VoIP: the future

I've been playing about with VoIP over the past few days. For those that don't understand what its about - essentially its making phone calls routed through the Internet instead of our crappy, expensive analogue network.

I don't make a massive amount of phone calls - I've always got my mobile on me, and work pays for that, so the landline at home isn't used much. But I'm always a little conscience of frying my brain a little too much, so a suitable alternative is always welcome.

In order for Voice-over-IP (VoIP) calls to work, you need some way of getting your voice over the internet. There's really 4 ways of doing this:

• Bit of software on your PC, and a headphones/mic setup plugged into your PC
• A USB phone. Still plugs into your PC, and PC needs to be on, but you can dial from a handset.
  
• Still using software on your PC, but an adapter plugged in your USB port to allow you to connect a normal phone (or DECT phone) and dial through your normal phone. You can also make/receive normal analogue phone calls.
• Proper VoIP router that routes your calls independantly of your computer. Again you can plug a normal phone in, or you can even get proper full-blown VoIP handsets.

Personally, I'm using option 3, after bagging a bargain on eBay for £12.

You can use Skype - but that relies on the recipient of your call being on Skype, or if performing a "SkypeOut" call (a call to a normal phone number), they charge you. That's not the point of this experiment!

So, welcome to the arena: www.sipdiscount.com . A sister website of www.voipcheap.co.uk that I have been using for a couple of months. VoIPCheap is purely sitting at your PC using their software - no way round it. SIPDiscount, however, is using the standard SIP VoIP protocol, so you can configure your router, or Softphone of your choice to route calls through it. Once you've charged your account with 5 Euros (about £4) then you can make landline calls to many countries (including the UK of course) for free. Completely free. That's more like it!!

Call quality is fine. The adapter from eBay is not the best quality - but does the job. I'm sure with better equipment I could easily surpass BT's line quality, but at the moment its about on par.

The cool thing about 'Softphones' is that you can actually run more than one SIP provider if you want. So, I also use www.sipgate.co.uk who charge for outgoing calls (so I use SIPDiscount for that) but give you a free local incoming number. I could make it be any local number in the UK, but I picked another Redhill number. So now anyone else in the world can call me, thinking their calling a normal landline, but it in fact rings through my PC (which passes the call through that device onto my DECT phones) and doesn't touch my analogue line!

It's a bit nerdy, but great to get something most providers charge £8-£15/month for, for completely free.
If I didn't need my BT line to get on the net (ADSL), I'd ditch it and run just VoIP!