[QUOTE=Poolguy] That sounds pretty cool, Andrew, but have they not got your credit card details from when you initially deposited your initial 10euros, and will they not simply debit the further hours from that? I hope the VOIP Gods remain with you!

[QUOTE=un-mundo]
Nope

SO far, there is not been a problem, and I don't expect there to be as they advertise that its free. According to the notes in the secure connection, they can only deduct moneies after you say so, and authorise it with passwords and PIN numbers and such. Your credit gets used at a rate of about 10c per minute for the calls to mobiles and that is only money I have paid them... and they are welcome to it. Anything to get away form give more to Telecom

Andrew

Hi

I can honestly say that as a techno dinosaur I haven't understood any of this thread !!!

So can someone explain all this? - am I right that if you have broadband you no longer require a phone at all?? and the calls to people with the same setup are for free?

Does anyone know if you can do this for TV as well?

Thanks for educating us dimwits !!

Skype is only free for calls to other Skype users. If you want it to replace your normal phone then you need to have the ability to make and receive calls from "traditional landlines". This will cost, but the claim is that it is cheaper than BT et al. The problem with Skype is that it requires your PC to be switched on at all times to make and receive calls. The energy costs of this could outweigh the savings. I use a service called Vonage, which costs about £40 to set up and £10 per month to operate. For this you get a cool little box which plugs into your Broadband, into which you plug a normal phone (including wireless) and also your computer. Calls to UK and Eire landlines (my daughter has a boyfriend in Dublin) are included (free) and most international calls are very cheap. Great thing is that if you have broadband in your Spanish property, you can take the box with you when you stay there, and make cheap calls. However, the quality of VOIP services such as Vonage, is still not up to "landlines" but hey who cares if it saves money.
Regards

Kevin

OK, I will try and explain Skype! Basically you go to www.skype.com and it offers you a free download. It takes just a few minutes, but you must have broadband. It asks you to choose a user name (Cptnemo, for example, or your real name). It offers you the chance to make it public (not such a good idea unless you want lunatic unsolicited phone calls, I imagine!). You then get a friend, anywhere in the world, to download Skype also. Via email you exchange user names and then "authorise" each other to be allowed to make contact. You can select whether you want to activate Skype every time you are online, or not. If you are both online at the same time and both have activated Skype, you will see that. One of you can then click on the other person's name. Don headphones and use a mik for best results. The computer will make the ringing tone, the other then clicks to answer. Bingo!

It's also possible to make conference - three or four way calls, but I'll not try and explain that here - at least, not til you've tried the above.

I hope the above description works, it's a while since I used it! It is easy, though, much easier than it sounds, it walks you through it as you download. Good luck!

I read rather an alarming article in the Guardian about a week ago (their media section) that many ISPs were starting to block Vonage as they don't like VOIPs. Apparently they can't block Skype. Or not yet, anyway.

If you're worried about your computer being at risk when you are running skpe then go to this site and it will independently check your computer for you and give you a report. You want the projects section and then scroll down to the shields up section. Then run the tests

http://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?rh1dkyd2

Aha, but how do we know that site isn't rogue and doesn't steal our information, our identity and ultimately, indeed, our lives!

Heh heh .... Mr Paranoid step forward sir

Luckily it was recommended to me by a computer company who know of its origins and recommend it for checking pc security so I'm fairly confident there isn't another Mitzyboy trolling around somewhere .......... or is there ....

I would recommend it. I have used the skype out too which costs a small amount per second depending on the country you call. 2.2 eurocents to uk and spain. this is only if you call a landphone. if you are calling another computer then it is free. we use msn with webcam too and my mum can catch up with the grandchildren weekly and they can see their friends in uk too. quality depends on your webcam too


hope this helps

I only "switch on" skype when I can see via MSN that my cousin is online, we then take turns to ring each other. I also use skype to chat to my Dad locally on his landline, as its far cheaper than BT, put in ten pounds in Jan, have £9:64 today and have made several calls to bt land lines. I think its the bees knees but am somewhat worried by your comment that ISP's may block voip, why would they do this, unless they are worried they will loose to much bandwidth and the system will have a go slow.
Mitzy, hate to tell you but I'm sure there are two of you, one in Sunny Leamington and the other masquerading as you in Alicante, , best get your PC checked

Hi, Kevray. I've managed to dig up the article I was referring to. Sorry but it's a bit long :

"VoIP customers around the world are discovering that their calls cannot be connected because telecom companies are blocking the movement of such traffic across the net. Jane Dudman finds out why"

Thursday April 6, 2006
The Guardian


"Theodore Peckler lives in Monrovia, California, and is one of the 1.5 million people in the US who uses Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems to make cheap phone calls via his cable modem connection. But last year, after five months using the VoIP service from the US provider Vonage without problems, he noticed an abrupt deterioration. "The line was choppy, very choppy and you could not understand any words spoken," he recalls. Puzzled, Peckler ran pingplotter - a program to detect problems such as packet loss and latency (delays in sending over the separate "packets" of internet traffic). It revealed major latency between his cable modem and local internet service provider (ISP).
"I contacted the ISP and was told it did not support third party VoIP," explains Peckler. "Vonage ran a test. It seems the ISP was blocking the cable modem when the Vonage adapter went into use. I ran a test of my own. I ran pingplotter for 10 minutes: no blockage, then I picked up my Vonage phone and placed a call: immediately there was a 100% blockage on the cable modem. This was a continuous loss as long as the phone was used."

Peckler is not alone. Users on VoIP online forums in the US and other countries, including Qatar and Mexico, have been noting similar problems since last year. For while VoIP (often pronounced "voype") might seem like a great deal for the average person, entrenched interests in the telecoms industry see it differently - and are taking action against it.

Consultation

Mindful of what has happened in other countries, the UK telecoms regulator Ofcom took the unusual step in February of announcing that it will look at the growing VoIP market, and report next month on whether new laws are needed to protect it. The consultation document says: "VoIP service providers have expressed concern that their ability to provide a reliable service may be impacted by internet access providers (ISPs) selectively degrading or blocking their VoIP traffic."

Ofcom says it has no evidence this is happening in the UK; only about 500,000 customers use it. But the forecast is for that to rise by 3m in the next six months.

And VoIP blocking happens in other countries, often those where there is still only a single telecoms company. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, national carrier Saudi Telecom is using software from US supplier Narus to block all VoIP calls.

Telcos in the US and other countries are reluctant to have their bandwidth encroached on by traffic from which they earn no revenue, and have been challenged over similar alleged incidents of VoIP blocking. Blocking VoIP traffic is technically difficult, but not illegal, and blocking specific types of internet traffic is on the increase.

Luxembourg-based VoIP provider Skype, now owned by eBay, has been particularly controversial. Skype is used by 75m people. But not everyone wants Skype on their network.

Skype is considered by many to pose a potential security threat because it opens an encrypted tunnel out of the network and forms supernodes that sit on a network and set up VoIP calls. There is considerable debate about how much bandwidth such supernodes eat up. US blogger Paul Kedrosky (http://tinyurl.com/mjelx) noted a major impact on his main office PC, and links to warnings that in supernode mode, Skype may even saturate a 100 Mbps line.

"Skype calls can be very scary for the owners of the networks over which they run," says Steve Bannerman, vice president of marketing at Narus.

Bandwidth

Skype says its software does not put undue pressure on bandwidth. "Users who have become 'supernodes' will not be able to notice any performance decreases on their computers," says Kurt Sauer, head of Skype's security operations. "A supernode will use approximately a tenth of the bandwidth of a user listening to radio on the internet. There are companies blocking or attempting to block Skype, but we believe they are making a mistake."

There's a lot of divided feeling about Skype, says Louise Cooke, managing director of Blue Coat Systems, whose ProxySG software can block Skype. "Some IT managers detest it," she says. "They don't want their network becoming a super-hub for Skype. But others see it as something that may have business benefits. We use it all the time."

VoIP blocking is often a function added to network or security management software, such as Narus's IP Platform, Verso Technologies' NetSpective 2.0 and SonicWall's enterprise appliances. Other providers with software capable of blocking VoIP include Bitek International, Packeteer, iPoque and Blue Coat Systems, and the list is growing.

One UK organisation that has blocked Skype is Brunel University. "We had a number of concerns about uncontrolled traffic," says Simon Furber, Brunel's network manager. "Skype is unpredictable because of its uncanny ability to become a supernode, so ... we shut the front door."

This is still Brunel's official policy. "But this is a balancing act: a lot of people use Skype and asked us why we were blocking it," explains Furber. "And Skype just finds another way out of the network."

So Brunel has now partitioned off its Skype traffic, using Packeteer's Packetshaper software. "We have corralled it so we can keep an eye on it and see what impact it is having," says Furber.

How blocking works

Blocking specific types of traffic over an IP network is usually done by blocking "ports" - equivalent to boarding up doors (if you imagine a network as a house with 65,536 doors) or denying access to specific IP addresses (equivalent to turning away particular people).

But Skype traffic is hard to identify, because Skype uses proprietary protocols, is encrypted and spreads from peer to peer, using a random combination of IP addresses and ports that defeats traditional port-blocking filters.

That means it can be blocked only by investigating the headers of every internet packet crossing the network to find the "Skype" ones. The challenge is to do this quickly enough so that other services aren't degraded. Narus claims its software can do this, and a major European customer confirms this.

A proxy appliance, widely used to apply controls to web traffic, can also be used to block specified unwanted traffic, including voice calls, if necessary."

Many many thanks for that un-mundo, most interesting. So it boils down to ISP's feeling that they are losing revenue, typical . Would be very interesting to get the results from Brunel uni, I will try do do some research into this and report back.
Best regards
Kevray

More specifically, ISPs that also operates as Telcos, e.g. BT, Telefonica, etc. The independent ISPs (most of which will use the main Telco's networks for their customers, of course), should not have an issue with it - in fact quite the contrary as it promotes broadband use.

Well the writing was on the wall for these dinosaurs (BT, et al) many years ago and they refused to adapt. Hopefully the consumer will win out in the end, because trying to control traffic is a very short-sighted approach.

I use Skype quite a bit, but at the moment it is still no substitute for a mobile and a landline phone. However, if conventional call prices keep going up, I will certainly be investing more in getting a better VoIP solution.

Good point, Unexpat.