dozy_muppet03

Hi guys,

Thought I would share my phone experience with you as it something I have battled with over the years in Canada, trying to make things better and cheaper for my family and relatives.

I use a company called Vonage which provides me with a Canadian Phone number, hooks into my broadband, looks and works just like a regualr phone...its cheaper , but here is the twist for the immigrants of us...You can actually assign secondary numbers to you phone from most if not all dialing areas in the UK. This is extremely handy for the relative as they in my instance call a Local Norwich 01603 ****** number , but my primary phone in Canada rings and obviously works in Canada if anyone calls my 905 number etc...


rgds



John

www.vonage.co.uk or www.vonage.ca

cneldred

pretty much the same as Skype then. You just get a number for UK, so people can call you on it at national call rate. However, if they have Skype aswell then it is free.

dozy_muppet03

No, not really its strictly Voip so has the total look and feel of a real phone...I tried skype, but no comparison..so many features it would take me a while to jot down.


rgds,


John

Ben W Bell

Skype can be used strictly VOIP, and is a VOIP app. Once we get to Canada I'm getting a Skype phone and just plugging it into my router. Free calls to all Skype users, people can call my Skype In accounts (I'll set up a Canadian and a UK one). Cheaper than the selling VOIP services.

rae

Not sure if this is what you are after but you can buy phone cards for £5, £10 and £20 in the UK at any post office. You are given an 0800 number to dail and the cost comes off yous phone card. They have deals on each month for different countries you can get free calls 12 noon - 12 midnight thoughout the month on a saturday. At the moment they are doing unlimited talk time for only 15p all day on Sundays through July 07, Oct 07 and Jan 08 for Canada. My friend uses them to call my mate in australia and she said they are well worth the money. So get your family down to the post office before they all close . Hope this helps. Clare

dozy_muppet03

I did try skype, but found the quality very poor and the app crashed alot but the biggest factors were I didn't want to complicate my telecommunications at home with different phone systems, but also wanted to have a secondary number attached to my primary as if I was still in Norwich which is also something you cannot do on Skype..

rgds


John

dozy_muppet03

Does sound good Clare but not exactly, My UK phone number is accessible to my Canadian phone so all my family in Norwich can call my 01603 number for free and my phone in canada rings.

rgds

John

Ben W Bell

Never had a problem with the Skype quality. Never had the app crash either. Occassionally it takes up way to much resources, but if you're not running it off a PC but direct as a phone that doesn't matter.

I'm unsure what you mean with regards to your last point, you can have as many phone numbers with Skype as you like and are willing to pay for. I'll have a Canadian number and add a UK number to it as well. Perfectly doable, just 50 Euros per year per number, as many as you like.

Atlantic Xpat

Vonage is interesting but not available everywhere in Canada. You also need to keep a landline for 911 if nothing else so as a strictly Canadian thing I don't believe it makes that much sense. However for trans-atlantic and particularly assigning a second number for UK local calls it sounds like a good deal.

I use Skype a lot and have noticed more problems recently with it crashing. One benefit (apart from being free) over VOIP is the video conferencing capability. This has made a huge difference to my aged parents back home!

dbd33

My parents-in-common-law have Vonage. It's usable but at the level of, say, Bell Mobility; about a third of the calls result in one party being able to hear the other but not the other way around. "I'm sorry I'm using Vonage" will soon be as common a phrase as "I'm sorry, I'm on a cell". Fortunately, with Vonage, you don't lose the call when the house goes under a bridge or passes a hill.

Atlantic Xpat

It's all a bit academic out here where they still talk about that Marconi fellah who did his talking across the atlantic from signal hill.

dbd33

Most of my incoming calls these days are from non-duplexed phones in India; if one person is speaking they can't hear the other. I can just imagine if I had Vonage, trying to explain that I know the caller can't hear me because it's not working, rather than not being able to hear me for the usual reason of not being shutted upped!

cov-canuck

We've done the same. We were disgusted by Bell's policy of charging a huge deposit if you have no credit history with Bell themselves, and since we rarely make outgoing calls it made sense to get Vonage. It's also free calls within Canada, to the US and to the UK, so when I do get the urge to speak to my family somewhere in whatever country they happen to be in, it doesn't cost me anything. OH has a weekly phone call to his mum (her request, not his), but she can't seem to grasp that it's free. She'll say 'let me ring you back', calls the 0121 number and pays for a local call instead of our free one.

We started with Skype, it was OK, but where we stayed for the first few months (my brother's guest room) we had a flaky net connection and my brother had a habit of unplugging our wireless router when he felt like it, usually mid-way through a call.

pinzo

I have to agree with you dbb. My brother got into the Vonage thing as it was 'free' to call England but we soon found out that during the phone call you would get this very annoying buzzing every few minutes down the line and nobody could speak until it stopped. It was commonplace for my brother to say "Its because I'm using Vonage"
End result....he cancelled it and went back to his old Bell phone to call home.


However phoning England to Canada, I use OneTel. You get a code you dial into your home phone and then get knock down prices to call Canada. I pay the £1 per month to get 1p per.min all day every day. My monthly bill is only a couple of quid each month. Highly recommended for long distance calls.

dozy_muppet03

Thanks for letting me know pinzo and sorry you had problems, for me I have to say best thing since slice bread, I do have 8MB ADSL and did throttle the bandwidth for QOS so maybe that was good on my part. Being anywhere in the world and having your voicemail travel with you and emailed to you is I have to be honest amazing and cant see myself switching back.

rgds

john