Andy posts long and loud on AT&T’s new Unity Plan: unlimited free calling between AT&T mobile and landline customers for a fixed price per month.  While the plan excludes mobile roaming, international calling, and CallVantage services (the AT&T VoIP offering), he thinks they will be blended into the mix soon enough. This should prove troubling for companies like Vonage. In fact, why use Vonage when I can have unlimited mobile AND landline calling for a fixed price on one monthly bill?

What folks are using VOIP for…FierceVOIP reports that last year over 614 billion national long distance minute were served, compared with 382 billion local and 82 billion international LD (iLocus report).

Don’t you get that feeling? Andy Abramson lists his six reasons why Cisco and Apple will play nicely together in the end. He’s probably right. Hey, maybe I hope he’s right…a  Linksys box that plays iTunes? Hmmmm. I think those execs must get a kick out of everyone getting in a lather over this.  

I was following the thread started by PhoneBoy and SightSpeed’s Peter Csathy about the obvious advantages of communicating with someone in person. Facial expressions, hand gestures, and body language are huge non-verbal cues that say a lot. But, when face time isn’t an option, then real-time video calling (using SightSpeed of course) is the next best thing. Peter himself runs his Berkeley-based  team from San Diego, and couldn’t do so effectively without SightSpeed. PhoneBoy agrees and thinks that SightSpeed rocks, “Almost like being there”.

But, I’m curious to know if the folks who use SightSpeed today are making spontaneous or pre-planned calls. I confess that when I use it, it’s usually a planned thing. I’ll email or text someone and say, “OK to SightSpeed you now?”, or I pre-arrange a call at a certain time.

My guess is that live video from the desktop is still so new that people hesitate at “surprising” someone with a video call. Unless of course you’re The SightSpeed Guy. You may want to check out his latest blog post. He’s wearing a tie. Must be the staff Christmas lunch.

Laptop magazine has a review of Fring, Talkster, Nimbuzz and Barablu. These four apps turn your good old cell phone into an internet phone and more. Of the four, Nimbuzz is new to me and Barablu I haven’t tried yet. Fring and Talkster I’ve used and quite like, although I think having a great handset makes all the difference. I wouldn’t bother with any of these if I didn’t have the Nokia N80i to test with.

The review does a good job of capturing the typical setup process for all applications, and gives both the pros and cons of usability, call quality and the like. Author Joanna Stern points out that “regardless of which mobile VoIP service you use, you’re going to need an unlimited data plan, which costs anywhere from $5.99 per month (T-Mobile) to $24.99 (Cingular)”.

Edited May 17, 2007:

James Wanless of Talkster clarified for me that their service in fact does not require a data plan:

Thanks James

Is VOIP a generational thing? When I told my parents about my great scheme to use VOIP for my business line and long distance calling, Mom gave me that worried look that says “Are you sure that’s not illegal?” You should try it, I cry! Vonage, my service of choice at the time, was only $19.95 a month. A simple calculation on my phone bill told me I was spending more that that on long distance every month, so it seemed a no brainer.

Then Dad says, why don’t you just use 10-10-YAK? Only 5 cents a minute.

That’s what my parents use. YAK is a dial-around service you can use for long distance calling. The charges appear on your regular phone bill so there’s no subscriber contract to deal with.

But Dad (I’m deflated now), YAK isn’t VOIP, and VOIP is COOL. VOIP is the WAVE of the FUTURE…OK well whatever.

Now I don’t know if it’s just my parents, but the idea of only paying for what they use on a regular old telephone makes total sense to them. Hooking up a Vonage phone adaptor to their PC and broadband modem to make phone calls does not.

But my Dad did get me thinking about this question of unlimited calling vs. pay as you go. If you ask the folks at SIPphone Gizmo Project, they’ll say that unlimited plans won’t save you money. Only paying for minutes you actually use will.

“A calling plan that involves unlimited calling is almost never in the best interests of the consumer. When you just pay for what you consume, you end up paying far less.”

It grieves me, but lets do the math. At 5 cents a minute, I would have to spend about 400 minutes calling long distance calls (6 1/2 hours) to break even with my $20 plus tax Vonage charges for unlimited calling. I spend way less than 400 minutes a month talking long distance, so (a) I was paying way to much at my telco before for long distance, and (b) I can do way better than Vonage.

Most VOIP long distance rates are around 2 cents a minute or less, so for me paying as I go makes sense (400 minutes at 2 cents/minute is $8)!

 

On Monday, Gizmo Project intro’d Gizmo Call, a super easy way to make calls from your browser. They say no traditional software download and installation is required, but you do have to install a Flash plugin (that’s kind of software isn’t it?) But, to get people using it, they’re offering five FREE minutes of calling anywhere. If you register with Gizmo, you get 10 minutes free. After your 10 minutes are up, you switch over to CallOut credits (roughly 2 cents/minute within North America). Pretty darn cheap.

See these other reviews from:

Andy Abramson, VoipWatch

Garrett Smith, Smith on VOIP

GigaOm, Om Malik

Luca Filigheddu

Russell Shaw

Here’s some other tips I dug up about using GizmoCall.

- If you are calling another Gizmo user, which is technically a free call anyway, the “timer” will count down and the reset itself to the original value after the call so you won’t be using free minutes for free calls.

- Two-number Caller ID costs $4 per year. Once you’ve paid for this service, make sure you are still logged in and click the Caller ID tab. The page should reload after a few seconds to show the Mobile and Home fields. Enter the numbers (either one or both) you want to use for caller ID.

- To have a call history, you must register with GizmoCall. Registration is free and you receive 10 minutes free when logged in (only 5 minutes when not logged in).

More info about Gizmo Call can be found here.

 

I received a nice note from the SightSpeed Guy to try the SightSpeed video calling and blogging service. There’s been a lot of blog buzz about this product so I was happy to give it a go. (Check out the video blog post from Andy Abramson that got things going and the aftermath according to Dina Kaplan of BlipTV).

I downloaded, installed and made my first test call all in about 9 minutes. Then, “Does my hair really look like that?” Next 5 minutes trying to fix it. Yowza…

Luca F. gets into why businesses must factor click-to-call into their marketing plan to succeed online. I agree.

In fact, I think that click-to-call is turning into a must-have feature for the new VoIP  services and applications you see popping up everywhere.

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.