I would to setup voip in our house in an attempt to lower our telephony costs. There's a bit of a discussion going on about it on the Satellite internet thread but I'm moving it here so as not to hijack that one. I'll paste the last comment from Jon so we can take it from there.
Thanks Roger, good to know about OVH and telephony!
However, I don't need any other solution for internet access. The Auvergne region has been very efficient in ensuring proper ADSL everywhere. Here in the country side the equipment is not modern enough to allow TV over ADSL, so Orange offers TV over satellite instead (at no extra cost).
Hi Krister, I've been exchanging details with John Sidwell of bigdishsat.com and he recommended OVH as a good telephone source which works well with Tooway. So, I've just signed up for a one-line home user with an 09 number. Haven't got hooked up yet, but I reckoned for €1.18 per month and unlimited calls to 40 countries, it had to be worth the 'experiment' to see if my VoIP phones will work with OVH over my existing Internet connection with Orange/Wanadoo, before investing in 2 years of Tooway. Tooway say their satellite signal covers the whole of Europe, so Cantal should not be a problem. Will let you know how we get on!
I have always tended to use Skype and Gtalk+ , but I agree they can be a little patchy on occasion. Our Internet provider in France also offers a deal for VOIP with our connection over WIMAX , which we intend to try soon as France Telecom have become very expensive recently.
We have been using the Draytel system for our VOIP 'phone for years and it saves us a fortune.
We still use the same Cirencester number that we had in UK and this gave us a problem when telephoning the HMRC on their overseas number, as they said that we were'phoning from the UK and cut us off!
They are not very up to date with modern telephony.
No James it's part of android 4.1.1 No doubt iphone have something similar. For android users look at: settings>phone>call>accounts>internet calling.
I like this because wherever you log on to any network you can make (and more importantly receive) voip without having to do anything other than connect to the network.
For home "landline" use the excellent Draytek routers have (if you buy the VG version with voip) two RJ11 sockets. This means you can, with enough ordinary phones, have two simultaneous voip conversations at the same time. I only have experience of Draytel which is Draytek's own voip service but it is excellent. You can ring round the world for 1p a minute (although some obscure places are a bit more) and there are no call drop outs or occasional poor quality calls like with Skype.
Many voip providers give you a London number for people to call you on but Draytel issue you with a dialing code of your choice for incoming calls and caller ID. The only places you can't have the corresponding dialing code for are 01534, 01481 and 01624 (Jersey, Guernsey and the IOM).
That looks interesting, I'll have a closer look.
Every now and then I also look at this alternative. OVH is hosting our web site, so I've tried to understand their offer OVH Telephonie and wonder if it would work here in Cantal. Of course, since our FT landline number is our business number, the transition has to be managed and therefore long.
I have Skype with an internet connection of 8mb; conversations are regularly broken or lost.
Jon
Using a smartphone to use the service is just what I want to do, does that require an app from the voip provider?
PS meant to add earlier on that if you use a VOIP router like the Draytek Vigor VG, you can plug any normal phone (or network of phones) around the house for VOIP calls. If you don't want lots of phone wiring any DECT cordless will do the same thing. VOIP has saved me a fortune since I started using it about 6 years ago and it can be handy having a UK number wherever you are.
Most of the smartphones can log onto the same VOIP service wherever you have a network connection (inc the 3G network). My htc 1X can be set to give you the option of GSM or VOIP to make any call and all incoming VOIP rings the htc. Again the outgoing calls via VOIP on the mobile on a network come up with my 01629 caller ID instead of the mobile caller ID.
Interesting Jon,
How do you plug a DECT phone into a router, RJ13? My router will take the dd-wrt VOIP firmware so that could be worth a try. I'm going to setup a new thread for VOIP so we don't take this one too far of course.
Thanks