VOIP – Cutting down your phone bills

Posted by: pctutorials  :  Category: VOIP

It's been a while since I made decent post, study and exams have been a huge work load for me so I'll do my best to regain blog posting.

 

Just recently, I've made the switch to VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol). Making phone calls over the internet is much cheaper than on a standard PSTN line, at least here in Australia. In Australia, the phone company Telstra are the big guns who own the copper networks. 

What this means is they can charge an arm and a leg for telephone calls. Even if you choose not to have Telstra, they wholesale the copper lines to other suppliers. I'm still paying line rental to Telstra because its handy as a backup phone, but using VOIP to make calls, I'm saving lots!

I can call anywhere in Australia on landlines for 10c untimed! Mobile rates are 15c a minute with no connection fee. I can't recall Telstra's figures from the top of my head, but all I know is it's much cheaper making phone calls over the internet.

I suggest if you have ADSL/Cable and want to save money, you should consider making the switch to VOIP.  

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Make Free Phone Calls Online

Posted by: pctutorials  :  Category: Tips, VOIP

Skype

Wouldn’t it be great if you could make free phone calls? By now, I’m sure you’ve heard of an application called Skype. If you haven’t, it’s all the rage at the moment. Skype is a free VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) program that allows you to make free phone call to other skype users for free. The olny cost is your interenet connection. This is excellent for making international phone calls because on a standard telephone line company, rates are expensive.

Another great feature Skype offers is the ablity to make video calls which is an attractive feature. So you’re probably wondering why everyone hasn’t made the switch to skype and ditched their phone company. This is where Skypes’ freebie run comes to a halt. To make phone calls to landlines or mobiles, a cost is incurred from transfering the VOIP data to a standard phoneline gateway. While rates are reasonable, its nothing to brag about. But if your buddies have skype on thier computer, you can still benefit. If you’ve built an effiecent PC, you could let it run all day to make and recieve phone calls. See Green IT: How to Cut your Power Bill.

That pretty much somes up Skype. There are other programs out there, but Skype is the best of them. You can download it from here: http://www.skype.com/download/

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