Why is VOIP not more popular?

[mike557]

Hi Guys

Just came across this site and reading the voip section, I already recognise some of the names (from shack and ukcvs) which is great to see.

I am a moderator of a voip section on another forum and like here, things are quiet which I find difficult to understand.

Letters are being sent out by BT saying that from 1st of April, they will be increasing call charges and connection charges. Do you realise that a 1 second call during the day will cost you 16p !!!

They are also changing the free evening call period from 6pm to 7pm and I bet that will catch a few customers.

Now is the time to look at voip....

VOIP is excellent and I cannot see why everyone is not using it. I understand that there are packages from landline companies and many people feel that they get a good deal from them. The point is they dont !!!

I run Asterisk (a voip PBX) and now have friends connected by it in Malaysia, Spain, Greece as well as the UK. Our calls are completely free to each other and they have UK telephone numbers so anyone can call them directly.

All my calls go out using one of the betamax/finarea companies during the day and in the evening & weekends the calls go via my landline as they are 'free'.

The call quality is really good and I end up paying less that £20 for ALL calls for a year.

I now have a fantastic Android phone which runs sip and when at home it uses the wifi and when out it uses 3G so I have an 'extension' anywhere. I do not pay for mobile incoming or outgoing calls as everything is done through the PBX.

My friends use a PAP2 (or spa-3000) and just plug in an ordinary phone or cordless. To them they have a landline (although it is actually an extension).

If you need help then get posting, and lets get voip moving - You can save so much money and it is real fun getting it all working.

As the cable scene is going to go very quiet, you are going to need another interest.....

[ant16151189]

Originally Posted by mike557

Hi Guys

Just came across this site and reading the voip section, I already recognise some of the names (from shack and ukcvs) which is great to see.

I am a moderator of a voip section on another forum and like here, things are quiet which I find difficult to understand.

Letters are being sent out by BT saying that from 1st of April, they will be increasing call charges and connection charges. Do you realise that a 1 second call during the day will cost you 16p !!!

They are also changing the free evening call period from 6pm to 7pm and I bet that will catch a few customers.

Now is the time to look at voip....

VOIP is excellent and I cannot see why everyone is not using it. I understand that there are packages from landline companies and many people feel that they get a good deal from them. The point is they dont !!!

I run Asterisk (a voip PBX) and now have friends connected by it in Malaysia, Spain, Greece as well as the UK. Our calls are completely free to each other and they have UK telephone numbers so anyone can call them directly.

All my calls go out using one of the betamax/finarea companies during the day and in the evening & weekends the calls go via my landline as they are 'free'.

The call quality is really good and I end up paying less that £20 for ALL calls for a year.

I now have a fantastic Android phone which runs sip and when at home it uses the wifi and when out it uses 3G so I have an 'extension' anywhere. I do not pay for mobile incoming or outgoing calls as everything is done through the PBX.

My friends use a PAP2 (or spa-3000) and just plug in an ordinary phone or cordless. To them they have a landline (although it is actually an extension).

If you need help then get posting, and lets get voip moving - You can save so much money and it is real fun getting it all working.

As the cable scene is going to go very quiet, you are going to need another interest.....

i actually use skype to make free calls so im not wasting any money on land line calls.

[mike557]

Skype is great if everyone in the world used it. The problem is you have skype in/out and the charges associated with it.
Skype is a proprietary form of voip, sip is open and sip to sip calls are also free. The problem with sip to sip calls is not everyone can either make or receive them due to the barriers some providers have created. There are however many ways round that :-)

[TheCoder]

Most people seem to think you need a PC on constantly to use voip but, of course, thats not true. There are many standalone voip phones that simply connect into a free router port and then act almost the same way as a real phone.

You can set yourself up with telephone numbers from all kinds of different places (meaning you can appear to be somewhere you aren't). I have local phone numbers in the USA (New York), Japan (Tokyo), UK (Manchester), Norway (Oslo) and Australia (Melbourne) meaning people in those countries can often ring me for the price of a local phonecall. All these numbers come through to the one voip phone (it allows upto 10 seperate SIP accounts).

[Andy20]

:shoc ked:

I has just had a VM phone bill for £30 for 1 month........... glad I read this or my Mrs would be dead!

[Jimdefruit]

I have been using a Broadstream voip phone for ages and wouldn't be without it.

[TDF]

I'm a long time VoIP user, I sing the praises to my friends every chance I get but not a single taker. I think people aren't interested partly because its beyond their understanding, partly because they get 'free' calls for £40 a month on their mobile or in their TV bundle.

I run my own PBX with a couple of ATA's, a Snom 360, softphones on my laptop and on a USB stick. £5 a month in credit on a 3 sim in my phone gets me calls over 3g.

Nuisance callers get added to the blacklist never to be heard from again, withheld calls go straight to voicemail, I had a ex girlfriend on time conditions because she kept phoning drunk at 2 in the morning. Caller ID pops up on my Dbox and on XBMC. Every call gets looked up in various databases and the Caller ID prepended with SPAM if its found, looking at sending these to the blacklist too.

I used to get the kind of bills that ruined your day, now its so little it makes my day.

Why would people put up with BT or Virgin, the latter didn't even offer Caller ID when I left them. With VoIP its so easy to have another number for the daughter that gets 90% of the calls or like TheCoder have a number near friends or family to save them on their bills.

I should mention wideband too, think of it as HD for your phone, CD quality voice that doesn't tire you out after a long call and makes it easier to understand people, especially those with a accent.

The sooner everyone else moves to VoIP the sooner we can all enjoy free, high definition calls, free texts and a multitude of other features, were just waiting on you.

[mike557]

@TDF - recognise the name.

Looks like you and I are doing the same thing although snom is very expensive (I use Mitel).

Your comments are accurate, but we really need to get people to realise that setting up voip need not be a big task.

All you need on most devices is to enter 3 bits of information :-
A/C (normally extension number on PABX)
Password
Domain (ip address of PBX/server)

There can be problems with certain routers but most modern devices work, it is only when you build your own pbx and have external extensions that configuration becomes more complex.

People thinking they have free minutes on the mobile (when they pay £20+ a month) are just being stupid. The calls are NOT free !!!

Yes you need to make calls when you are outside so yes a mobile is necessary but with modern smart phones you can do voip. So instead you just need a data service or use wifi. Data services need not be expensive as TDF says £5 on 3 or free with giffgaff at the moment.

All in packages (virgin) are not the value they appear and I think the legality of saying we will charge you more or not alter your price if you drop a service is a con.

By going over to voip you can drop BT, Virgin or even the mobile number (although you will still have it). People calling me on my mobile just ring my landline and as the mobile is an extension it rings. Mobile calls are so expensive unless you have a contract or add about £10 per month on PAYG - why? So that having a contract/free minutes appears good value - it is not.

Voip gives you mobility - people do move and unless locally, they have to have a new phone number. With voip your number is wherever the phone is, which can just as easily be in another country.

Voip allows you to have more than one telephone number e.g. daughter/son/business.

Voip calls are low cost or free including international calls.

Suppose the bottom line is it appears too much bother for something that appears low cost anyway. Sorry guys but if you think that you are just being like sheep following each other. Get playing and you will be amazed at what you can do.


phew, I feel better now :-)

[brian]

I tend to be still suspicious about VoIP - after all, the big selling point for the service is simply price, not quality, and too often I've spken to people from VoIP lines where they would simply drop out.

Running a business a landline at least offers a degree of stability that I presume I am paying for - it simply looks unprofessional to ask clients to use VoIP because it'll save pennies, especially when you find your calls with them dropping out periodically, which looks very unprofessional.

So I guess I tend to take a more cynical view in business terms, because what matters is not price or cost savings, but simply reliability. I figure VoIP has moved on a lot over the past couple of years, but I'm still concerned about such issues not being ironed out.

My mum uses Skype all the time, though.

[mike557]

Originally Posted by brian

Running a business a landline at least offers a degree of stability that I presume I am paying for - it simply looks unprofessional to ask clients to use VoIP because it'll save pennies, especially when you find your calls with them dropping out periodically, which looks very unprofessional.

The clients would not know that you were using voip - to them they have just dialed an 'ordinary' land line number. The clients need no special equipment just their normal way of making phone calls.

Drop outs can happen although a reasonable broadband connection should work fine.

For a business wanting a number of lines (say about 10) I would recommend a dedicated broadband connection. For SOHO the normal broadband should be fine (depending upon the codec being used).

People believe that call quality is poor on voip - voip can use the same codecs as normal telephone calls so the only problem is packet loss and latency over the broadband.

Voip will not have such a high availability as a land line as it uses your land line and then you have the availability of the broadband.

So if your broadband goes off, you will lose your voip lines - hence a backup should be used for business.

If your power fails you will lose your lines however for a business using a pbx you would lose the lines anyway.

Voip is cheaper and voip is flexible, people using voip know the downsides and know the upsides are so much more