From: www.quickstartvoip.com

Free Internet phone service lets you to make free long distance calls over the Internet in three different flavors. The first enables you to make calls from one phone to another as long as both are connected to broadband lines. The second allows you to make calls from one computer to another and the third makes calls possible from a computer to a traditional phone.

But, there are limitations to free services. Let’s take a look.

Phone-to-phone service providers require that you purchase their telephone adaptor (or ATA). As long as you are calling other people who have purchased the same equipment, the call is free. PhoneGnome is one such service. The PhoneGnome adaptor costs about $119. You literally plug it in to your broadband connection and to your regular phone, it configures itself, and you are good to go. You can start calling other PhoneGnome users anywhere for free. You don’t have to switch phone numbers or change telephone companies. Vonage, Packet8, AT&T CallVantage, and others you may have heard of follow the same model.

PC-to-PC service providers allow users to make free calls from one PC to another. Both parties need a PC with an Internet connection and some software easily downloaded from the Net. However, for a call to ring through, both parties have to be online at the same time and have the same, or at least compatible, software. By adding voicemail to a PC-to-PC service though, callers can leave messages even when you’re not online. Unfortunately, voicemail may or may not be free.  Skype, Gizmo Project, and FWD are three typical PC-to-PC services.

PC-to-phone services let you to call a regular phone numbers for free. However, you may be restricted to the locations that you can call or the length of the call. VoipBuster, for example, provides free calls from your PC to landline phones in about 30 countries. The restrictions are a little bit complex, but free is free…Lucky for us, the bigger software-based phone companies are trying hard to entice users so there’s also a current wave of promotions trumpeting free calls to landline phones. Skype for example offers free calls to any phone within North America until the end of the year. Gizmo offers free calls to phones in 60 countries as long as both parties maintain an active Gizmo Project account.

In all of these cases, free Internet telephone services make money by selling credits for calling minutes to landline phones or mobiles, long distance destinations, or phone numbers not on the same VOIP service. Rates are low, however, and you can expect to save significantly over traditional long distance companies. For regular phone users to call you on your free Internet phone account, you must “buy” or subscribe to a conventional phone number. Most services allow you to buy a phone number in different locations, so if your family is in the UK and wants to phone you regularly, you can buy a local UK number that they can call for free or inexpensively.

Truphone is a UK software developer that has just released free VOIP software for Nokia E series cell phones. Mobile calls are free forever to other Truphone users and, until the end of the year, free to landline phones as well. For Truphone to work, you must have Internet access to a Wi-Fi network, which means your home, coffee shops, and public access points, among other places.

The company also resides on an all organic farm in Kent, UK, which I think is kind of cool. Their web site is well documented from a user point of view, so if you’re thinking of giving it a try, click the Help tab and have a look the Frequently Asked Questions and How-to-Guides.

Also read Tom Keatings review of Truphone software.

In an announcement today, UK-based Truphonelaunches free calling from mobile Truphone customers in the US to landlines everywhere (well, 40 countries worldwide actually). This program is an extension of their UK launch promotion and will be in effect until the end of June. So if you really want give a great mobile VOIP application a whirl, now’s your chance. US customers have always been able to talk to other Truphone users for free but now they can call regular landlines too.

You can download Truphone for your Nokia handset here:
http://www.truphone.com/downloads/downloads.tru

Watch a YouTube video of this press release here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK9wuSFoSqQ

And finally, read the whole press release:

March 27th 2007 – Orlando, FL & London, UK - Owners of Wi-Fi-equipped Nokia smartphones will be able to make free international calls from the USA to landlines in 40 countries throughout April, May and June, mobile internet telephony pioneer Truphone announced today. The announcement extends and enlarges Truphone’s current price promotion [ending on March 31st], during which customers have been able to make free mobile Voice over IP (VoIP) calls across the USA and Canada.

“We’re delighted to be making it so attractive for people to try internet telephony on their mobile handset, instead of being tied to their computer,” said James Tagg, Truphone’s CEO. “The convenience of a normal, mass market cellular handset and free international calls is an unbeatable combination for the consumer.”
Countries to which any on-net Truphone user worldwide may now make free calls to landlines include China (landlines and mobiles), Mexico (Guadalajara, Mexico City and Monterrey), Russia (Moscow and St. Petersburg) and most European Union countries.

Tariffs to some paid-for numbers may have changed from the previous promotional period. Truphone’s full tariff document is available at www.truphone.com.

Under the terms of the new promotion, free Truphone calls can be made to the following countries (applies to Truphone calls to landlines only, unless otherwise stated): Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil (Rio de Janeiro & Sao Paulo only), Canada, Chile, China (Landline and Mobile), Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Guam, Hong Kong (Landline & Mobile), Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Korea (South), Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico (Guadalajara, Mexico City & Monterrey only), Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama City, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia (Moscow Central & St Petersburg only), Singapore (Landline & Mobile), Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, US Virgin Islands and USA (landline & mobile).

About the Truphone service
Truphone enables Wi-Fi equipped mobile phones to make 100% VoIP calls at either zero or very low cost to the caller, by using the SIP standard and the Internet to route network traffic, rather than traditional mobile phone networks. Truphone-to-Truphone and Truphone-to-SIP number calls are always free, with Truphone calls to other numbers charged at cheaper rates than those charged by mobile operators and often at lower cost than even a conventional fixed line.
There is no monthly subscription, no inbound charges and billing is via pre-pay. Sign-up and top up are done via the web site. Customers get Truphone by downloading a small piece of free software over the air to their phone. When a Truphone-equipped handset is not in Wi-Fi range it reverts to being a normal mobile phone, with calls routed over GSM as usual.

I’m a few days behind on this one (see VoIP Watch and VoIP and Gadgets), but Laptop magazine is giving away a few Skype Wi-Fi phones and router bundles. To qualify you’ve got to tell them the craziest place you want to set up a Wi-Fi connection and make a Skype call.  Sign up here…

I’m trying to get into Gizmo. Gizmo Project is a free Internet telephone (or softphone) that lets you make free or low cost phone calls on the Internet. With Skype, you are limited to calling fellow Skypers. With Gizmo, you can call other Gizmo members for free, as well as GoogleTalk users, Jabber users, and SIP phone numbers. Unlike Skype, which relies on a proprietary or closed network, Gizmo users are free to contact any Internet phone number on an open SIP network. 

With Gizmo, calls to regular landline phones and mobiles are subject either to very low rates, or a complicated free call plan that has something to do with calling registered Gizmo members who don’t happen to be online but who normally ARE online AND active Gizmo users. I’m being a bit cheeky here, but free calls really are a good thing in any form.

But as for using it, I’ve had a few hiccups which suprised me. First, I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was doing and imported my whole Outlook address book into it. Many entries have no phone numbers, so I ended up with a pretty useless list. The only way to delete the entries is to right-click each contact individually and click Delete. Or, log into my sipphone.com account and delete them from there. Both methods take a long time. Yes, I should have payed more attention but I think I was on autopilot.

For folks like me, a pop up or note in the dialog box that says “Some of your Outlook contacts do not include telephone number information. Do you want to continue?” would have been helpful. Or better yet, why not give me the option to import only those contacts with the phone number field filled in. I mean, I can’t remember which Outlook contacts have a phone number attached and which don’t until I look it up in Outlook.

Then, adding contacts using the Contacts > Search for member command didn’t seem to work. Before I lost my mind I upgraded to the newest Gizmo version and that fixed the problem.

These aren’t big issues, but it definitely took me more than 10 minutes to make my first call. Many of the opinions I’ve read seem to indicate that Gizmo is the favoured choice. Is it because it is the anti-Skype or is it easier to use? I’ll let you know when I’ve used it more.

Reprinted with permission from: www.quickstartvoip.com

In order to use VoIP, both parties need a broadband connection. This is a high-speed Internet, or broadband connection usually provided by a cable or DSL modem. Broadband modems are usually used to connect computers to the Internet, but in the case of VoIP, computers are not necessary.

The simplest form of VoIP is a computer-to-computer voice connection. All that is required for this type of connection is a computer, a headset consisting of earphones and microphone, and VoIP software. Most software packages are free and allow you to connect to any computer running the same software. There is no charge for this type of connection and calls can be made to anywhere in the world.

VoIP software can also be used to connect to land-line phones — that is, phones which are not connected directly to the Internet. This type of call is usually not free but the cost is quite a bit lower than what your telephone company charges. Some VoIP services also allow you to make calls to cellular phones.

The only time that both parties need a particular VoIP software package is when they are making computer-to-computer calls. Parties receiving land-line or cellular calls do not need any extra equipment or software.

VoIP Transmissions

VoIP is based on digital data transmission. The first step in any VoIP call is to convert the analog signal of the human voice into digital data. This is done within an Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) that divides an analog signal into discrete steps which are represented by numbers. The next step is to compress the audio data using a codec (enCOder/DECoder) which significantly reduces the amount of digital data while maintaining audio quality.

The compressed digital data can now be sent over the Internet. The data stream must be divided into packets which, besides containing the audio data, also have information concerning their destination and their place in the data stream.

All data that is sent over the Internet is encapsulated in ‘layers’ which aid in its proper delivery. For example, web pages may use the Internet Protocol (IP) network layer to specify destination and origin addresses, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) transport layer to create a connection between two computers and the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as an application layer to allow the Web browser to display the web page correctly.

Most VoIP uses a transport layer called User Datagram Protocol (UDP) which is faster than TCP. A commonly used application layer is Real-time Transmission Protocol (RTP) — originally developed for delivering audio and video over the Internet. RTP provides information about the sequence of the data packets so they can be reconstructed in the correct order at their destination.

RTP also has the ability to drop packets if they do not arrive within a certain amount of time. This is necessary for telephone conversations because if the telephone software waited for every packet of information to arrive before reassembling it there would be unacceptable delays in the audio stream.

Even though some of the packets are dropped, there is usually still enough information to make the conversation legible. The number of packets that will be dropped depends on the speed of your Internet connection in the distance between the two parties.

Once the voice data has arrived at its destination, it is reassembled in the correct order and converted back from digital to analog.

 

Hi and welcome to my blog about VOIP, voice over IP, Internet phone, broadband telephone, or whatever you feel inclined to call it. This is NOT a blog about women, or even necessarily about women who use VOIP services–I mean how boring is that. I called it The VOIP Girl because well I’m a gal. And I want to write about this voice over ip. That’s about it. What really prompted me to get going however, is the fact that there are few women commentators on this subject. I’m curious to see if my perspective will be any different.

I want to write about how consumers (that’s you and me) are doing using VOIP.  I don’t necessarily care about IPOs, who’s buying who, and all that insider industry stuff. There are tons of blogs out there talking about all that. In fact I would say that is mostly what you’ll find when you look for VOIP commentary in the blogosphere. It’s great stuff, but really I’m interested in how ordinary folks are using Vonage, Skype, Gizmo, etc., and how is the free stuff stacking up against heavy hitter paid services.

Thanks for stopping by.

Leanne Tremblay
VOIPGirl

Hi and welcome to my blog about VOIP, voice over IP, Internet phone, broadband telephone, or whatever you feel inclined to call it. This is NOT a blog about women, or even necessarily about women who use VOIP services–I mean how boring is that. I called it The VOIP Girl because well I’m a gal. And I want to write about this industry. That’s about it. What really prompted me to get going however, is the fact that there are no women commentators on this subject. I’m curious to see if my perspective will be any different.

I want to write about how consumers (that’s you and me) are doing using VOIP.  I don’t necessarily care about IPOs, who’s buying who, and all that insider industry stuff. There are tons of blogs out there talking about all that. In fact I would say that is mostly what you’ll find when you look for VOIP commentary in the blogosphere. It’s great stuff, but really I’m interested in how ordinary folks are using Vonage, Skype, Gizmo, etc., and how is the free stuff stacking up against heavy hitter paid services.

You may already know that I’m a relatively new PhoneGnome user, but so far I’ve been quite impressed with what this playing card-sized box gives me. When I spoke with David Beckenmeyer a few weeks ago he hinted that some great updates were in the pipe designed to really expand the PhoneGnome community. Ta-da…introducing PhoneGnome 2.0.

Today PhoneGnome 2.0 is available and I encourage you to read all about it on the PhoneGnome Blog page. Here, David works through what he and his team found were the biggest objections to PhoneGnome and how the company overcomes them.

Here’s a summary of what PhoneGnome 2.0 offers:

-Web activated calling: PhoneGnome uses your web browser to set up calls between two phones so there’s no software, microphones, headsets or other devices required. To use web activated calling, you must be a registered PhoneGnome user. Reigistration on the PG site is free and calls to other registered users are also free.

-Free PhoneGnome software: Download free software to use your PC or laptop as a fully-functioning telephone. Headset/speakers and microphone required.

-Original PhoneGnome box now a new lower price: a great deal at $59.00.

 

From: www.quickstartvoip.com

Voice over the Internet phone service is no longer an exclusive preserve of techies. Scores of telecom companies, cable companies and young entrepreneurs have set up VoIP services.

Each one claims to offer extra features and benefits. So how do you decide?

If price/cost is your most important deciding factor, VOIP comparison sites are great. They extract all the rate info and display it in a handy chart. Voipreview.org is a good example. Click here to compare the VOIP phone service and prices being charged by different providers.

The services that you should take a close look at are basic services, advanced services, voice mail, faxes, call blocking, web management, special calling, and customer service.

The most common services being offered by VoIP providers under the different service heads are:

1. Basic Features: Call forwarding, international call forwarding, caller id by number, caller id by name, call-waiting, call-waiting caller id, disable call waiting, distinctive ringing, repeat dialing, return dial and three-way calling.
2. Advanced Features: Call Transfer, conference bridging, simultaneous ringing, sequential ringing, secondary virtual phone number, additional service lines, toll-free numbers (incoming), MS Outlook integration and softphone support.
3. Voice Mail: Retrieval of voicemail from telephone handset, phone number for external retrieval, retrieval via web interface and receiving of voice mail via e-mail
4. Fax Functionality: Support outgoing/incoming faxes, receive faxes via voice mail, and a dedicated fax line.
5. Call blocking/filtering: Block outgoing international calls, block outgoing 1-900 calls, block incoming anonymous calls, do not disturb notice. This also includes blocking of telemarketing calls or selective blocking and selective forwarding via e-mail of filtered calls
6. Web Management: Modify basic/advanced features, obtain detailed call logs, activate order/cancel features/services, activate click to call facility, and provision of web interface that is compatible with non-IE browsers.
7. Special Calling: 911 Emergency calling, 411 Information, free in-network calls, free calls to external VoIP networks, Cable box/SatTV/Tivo compatibility
8. Customer service: Technical support via telephone, technical support via email, web-based technical support and account management by telephone.