[yasmin]

My cousin is moving downunder from the UK - she and her husband would like to communicate with friends / family on the cheap, via some sort of VoIP.

Do any ISPs offer VoIP packages? (My brother in america has signed up vonage and has a VoIP line which is cheap / free for most countries).

What's skypes connection like between Aus and UK (latency?).

[Discus]

Why not just video talk with MSN? It's free, how do these companies get away with charging people for your own bandwidth? Or do they offer something else?

[PekHyvac]

at home, im with the ISP "internode" and they have whats called nodephone. if you have the right hardware (adsl modem/router with inbuilt voip ports) you can hook up your normal telephone and use internodes network to call pretty much any phone number.

talking from Australia to Canada is cheap (faaaaaaar cheaper than using telstra) and is such good quality you cannot tell the difference between using voip or using the normal telstra service.

so, im sure it would work perfectly fine between aus and uk.


Why not just video talk with MSN? It's free, how do these companies get away with charging people for your own bandwidth? Or do they offer something else? because you can just call up any telephone number, doesn't matter if they have the internet or not.

[Discus]

at home, im with the ISP "internode" and they have whats called nodephone. if you have the right hardware (adsl modem/router with inbuilt voip ports) you can hook up your normal telephone and use internodes network to call pretty much any phone number.

talking from Australia to Canada is cheap (faaaaaaar cheaper than using telstra) and is such good quality you cannot tell the difference between using voip or using the normal telstra service.

so, im sure it would work perfectly fine between aus and uk.



because you can just call up any telephone number, doesn't matter if they have the internet or not.

Ah so does it link to a local telephone box over the internet and then make a local call?

[PekHyvac]

as far as i know, no, if you call the person on voip, you can dial their normal telephone number. but they cannot call your voip number, they just call your normal phone as if the voip didnt exist.

apparently they are working on it, but im not sure how far off it is.

if however theres 2 people on voip, its completely free as its just internet traffic, and you can call each others voip #

[yasmin]

Cheers!

[Karpattaisp]

but they cannot call your voip number, I get incoming calls on my VOIP, with iinet. Only difference with a landline is the dial tone and the cost.