So, how many of you guys are using skype and how many are not yet part of the voip world?

i got a glimpse of it a couple of days ago seing a link from a tech newsreport.
is it flawless like the site would have us believing it is? i've never really even thought of a usb phone before that. You got one?

hello brunob haven't heard from you in a while

about Skype

I use it and have the natty headset

it is great I save about £30 on international calls a month

It is only worth getting if you ring internationaly though

hey there,im still in east london after having traveled a bit.
I call france and the US about 8 times a week - i've a rate of 4p to the US and 4p to france - have you tried it thru a public access spot?

Well since my landline calls cost about 2p per quarter and I have to pay the landline rental to have ADSl in order to have VOIP- Ill give it a miss.

rig: do you use your mobile to call ppl whilst indoors and they're indoors too?
cause then you could make a saving there... not only that but you could increase the number of phone calls you make if they were between skype clients via the net cause that doesn't cost a penny.

yes but to their mobile not their landline and only at weekends or evenings. I barely ever use up my free minutes.

Cost is'nt the reason that I dont make more phone calls.

I really do wish I could ditch my landline and keep ADSL- even without VOIP exisitng.

keep an eye on bulldog then... they throw in the phone line rental free.. you only pay for the internet pipe! but only in an exchange where they've gone thru LLU and got their kit in there

also, just check out SkypeOut which allows you to ring others as it might be cheaper than normal line... however, the biggest problem is with bandwidth use - if you're downloading a lot of stuff it'll adversely effect the quality of the call

I've been using VoIP for the past 3 years now. Why is everyone suddenly getting so wet about it?

keep an eye on bulldog then... they throw in the phone line rental free.. you only pay for the internet pipe! but only in an exchange where they've gone thru LLU and got their kit in there


yeah Ive looked at bulldog- you do have to pay for the line rental at the same rate as BT but the internet part is very cheap and fast. I was thinking of moving to either budlldog or UK online- do you know anyone that uses either?

eb: cause there's finally some products aimed at more than the business market and we finally have bandwidth more readibly available to the general public than 3 years or more ago (which was when I first looked at it when I got my first adsl line back in 2001-ish)

keep an eye on bulldog then... they throw in the phone line rental free.. you only pay for the internet pipe! but only in an exchange where they've gone thru LLU and got their kit in there

TalkTalk are by far and away the best and they've been around a lot longer than Bulldog. I'd rather trust the Carphone Warehouse with my money. 512kbps broadband and unlimited calls to landlines 24/7 for £24.99 sounds like a good deal to me and you don't have the hassles of VoIP (i.e. losing the phone line if your net connection goes down).

Click here to get TalkTalk (http://www.qksrv.net/click-1534042-10306276)

rig: they do supply the phone line rental free.. but only if you are connected to an exchange where they have gone thru llu and put their kit in - the rest of the country has to pay line rental.

I don't know either but I don't trust uk online as far as I could throw them - very small userbase (and again their best offers are limited to llu exchanges as their parent company easynet have kit in there)... bulldog is a cable and wireless subsiduary.

I've been using VoIP for the past 3 years now. Why is everyone suddenly getting so wet about it?


I would have thought the answer was obvious - its becuase of broadband take up. Now a large percentage of people have always on unmetered internet access so there is large enough critical mass to make VOIP a real rival to PSTN.

Previously VOIP was useful if for example you phone a particvular person abroad regualry- and you both set yourseves up for it but for generl phone calls all over the place you'd just have been conecting to a PSTN 90% of the time and the benefits were lost.

I would have thought the answer was obvious - its becuase of broadband take up. Now a large percentage of people have always on unmetered internet access so there is large enough critical mass to make VOIP a real rival to PSTN.

Previously VOIP was useful if for example you phone a particvular person abroad regualry- and you both set yourseves up for it but for generl phone calls all over the place you'd just have been conecting to a PSTN 90% of the time and the benefits were lost.

That isn't how VoIP works. It goes through the internet to the remote exchange, regardless of whether they have VoIP or not. The only extra charge you have to pay if they have PSTN is the tax that is charged on a phone line in the US (VoIP isn't taxed).

I don't know either but I don't trust uk online as far as I could throw them - very small userbase (and again their best offers are limited to llu exchanges as their parent company easynet have kit in there)... bulldog is a cable and wireless subsiduary.

You'd trust Cable & Wireless with your money? They went bankrupt and were nearly liquidated not long ago and they still owe ex-customers millions of pounds! If there's any telecoms company liable to go bust it's them! Plus, Bulldog have a massively high contention ratio.

rig: they do supply the phone line rental free.. but only if you are connected to an exchange where they have gone thru llu and put their kit in - the rest of the country has to pay line rental.

I don't know either but I don't trust uk online as far as I could throw them - very small userbase (and again their best offers are limited to llu exchanges as their parent company easynet have kit in there)... bulldog is a cable and wireless subsiduary.


Im at a llu exchange. Bulldog seem to charge £10.50 line rental (same as BT) plus £10.75 for 4 Mbs uncapped (much cheaper than BT).

Ukonline charge £30 for 8Mbs or £20 for 2Mbs.(ontop of Bt line rentla obviously)

I presently pay £30 for uncapped 1 Mbs with boltblue so its worth me moving.

That isn't how VoIP works. It goes through the internet to the remote exchange, regardless of whether they have VoIP or not. The only extra charge you have to pay if they have PSTN is the tax that is charged on a phone line in the US (VoIP isn't taxed).

Looks like more than just tax to me http://www.skype.com/products/skypeout/rates/all_rates.html

but yes I hadnt relaised that it can be signifinctly cheaper to call conventional telephones abroad than it is wiith a tradtional phone.

Rates for UKand mobiles looks about the smae as normal to me.

well, I didn't say that I trusted them... but I was just saying keep your eye on them that's all... the one telco that has some potential when it comes to capacity is ntl - they're looking at rolling out the next gen dsl in paralell to the cable connection you already get with them.. so one can be dedicated to net and the other to other services like vod and voip.

However, as with most of the main isp's n telcos they tend to be shite with customer support and you'll get that no matter what... even independant ones can be crap - carphone whorehouse don't exactly have the best of records with customer support either.

Skype utterly rox0rz, I don't know what I ever did without it. So much better, I've more or less migrated from MSNM to it now.

I use Skype, but most of the time none of my few skype-contacts are not online. My best friend also uses Skype for calls to Indonesia, and he has only a 56k-dialup connection!