
But, most people don't know that. I was writing for them. The point was that Skype gets through when you think it might not. It's a minor hassle to open ports in my firewalls, even though I own them, and I prefer not to open ports, anyway. I appreciated not having to do that.
It amazes me how unhappy people are in the United States! Look at the comments to any story and count the percentage of people who are adversarial or hostile in some way. Often when someone knows something someone else doesn't, it is considered an acceptable time to act out anger.
Broadvoice looked great, and my roommate uses it. Here's his setup.
His mother lives in another country. He had a brother studying in the US, but he decided to put his PhD on hiatus and returned to his mother. Signed up for Broadvoice before doing so, and so he got a phone number in the US.
He went to his home country, got broadband, and hooked up his phone adapter. Now, when my roommate wants to talk to his brother or mother, he just picks up the phone and dials a US number. Similarly, when they want to call him, they just pick up the phone (in the other country), and dial his number.
Clearly, my roommate loves the setup.
Me? Unfortunately, Broadvoice does not have my area code. So I settled for Broadvox Direct (http://www.broadvoxdirect.com), perhaps the next best after Broadvoice featurewise. I just got it set up yesterday, and have a 14 day money back guarantee. Great quality so far. $20/mo gives you unlimited calls to US or Canada.
Beetle B.
I use SIP providers. A local one for a local phone line/number here in Denmark (90 cents/minute), I do have a SipPhone account on the other port of my Sipura 2000 for when I have to call the US.
Also uses peering through FWD (Free World Dialup) for calling 1-800 numbers and other SIP providers.
Skype is hype is a closed proprietary standard, and all the "stand-alone" Skype phones you can buy requires the PC to be on if doing IP to IP calls.
SIP is an open standard, there are loads of adapters/phones available. And they work even if the computer is shut down. So I am all pro-SIP. Can change provider to the cheapest I want at any time.
I am planning on puttin up an Asterisk server so I can route calls more efficiently. And I will connect a cellphone to it, since cell -> cell is way cheaper than calling them from a landline.
BTW: I do not have a non-VoIP landline. Only a standard 2048/512 ADSL line + a cable modem (1mbit/s + pay for usage) for backup.
> It works
It more than works! And it's more than phone!
My sister stays in California with her family this year, and I live in Israel. Phoning is not very expensive, but with Skype the families gather on both ends and everyone can speak and be heard by exeryone else, so it more like a family gathering! The kids love it!
So that makes Skype more than a phone to us. It's not just person to person (pun intended).
I've used one button phones before, but they never caught on. Perhaps because most people cannot count, which is a requirement for then one button model.
The old rotary phones where just hung the phone up for a moment. 10 hang ups in a row was 0, 9 was 9, and so on. It makes an interesting parlor trick, everyone should do it once. After that, it is too much a pain.
I use Packet8 to call home...I'm overseas in Korea. for the Freedom Unlimited plan it's about $20 a month and I call the States for for no extra charge and my family can call me on the local 781 area code for them. Alot better than burning through calling cards, and I can use the service all over the world, whether I get stationed in Germany or the States next.
And how is 6500 miles not long distance?
Also, I've spent zero dollars on software for my Windows box this year. No, I don't download shit off edonkey. I just didn't buy anything new.
The only software money I've spent this year was $99 for Final Cut Express that I purchased with my new iMac.
And no, I don't pay anything to MS for using their VoIP.
Just call the manufacturer for any service directly and they'll patch you through to india directly for free :P
(LAUGH! It's a joke!)
I just hop in the time machine, set the destination for 1972, and when I get there I use my trusty Cap'n Crunch whistle.
(laff. happy new year.)
Karma only matters to me now and zen.
Different cards on that site have different rounding. Sure, it's a rip-off if you don't read the fine print. It saves you money if you do. Three minute rounding is not bad if you make many long calls and the per-minute rate is lower.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Here's a comparison of some broadband phone services. http://www.roffe.net/voip/ I think it's interesting that international calls to Finland that terminate to cell phones cost much more than calls that terminate to land lines. What is the extra cost, the equivalent of central office access charges, or some Finnish mobile phone charges that land lines don't require? Does anyone know?
so much providers, so many protocols, devices !? it becomes a nightmare. when are we going to call someone no matter where he/she is connected.. i'm using http://www.freeipcall.com/, no fancy things, no monthly subscriptions, just voice
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