Thread: VOIP

Yes, the good old telephone over the internet thing. I recently changed over to VOIP for my home phone and can now make calls (local, national, and some international) for nothing (well, there's a $10 a month service fee). Calls to cell phones are still charged, but that's nothing new I guess.

The uptake of VOIP in Australia has been limited. A lot of people don't really know it exists, and those that do have to face Australia's weird ISP fixation on capping data use. On top of that, until fairly recently decent internet service has been limited to cities. For example, despite living only 80kms from Brisbane (the Capital city of Queensland) I can still only get ADSL1 (though I've jiggered it so I can get around 16Mbps download speeds now).

Anyway, I'm interested to know whether many of the non-Australians (and Aussies for that matter) on the forum use VOIP? And what kind of hardware/internet do you have? For example, I've got a 16Mbps download/ 1Mbps upload connection with 100Gig a month data limit and I use an AVM Fritz!box 7390 modem/router/dect/voip all in one thingy.

James.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

For example, despite living only 80kms from Brisbane (the Capital city of Queensland) I can still only get ADSL1 (though I've jiggered it so I can get around 16Mbps download speeds now).

Not on Voip but I wanna know how you did that. I'm on ADSL2 with only 5Mbps & I'm only 5kms from the exchange.

Originally Posted by onimaru55

Not on Voip but I wanna know how you did that. I'm on ADSL2 with only 5Mbps & I'm only 5kms from the exchange.

I had a chat with my (non Telstra) ISP one day. The exchange here is ADSL2+ enabled but the company that owns the exchange (whose name rhymes with belstra) does not let their competitors (who rent the exchange off them) utilise that capability. But they can do some jiggery-pokery with "compression algorithms" so that their customers can in fact get ADSL2 line speeds. In my case it worked spectacularly well ,and overnight my internet speed increased around 11-fold.

I'd suggest having a word with whoever your ISP is Oz. I know there are physical limits on speed because of attenuation and other technical things to do with the lines, but perhaps they can do something.

James.

Well, in this part of the country I'm lucky I'm not using tin cans to communicate with. For years I had the only ASDL Service available which was 1.3/550K. Now I have a roaring 6MPBS/8500K. I'm using Ooma VOIP and when I first got it I still had the old service and it just didn't work it was too slow. With my current service outgoing is fine but incoming still has on and off issues with dropped calls or just bad connections. From what I can see you need 10MPBS/1MPBS for a really reliable connection. My only other alternative is Comcast and a cable modem which I'm not about to do.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Well, in this part of the country I'm lucky I'm not using tin cans to communicate with.

Ah yes, here we call those tin cans the Abbott Internet.

I use VOIP occasionally.

The area i live is covered with somewhat ok 4G network. Usually it works well (just checked: 5 Mbps upload/48 Mbps download). Limitless data.
14.95€/month.
However, usually in the summer when there's lot of folks around (tourists, summer residents etc) speeds get really slow or stuck sometimes.

Hi Jimbo, I started using VOIP about 8 years ago, I am with vonage and your Internet speed is more than enough. I think you only need around 100kbs :

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r285...eds-for-Vonage
I live in Canada and with current plan can call 60 countries for free... Or for what I pay monthly, but it is a flat fee, no matter who I call and how long the conversation is. Hope this helps.

James/All,

My VOIP provider has a smart phone app that allows me to use my VOIP number to dial numbers outside my free coverage numbers. A caller ID on the receiving end will have my VOIP number listed.

I use the app to dial any number not covered in my plan. For free. No use of minutes. Pretty neat.