Been playing about with Internet phones over the last few days and it has kept me busy. Good old reliable Skype seems to be having performance problems and doesn’t do conference calls to well so I was looking at some alternatives. This is one area where the cloud is giving clear benefits with neglible risk. VOIP is a tried and tested technology and has been around for a while now.
Seems there is quite a few of them out there now. Several VOIP providers are looking for our business. Although most are intended for use with handsets and little exchanges most will actually run from your PC, or Mac, as softphones.
Once I’ve found a good working softphone I’ll be switching to save some money. You can even have free phone numbers for your areas and with the providers being worldwide you can save quite a bit if you have family abroad.
If only the government had not cocked up the final loop which means no matter what BT are still in business. If you are unaware, for ADSL, BT hold the rights for the loop into your house. This means unless you can get cable or satellite or can afford Broadband dongles you have to have a BT line. Even if you only want broadband you have to have aBT phone and they are an atrocious organisation to deal with as well. One true leap forward would be to move this work to a more efficient organisation but like the BBC it seems protected.
Anyway, I have cable so I don’t need a BT line. If you have cable then I would consider getting rid of the landline and going VOIP. Although, as usual, there are disadvantages as well. The main one, probably the only, being that with no hardline if you have no power you are unable to make 999 calls. Of course with more mobiles it is less of a problem than it could be.
Anyway, the favourite at the moment is Sipgate. It came recommended by someone I’m working with at the moment. The softphone is actually pretty poor, actually poor does not describe it, but the hardware options look good and the cost savings will be significant. Well worth a try.
Internet phones
Been playing about with Internet phones over the last few days and it has kept me busy. Good old reliable Skype seems to be having performance problems and doesn’t do conference calls to well so I was looking at some alternatives. This is one area where the cloud is giving clear benefits with neglible risk. VOIP is a tried and tested technology and has been around for a while now.
Seems there is quite a few of them out there now. Several VOIP providers are looking for our business. Although most are intended for use with handsets and little exchanges most will actually run from your PC, or Mac, as softphones.
Once I’ve found a good working softphone I’ll be switching to save some money. You can even have free phone numbers for your areas and with the providers being worldwide you can save quite a bit if you have family abroad.
If only the government had not cocked up the final loop which means no matter what BT are still in business. If you are unaware, for ADSL, BT hold the rights for the loop into your house. This means unless you can get cable or satellite or can afford Broadband dongles you have to have a BT line. Even if you only want broadband you have to have aBT phone and they are an atrocious organisation to deal with as well. One true leap forward would be to move this work to a more efficient organisation but like the BBC it seems protected.
Anyway, I have cable so I don’t need a BT line. If you have cable then I would consider getting rid of the landline and going VOIP. Although, as usual, there are disadvantages as well. The main one, probably the only, being that with no hardline if you have no power you are unable to make 999 calls. Of course with more mobiles it is less of a problem than it could be.
Anyway, the favourite at the moment is Sipgate. It came recommended by someone I’m working with at the moment. The softphone is actually pretty poor, actually poor does not describe it, but the hardware options look good and the cost savings will be significant. Well worth a try.