Edward C. Baig: Personal Tech - Net calling service Skype: Simple, free, not perfect
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VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, may be geek speak for calls routed through cyberspace. But for many consumers, VoIP translates into ever-cheaper and sometimes feature-rich telephone alternatives. Consider the Skype service I've been testing. It lets members talk free from one computer to another.
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Software radio could offer an elegant solution to a vexing problem: how to have a single handset communicate across multiple networks.
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Skype&#39;s free Internet telephony software works with Siemens phones via the Gigaset M34 USB adapter, an open interface adapter that is plugged into the USB connection point of a users&#39; PC.
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You may have seen ads for services offering cheap &#39;&#39;Internet phone calls,&#39;&#39; or heard someone bragging about how little they pay for long distance because they have an Internet phone, and wondered what they were talking about.
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Handset allows Skype users to make free Internet calls and send IM messages to each other while on the move.
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Low cost and flexibility are selling points for the open-source VoIP software, but is it right for your shop?
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MacCentral - Internet service provider (ISP) EarthLink Inc. on Tuesday announced the launch of EarthLink Free Online Calling, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service that enables their Mac and PC to make calls over the Internet free of charge. Based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the service works with a Mac or PC equipped with a headset or an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA). Users can make unlimited calls to other SIP users, and can also listen to voicemail via e-mail. The service also offers an online calling log and online account management. ...
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The basic technology is called voice-over-IP and it is referred to as VOIP. Free! Sign up here to receive our SiteWatcher e-Newsletter!
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VoIP moves out of the 'PC peripheral' era Review The concept of the PC-free Skype-supporting DECT phone went straight to the top of our How Did We Survive Without One? list on the first day we used such a device, the Netgear SPH200D - reviewed here. Now, from Singapore-based Aztech, we have the V500DS-S1, another all-singing, all-dancing, Skype'n'DECT phone capable of making calls via either a run-of-the-mill landline or VoiP.â¦
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Company launches new VoIP service that lets Internet phone calls be made through a browser without a heavy client software download.
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11/22/2004. Using your computer and Internet connection to make local and long distance calls has been getting a lot of attention lately.
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(InfoWorld) - On Monday evening, my wife reached me on my mobile phone. She was spending a long weekend with her family in Maine. "I've called our home phone several times," she said. "And I keep getting a busy signal." That night, I didn't think twice about the phone problem. We have been VoIP customers for more than a year, and flaky service has been standard operating procedure. I reset my VoIP converter box and crossed my fingers. Then, on Tuesday, when the problems persisted, I called my VoIP provider, SunRocket, and got the message that the company was no longer taking tech support and sales calls. That's not good. Many free-market analysts and large telecom providers have hailed this as a new era of competition. It's a wonderful new world where your VoIP provider can cut off your home phone service without warning. This week, SunRocket went belly up without any communication to its 200,000 customers. SunRocket had been providing both my home and my home office phone service. I could charitably say that phone service since Monday evening has been intermittent. In reality, phone service has been mostly dead with occasional spurts of dial tone. Now, when business associates try to call my home office, they get either a busy signal, or they get one ring and a hang-up. I'm trying to switch my home and office numbers to Vonage, but they say it could take up to 10 days for the switch to happen. When I first heard about SunRocket more than a year ago, it seemed like a good solution to large monthly telephone bills. The local incumbent phone service was charging about $60 a month for unlimited local and long distance. SunRocket offered unlimited local andÂ long distance and even some international calling for $199 a year. The company also offered a second out-of-area-code phone number at no cost. That feature caught my eye because my home office is in suburban Maryland, but most of the people who call me are located in Washington, D.C. My wife and I looked at a savings of more than $500 a year and decided it was time to check out VoIP. The switch was not without problems. Voice quality was spotty at best, particularly when we were talking to someone on a mobile phone. For months, we had problems with frequently dropped calls. We soon became quite familiar with the "not-my-fault" phenomenon. SunRocket blamed the problems on Comcast, our broadband provider. Comcast, of course, blamed SunRocket. (Comcast: We can't guarantee quality of service for third-party applications. By the way, why don't you switch to our voice over IP service -- it only costs double what you're paying now.) After months of experimenting with equipment configuration, we finally got most of the problems ironed out. When it came time to renew our annual subscription, we had mixed feelings, but SunRocket was still significantly cheaper that most alternatives. We paid $199 for a year of service in March. In late June, in a sign of things to come, SunRocket laid off about a quarter of its workforce. The way I look at it, someone owes us about nine months of phone service, but we're not holding our breath. Now, in some ways, this is just a story about a couple hundred thousand VoIP customers who saw their phone service go dead without warning. But there's a larger context here. During the last couple of years, some telecom analysts, free-market think tanks, and telecom carriers have trumpeted a new era of competition. Their argument: Old, monopoly-style regulations aren't needed any more because there's all kinds of competition out there. They say that telecom carriers shouldn't have to share their networks with competitors and broadband providers shouldn't be prohibited from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors because there's all kinds of competition out there. Meanwhile, SunRocket, the second largest independent VoIP provider, has shut down. Vonage, the largest independent VoIP provider, has faced a patent infringement lawsuit from giant competitor Verizon, and its future is uncertain. Verizon contends it owns the patent to the technology that translates VoIP calls and allows them to connect to traditional telephone networks. Wireless phone carriers provide some competition, but the largest two wireless carriers are owned by the two giant telecom carriers. I'm not sure that counts as competition. In the broadband space, there are some indications that one or two new competitors are on the way, but it could take years. Right now, well over 90 percent of the U.S. has at most two broadband providers, the cable company or the telecom carrier. The telecom carriers are fighting against auction rules that would encourage a new broadband provider when a chunk of television spectrum is freed up in early 2009. Elsewhere, broadband customers in other countries, such as Japan and South Korea, pay less for faster service. Japanese customers pay about one-seventh what U.S. customers do per megabit of bandwidth. But few people in D.C. want to talk about the real reasons for this. It's not free-market competition; instead, telecom services in many other countries are highly regulated and subsidized by the government. For some of us, the promise of telecom competition seems a long way off. And, by the way, if you want to find me during the next week, your best bet is probably e-mail.
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(InfoWorld) - Internet phone service provider Skype plans to start charging U.S. and Canadian users $29.95 per year for unlimited calls to regular phones in both countries, as theÂ end of a free trial offer looms. Users who sign up before Jan. 31, 2007 will receive a special rate of $14.95 a year and 100 free minutes of international calling, Skype said in a statement on Wednesday. Any user wishing to continue using Skype to make calls to regular phones or mobile handsets after the free trial expires Dec. 31, but does not want a yearly plan, can pay for SkypeOut at a rate of just 2.1 cents per minute for calls within the U.S. and Canada. Computer-to-computer calls using Skype software will remain free. Skype allows users to make voice and video calls to regular landlines, mobile phones, or PCs over the Internet. The company's popular software can also be used to share files, send instant messages, conduct conference calls, and more. The new plan to start charging users for calls to regular phones comes just six months after Skype launched a free trial of its VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) service in both countries. The company is part of a growing trend of users making voice calls over the Internet at rates far lower than traditional phone companies charge. The plan also pits Skype against other Internet calling carriers, such as Vonage Holdings, which offers a $24.99 monthly package in the U.S. that includes calls to several European countries such as the U.K., Spain and France, as well as extras such as voice mail,Â 911 emergency-dialing, and a free phone adapter. Skype, a Luxembourg company bought by eBay last year, already serves more than 136 million registered users globally, as of the end of September 2006. The company made a name for itself by offering free PC-to-PC calls over the Internet with the aid of its free software.Â New Skype-enabled devicesÂ able to link to the Internet, such as mobile phones able to connect to wireless-LAN networks, continue to become available.
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Internet and mobile test and measurement company Keynote Systems says that VoIP services outperform landline phone systems in call quality, although the technology still has some ground to make up in other areas such as audio delay.
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EarthLink is offering free VoIP calling as an incentive to sign up for its high-speed Internet service. The free service is available to the company&#39;s million-plus broadband customers.
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The day seems to be approaching when free phone service over the Internet will be available on mobile devices everywhere. On Wednesday, mobile phone giant Nokia took a step closer to that day by making Skype&#39;s Internet phone service available on its N800 Internet tablet.
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Pot, dial Kettle eBay's proprietary VoIP service Skype wants the Federal Communications Commission to change its rules on how cellular networks operate.â¦