Can VOIP compete with Telecom providers?

[mike557]

BT are offering free unlimited evening and weekend calls as part of your line rental. In addition you can also call 0870 and 0845 numbers during your free period. For a further £4.95 they will provide unlimited anytime calls.

When you compare this to a betamax / voip provider you get 300 free minutes over a floating 7 day period. The free destinations vary but 0870 & 0845 numbers are always excluded.

To use voip you need broadband which for adsl users means you must have a phone line - so is voip worth all the trouble?

My view is - voip should be seen as a 'secondary' service. Instead of someone paying for two telephone lines (and broadband), they pay for broadband, a line and use voip instead of the second telephone line.

If you need to make more than 300 minutes of calls over a 7 day period then BT is more beneficial.

If you want to make international calls then voip could save you a lot of money.

If you call 0870/0845 numbers then BT is cheaper.

The downside of BT is that you can only make one call at a time where as voip allows as many simultaneous calls as you wish.

So is it worth moving over to VOIP?
What do you think?

For me the answer is a definate yes - I have a PABX, with that comes the flexability of sending calls over BT during the free time and routing over betamax during chargeable period.

I have remote extensions - my father (about 30 miles away), friends in London and Spain. We can call each other and they can dial out through my system.

For the average home user, sticking with BT is probably more ecconomic. You should use a breakout service for your International/mobile calls and BT for the rest.

So what are your thoughts?

[PaphosAL]

Mike- I make loads of calls to 0845 / 0870 numbers for free on voipstunt, m8.

The secret is to go the the www.SayNoto0870.com site first, where 99.9% of the time, you'll find a std landline number (or even 0800 number) for the company that's trying to rip you off by making you call them on their 0870 or 0845 number!

Cheers- AL

[mike557]

Agreed - Al
Although I do know of a few numbers that are not on saynoto0870
If you are with BT you dont need to lookup the numbers just dial.
As you know I am an extremely strong supporter of voip but looking at it from the average BT users perspective, is it worth the hassle?

Note I am talking BT and not rip off Virgin. Tiscali at £14.95 with broadband and phone line is not so bad although it is only free weekend calls.

[PaphosAL]

But VM will have to come up with a similar strategy to BT very quickly, surely? Or they'll be uncompetitive and see their churn rates rise? The very last thing they want, on the fixed Telephony customers front!!

Come on, you Virgin Media spies- give some feedback to Richie:

• Similar package to BT- but 'just' £3-99 pcm
• No 60 minute cut-off

Cheers- AL

[mike557]

I admire your optimism Al - but the simple answer is why should they?

People using VM telephone service tend to be locked in with their TV package/Broadband deals. Cancelling telephone service normally means an increase for the other packages.

The average customer 'feels' that they are getting a good deal when in fact the prices of the bundled packages are actually more expensive than individual packages elsewhere !!

Also dropping the phone service would probably mean an installation of a new phone line by BT (cost about £120), so dropping everything and switching does not sound like good value - although it is well worth switching in the long term.

Example
I decided that VM were charging too much for phone & broadband so dropped them - the costs were.

New line installation £120 but discounted to £29 if agree to 18 month service.
Broadband - free install and router with o2 at about £7.50 per month for 8 Meg (with mobile PAYG) plus £70 cashback and first 2 months free i.e. BB costs about £5 for the year !!!

Line rental with BT/VM are about the same so then we are down to call charges. BT provide unlimited evening and weekend calls - VM dont

When taking up the unlimited offer BT force you into a renewable 12 month contract (very convenient as I was on 18 months)

I now have uncapped broadband and do get 8 Meg (could have been 11Meg - if I paid for 16Meg service) download and 1 Meg upload. This is far better than VM's broadband offer.

So overall I am pleased I swapped, I have benefited and the benefits are increasing.

In the business world, VM are losing business but you have to look at the income they are getting currently and the 'loss' if they try to compete. If the churn is acceptable then I cannot see prices changing.

Voip is certainly the best option for customers of VM as using systems like 18185 or 18866 cost more via VM.

Is voip beneficial for a BT customer..... maybe...... for reasons stated above.

I was a happy VM customer and had been with them since they launched BB (my area was first in UK). The service was reliable although technical support was attrocious. I was rarely capped but it was on the increase. I always used Voip because of their expensive call charges.

Happy for VM customers to chip in here - and give their feelings

[mrdude]

BT's deal might be good if you are constantly on the phone.

However most of my family are on sipgate - so sipgate to sipgate calls are free and I have a local number as do they.

Voipcheap calls are made to other UK areas & a few mates in Germany and Norway - when not calling the family on sipgate.

I never go over 300 minutes - but If I did they would be mostly to sipgate numbers (which are unlimited & free)

I don't pay any line rental and only need to add credit about once or twice a year.

So for me my average monthly phonebill over a year probably is around £2.

I can't see BT or VM beating that - also if for some reason voip companies went bankrupt tomorrow I would just create my own sip server (using software I have) and use a free dydns service to allow my family to connect to my service.

VOIP is definately the cheapest option in the longrun - not only that but with the likes of xbox360 (using messanger and a webcam), eyebeam, bria etc - people can talk to each other for free and have a video conversation for free without having to use VOIP.

TBH IMHO the days of landlines as we know it are going to end sooner or later and sending data (voice or video) is the way everything will be in the furute.

[mike557]

As I said

Voip is certainly the best option for customers of VM

Although you may find that you get a cheaper deal having a phone line (VM expect to make money on your calls).

If voip provider goes bust then using something like E.164 would be worth setting up - they do number to sip address translation. Once registered with them, they verify you have the number. If sipgate or betamax close, the translation would still work

[mrdude]

Originally Posted by mike557

As I said
Although you may find that you get a cheaper deal having a phone line (VM expect to make money on your calls).

If voip provider goes bust then using something like E.164 would be worth setting up - they do number to sip address translation. Once registered with them, they verify you have the number. If sipgate or betamax close, the translation would still work

Actually That thread you posted on E.164 looks very interesting and quite neat. I am using Icewarp mail server software - with (ALL the plugins) so I can use that in windows to have my own mail, sip, sms server etc. Looking at your post I could probably use that service as well with that software. BUT....

I was looking at getting a NAS - QNAP TS-209 Pro II and fitting it with 2 terabyte drives and using that to run joomla, php, mysql and an nzb client but because it's linux based software it can also be used to run asterix. Apparently it's cheap to run (cheaper than a pc) and as my upload speed is reasonable I was gonna host a site for family members so we can share music and photos as it has ftp and http download features (and also stream mp3's to there dreamboxes). So if I could get all this working on one box without the need for a pc and use asterix on it and set up E.164 this would be good and voip companies would no longer be required.


PS. having a phone line means you still need to pay for line rental from VM etc, with voip you don't have that expense to it's still cheaper IMHO.

Here's a wiki on using the qnap to run asterix:
http://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/Asterisk

[mike557]

Been there done that .... almost

I think you would be much happier using a netbook as I have just done for Asterisk and everything else. It is low power and works really well for Asterisk/dhcp/tftp servers etc.

I used to run Joomla on my main VDR server, but you have to keep up with security updates etc etc. Easiest option for Joomla (which is an excellent Content Management System) is to go for some cheap web hosting package on Ebay. Prices from about 99p for a year !!! They are not ultra reliable but for home use and that price they are worth it.

You are not using your own bandwidth and have so many packages to play with all very easily installed.

I do run my own hosting service because 99p services are not suitable for even small commercial use.

Anyway this has drifted off the subject

Agreed about not paying VM line rental if you just use voip - but most VM packages are £10 more if you do not take the line so most customers just have it.

VMs' new 50Meg service is £28 if you have a line and £38 without
They are at least saying that they are looking at increasing the upload speed (about time) which could make home servers more popular.

At the moment I find that 1,265Kbps upload on O2 works very well when using G.729 codecs in Asterisk. At least it is double what VM were providing.

If you do want to try setting up Asterisk on the NAS, be very carefull about codec choices. You will probably find that the box could only deal with 1 call at a time, provided transcoding is not taking place. With transcoding you could suffer from robotic/chirpy voice.

Everyone should register their voip telephone numbers with www.e164.org. It allows Asterisk servers to check and connect directly with the voip device instead of making a call via the PSTN. If everyone used voip and everyone registered on e164 then voip would destroy all telephone companies (both voip and analogue)......

[PaphosAL]

Nooby question: where does one d/l this site's Security Certificate to on one's PC, Mike, please?