VoIP
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Reference
Related Articles
- Many VoIP and cellular phone providers are now charging a regulatory recovery fee
Service Providers
Computer as phone
- Gizmo
- available for Linux
- rich computer-oriented features
- Skype
- based in Europe, but available in U.S.
- dial-in phone numbers cost €30/year or €10/quarter
- no fixed monthly rate for dial-out ability; pay only for minutes used
- conferencing & group tools
- recently went over to the dark side by partnering with Intel to provide better service on PCs using Intel's chips [1] [2] (2006-03-11 A hacker has now released a patch to defeat this limitation: slashdot)
- additional evilness: one user reports that if you install a button on your site from http://www.skype.com/share/buttons/, the code includes Javascript that detects whether each visitor to your site has skype installed; if not, it spawns a popup window telling them to download it. This fact is not disclosed on the buttons page.
Regular phone
- lingo
- Cheaper than Vonage, with some more advanced features
- SunRocket
- may be incompatible with regular phones; web site is not clear
- Vonage
- unlimited within U.S. for $25/month
- plans start at $15/month
- no setup charge
- list of recent calls available via web
- voicemail can be emailed to you automatically
- annoyingly, the emails do not include the text of the caller ID, only the phone number
- they also do not include the length of the call
- in mid-2007, Vonage began offering an optional paid transcription service for their voicemails (text transcription of the message is apparently included within the notification email)
- Vonage links: Technometria (2 articles as of 2006-09-19)
Software
Links
- VoIP versus traditional telephone: "Why is making a phone call over the Internet more efficient?"
- 2006-10-05 A free telephone consultant by James E. Gaskin