OT, regarding skype and voip

[Bill R.]

Something that a lot of you probably have a much greater of knowledge of.
My customers have been complaining about not being able to get ahold of me and having to leave messages which i don't usually return till that evening or the next day.

So i broke down and got a cell phone, something i said i wouldn't do. I went so far as to port my land line to it and got my wife one with shared minutes between the two. Now i'm wondering about voip and the skype thread that Gayle had posted on here before. A number of my calls during the day are for parts and i'm typically on hold for 5 minutes or more at a time as the parts guys look stuff up.. With my cell phone time plan this won't cut it so I was wondering about getting Viatalk unlimited for the 2 year plan for 179. Unlimited local and long distance, to avoid wasting minutes on the cell phone for parts calls and the inlaws who talk for hours at a time.

Any voip users out there? Thanks.

[mattyb]

Hi Bill. after much pestering by the missus to get skype on I finally did it. The wife, 2 sister and mother all talk every day for hours, further to this the brother in law lives in Chicago and has the only nephew in the family so bills were high. we had told mum and dad in law about skype and web cams etcetc. so finally they get it and then we get it so and so and so on. i can say its a really good idea money wise. free to the states and you can see the others. works most of the time and if you are already paying for an internet connection its $10-20 bux for a decent headset and away you go!

Now and then its a bit crap but what the hell its free! takes 3 minutes to set up. what would be good is if your suppliers had skype. they should encourage all of their repairers to get it and supply the headsets free. remember skype is free to another user but u pay to call any other non skype number. i only use it to the inlaws as my mobile plan in oz is pretty damn good.

[shanek]

I have Vonage. I've had it for a year now and I like it. In Canada its $20 for 500 minutes per month or $40 for unlimited. I think its $20 for unlimited in the US. You have to buy a specific modem which ended up being around $30 with the mail in rebate and there is a $30 activation fee. At first it wasn't great because I had a shared internet connection. My mom said that it sounded like I was using a cb radio sometimes. Now that I have my own internet connection its fine. I would recommend it.

[Tiger]

Sunrocket! I got it for more than 6 months... don't know how long. No problem at all. I paid $99 for the entire year! They don't have that anymore... maybe they will on Father's Day... which is when I got it... Once a while they have $199 for 2 years! But I haven't seen that either.

You will need broadband at your shop to have that VOIP. So why are you phoning your order on parts? Why not do it online like the rest of us?

[Tiger]

$3 per month for 2nd line

[GoldenOne]

My parents are using vonage now at home, I wouldnt recommend it if you are a heavy streaming video user or other high bandwidth users, call quality sometimes tend to be very bad, otherwise its awesome

[SharkmanBMW]

I use Skype now for Long Distance calls, mostly within Canada and for the price it is great.

You MUST have a headset or it sounds like crap.
For the $15, you can't beat it.

But, by the sound of it, you would also need Skype IN to get those calls from your customers, "IN" is where they give you a real number to receive - not only dial out. I don't know the $$ of that package.

[Tiger]

Sunrocket is free to Canada and Puerto Rico for $3 more than Skype plus you just use regular cordless phones.

[MBXB]

Bill,

I've been using VOIP for about 5 years. Started with Vonage for home and Lingo for business. I eventually dropped Lingo cause I didn't really need an extra line. I switched from Vonage to Viatalk about a year and a half ago (cheaper package). My only complaint with Viatalk is one bill that had $2.50 in charges I hadn't made. I'm still working on that one with their CS.

The one caveat with VOIP is your ISP. You'd better have a really dependable one. Once every 5-6 months, Brighthouse decides to do maintenance and I lose service for a few hours. I've also had to "reboot" the entire home network due to electrical fluctuations. I have UPS on all devices now.

Considering I was spending 5 times what I pay for VOIP, it's a good deal.
Definitely a lot cheaper than Ma Bell Service.




Something that a lot of you probably have a much greater of knowledge of.
My customers have been complaining about not being able to get ahold of me and having to leave messages which i don't usually return till that evening or the next day.

So i broke down and got a cell phone, something i said i wouldn't do. I went so far as to port my land line to it and got my wife one with shared minutes between the two. Now i'm wondering about voip and the skype thread that Gayle had posted on here before. A number of my calls during the day are for parts and i'm typically on hold for 5 minutes or more at a time as the parts guys look stuff up.. With my cell phone time plan this won't cut it so I was wondering about getting Viatalk unlimited for the 2 year plan for 179. Unlimited local and long distance, to avoid wasting minutes on the cell phone for parts calls and the inlaws who talk for hours at a time.

Any voip users out there? Thanks.

[Gayle]

Bill,

I've been using VOIP for about 5 years.

An early adopter. I didn't know you were such a technophile Ramon.

[DanDombrowski]

Bill,

One thing to remember is that one of the features of the merger between AT&T with Bellsouth and Cingular is that I believe they are going to offer free calling on any cell phone to any AT&T, Bellsouth, or Cingular customer, including landlines. I might be a bit off on the details, but the fact that I have Cingular and so do most of my friends, I use very few actual billed minutes compared to what I actually talk.

Of course, if I were on the phone all day between 9-5, I'd probably use a whole lot more, but its something to look into if you have Bellsouth/AT&T in your area for landlines.

As for the VOIP, yeah, make sure the ISP is rock solid, other than that, I know lots of people that use it.