Net Phones Taking Off in the Third World 173
dipfan writes "Internet telephone technology is surging in popularity and starting to make a big dent in telephone revenues in the Third World, for a simple reason: cost. A call from Honduras to the US over the net is just 5 or 10 cents a minute at an internet cafe, compared with $1+ a minute through a telco, reports the Washington Post, which compares the situation to the US where internet telephony "is used mostly by college students and geeks" who have the time and energy to install the software."
Bandwith (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bandwith (Score:2, Interesting)
There is such a glut of bandwidth right now, telecom carriers do not anticipate adding additional fiber until 2010.
Re:Bandwith (Score:2, Interesting)
nortel / lucent / cisco are all selling metro optical gear a healthy pace. They are not selling any long haul fibre.
The fibre "glut" is one of the biggest fallacies of the early 21st century.
Re:Bandwith (Score:3, Informative)
The telecoms, in case you haven't noticed, are all in the process of going out of business. Industry giants like AT&T and Global Crossing are beginning the slow slide into bankruptcy and decline.
Metro optical gear is selling like hotcakes because the equipment allows companies to maintain their network without paying a huge premium to an upstream provider. Why should a firm pay $6000/mo for a connection when you can buy a $50,000 laser that has no monthly cost?
Re:Bandwith (Score:1)
Re:Bandwith (Score:1)
OM&P = Operations, Maintenance, and Provisioning. These issue are central to any techology that a Teleco buys / sells.
Again Total cost != Price.
Also, most places do not have the infrastructure to pay for the OM&P. That is why they will pay 6k a month for the service.
Remember the CFO makes more techology decisions than the CIO / CTO.
Re:Bandwith (Score:2)
But, optical networks remove alot of the overhead of frame-relay or atm links from big telecom companies.
Once you install a short-haul optical networking or other wireless technology, it is just another link in your LAN or MAN. We've been running a pilot to link government agencies in the state capitol with good results (and low ongoing expenses)
In a medium to large organization, the existing IT staff combined with a maintainence contract can handle most issues as they come up.
Re:Bandwith (Score:1)
http://www.forbes.com/2001/08/01/0801fiber.html
Latency (Score:2, Informative)
However, IMHO, I have found it annoying to speak with people over the internet for the reason that the tempo of a conversation is often broken by having to wait for the person on the other side of the line to hear what you just said. I've taken this to be a latency-related issue, but hey I could be mistaken. At any rate, I'll stick with the telephone for now.
The whole idea of a telco is silly now (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The whole idea of a telco is silly now (Score:3, Informative)
Cisco, Lucent, Nortel, etc. equipment for high-speed fiber is EXPENSIVE.
Re:The whole idea of a telco is silly now (Score:1)
Re:The whole idea of a telco is silly now (Score:1)
How much bandwidth do you think your cellphone is using? It's a lot less than 128K. The real issue limiting VoIP use is QoS, including latency.
Now, video-phone technology is certainly being limited by the limits on upstream bandwidth. But the market for that has so far been pretty limited.
User demographics (Score:3, Insightful)
I "call" from Denmark, and he is not a college student.
Does that mean Denmark is a third world country or is my friend a geek?
Re:User demographics (Score:1)
You read slashdot, so your friend is by proxy somewhat likely to be a geek.
And about the 3rd world part..
Are you in Jutland or Sealand?
-Dennis in Copenhagen
:)
Re:User demographics (Score:2)
I started using it as even though i have an acceptable
Then I received my bill, over $2.50
They agreed to give me the refund. FIVE TIMES. but they kept billing me for it - and never actually refunded me the amount. So I didnt pay them and switched to sprint - and make all my calls overseas via yahoo messenger.
I used to work for a VOIP co, and know a lot of cheap VOIP methods etc... but nothing beats totally free Yahoo. and the quality is good enough, especially since its free....
Obvious (Score:2, Insightful)
I am not particulary surprised at this.
Re:Obvious (Score:1)
/Pedro
Re:Obvious (Score:1)
/Pedro
Demise of VoIP (Score:1)
Obviously they intenede to mke money on Ads - but the demographics - Third World Cafe users - probably aren't very promising to advertisers.\\This must explain the restructuring and otherwise discontinuation of those systems.
In the US - most cellphones are National Plans with cheap rates at night - I presume the people who would have wanted to chat cheap here - just use their cells - I do.
AIK
Telephone Companies (Score:3, Interesting)
This is good for a lot of these countries, since families often have relatives scatteered around the globe, and can use a low cost method to stay in touch (besides written communication, of course).
Re:Telephone Companies (Score:2, Insightful)
3rd world countries are going to use the internet for phones, but it won't catch on a for a while (many many years) here in the US. The US is quality sensitive.
How many people have tried to unplug your land line and have just a cell phone. It sucks, even in areas where coverage is good.
Remember, the Telecom industry considers ethernet an immature techology.
Telecoms are in trouble because the margins on Data products are a lot less than voice products. As they increased the mix of data products to stay competive, their margins went to the crapper.
Re:Telephone Companies (Score:2)
I've done this and it doesn't suck at all. My coverage is great; I can make and take calls wherever I go. The quality of the line isn't that much different either.
And no telemarketing calls.
I'm glad I dropped my land line for a cell.
Max
Re:Telephone Companies (Score:2)
I don't care about 911 -- never had to call it once, and I can't think of a plausible case where calling 911 and waiting/hoping for a useful response would be a better way to take care of my safety and that of those I live with than taking affirmative action anyhow. That is to say: if your family's safety depends on 911, your family isn't very safe.
Not when the Telco owns the fibers (Score:4, Informative)
I've had personal experience with the Republic of Palau in the Western Pacific. Palau National Commuinications Corp. owns the phone system, and also runs Palaunet, the only ISP on the island. (Good luck getting another ISP in when PNCC owns the access to the lines.)
Result: internet telephone calls are prohibited on Palaunet. (It's easy-- watch for bi-directional high-bandwitdth traffic, instead of uni-directional. So simultaneously uploading and downloading on a P2P will get your account a once-over, but that's life in the Third World.) Instead, you're forced to pay the egregiously expensive long distance voice rates.
Internet telephony only works if you've got an open communications industry. That's not true in a lot of developing countries, where the Government is footing the bill for all infrastructure, and wants to keep control of it for economic or political reasons.
It's hardly limited to the "Third World" (Score:2, Insightful)
Speaking from personal experience, my stepfather (in Virginia) uses VoIP to talk to his brother in England. And it's not just because of cost (since both of them are senior-level managers at a telco and a hardware vendor, respectively), but also because most of the time, they're online and in front of their computers anyway.
Re:It's hardly limited to the "Third World" (Score:1)
That depends on the provider.. (Score:1)
This is by no means a situation limited to my location, cheap providers of overseas calls exist all around the world. Having experimented with telephone calls over the internet, I found my current option to be far more practical (since I can use it from any landline) and convinient.
All it takes is some quick research to find out the cheapest provider for your needs (a service a local computer mag kindly provides every fortnight)
ABOUT TIME (Score:1)
Say bye bye telcos. I hope those third world countries really save enough money from these large first world corporations to make a quality lifestyle change. I hope they take this opportunity to manage their own services and dont let USA bully and sanction and threaten their way into corporate control of the new technologies there.
Re:ABOUT TIME (Score:5, Informative)
That's what I've been saying for years. VoIP, while still definitely in its infancy, is just as much the future undoing of the LD industry as P2P is the undoing of the (current) music industry.
I hope those third world countries really save enough money from these large first world corporations to make a quality lifestyle change. I hope they take this opportunity to manage their own services and dont let USA bully and sanction and threaten their way into corporate control of the new technologies there.
I'm an American but currently live in Mexico. I don't know what you're talking about in terms of "these large first world corporations." If you are implying that American telco companies are robbing the poor in third world countries you are sadly mistaken--at least in Mexico.
Mexico has a terrible telephone monopoly, "Telmex." It historically has terrible quality and their prices are outrageous. It costs about 80 cents per minute for me to call the U.S. but only about 15 or 20 to call from the U.S. to Mexico. And Telmex is entirely a Mexican monopoly.
In fact, a few years ago the phone monopoly was "broken" by the Mexican government and competition was introduced. Both MCI and AT&T entered the market, and we even have competition in local service in many parts of Monterrey. However, Telmex is still the monopoly. Since most people get their phone lines with Telmex they generally get new subscribers to sign-up for their LD service. AT&T and MCI are at a distinct disadvantage and have even considered leaving the Mexican market because Telmex maintains its monopoly in fact, if not in law.
As is usually the case, problems in the third world--political and economic--are NOT the fault of the U.S. or other first-world countries. They are almost always the fault of powers closer to home. In this case, telco providers in Latin America make a killing because they either have a government-mandated monopoly, or the government allows competition but silently supports the original monopoly by not encouraging the competition or forcing the monopoly to act in non-monopolistic ways.
Re:ABOUT TIME (Score:2)
Re:ABOUT TIME (Score:1)
It is ridiculous to blame first world telcos for prices when it is the local telcos giving the shaft to the local people.
Telcos still own the plant (Score:2)
Smart telcos will stop differentiating between phone and data service and provide one pipe with a protocol that supports both high latency/high bandwidth applications like internet access and low latency/low bandwidth applications like telephony. DSL is already kinda like that, except that it is viewed as an add-on rather than an integral part of the service.
The key part is integrated billing, where the bandwidth is not differentiated between data and phone services.
It's about god damn time! (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Decrease the costs of traditional telephone service because they will need to compete with net based services.
2) Increase the costs associated with connections to the internet, because as people use more, the costs for everyone goes up.
I'm not sure which will actually occur, but I bet with services such as this [slashdot.org] around, you'll see a lot of broadband companies upset because they will want their piece of the action. If the average user starts using his/her connection for phone services too instead of just downloading, why are people so confused when they hear about price increases such as this [slashdot.org]. To me, it just makes sense, more people will use it for more things==service costs more to provide.
Now I'm just waiting for some level of QOS to implemented world wide for this sort of thing, that way my phone call doesn't wait for your warez. Know what I mean?
14c a minute here (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:14c a minute here (Score:4, Interesting)
And on top of that our voice quality is US toll quality or better, even with the quater second delay. If it were not illegal I would interconnect to the Indian PSTN and sell a calling card using excess capacity on my system.
It *is* possible for the telcos to embrace VoIP or a similar packet voice technology and integrate it into their SS7 or ISDN networks. Other than corruption of the PTTs I don't see why it isn't being done to lower costs and improve quality where appropriate.
Re:14c a minute here (Score:1)
hmmm.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:hmmm.... (Score:2)
For years, telcos in developing countries used international call charges as a sort of "tax" on emigrants. People would move out of the country, go live in the US or UK or Germany or wherever, earn a whole lot more money, and spend some of it calling their relatives left behind in the homeland. And then the exhorbitant settlement rate would funnel money back from overseas.
Arguably, this is a good thing since it allows comparatively wealthy migrants to subsidize service to poor locals who would otherwise not be able to afford it. Of course, in practice the telcos are usually so incompetent that the money just gets wasted or disappears into various people's pockets.
This changed a lot, of course, when the FCC unilaterally initiated settlement rate reform [fcc.gov] in 1998, one of the most brilliant pieces of public policy the US has ever pulled off. Now, the amount by which inbound callers can be gouged is strictly limited (hence the drastic decrease in international call costs that we've seen in the past few years).
However, telcos are still free to gouge their own citizens, presumably carrying on the spirit of the earlier "tax" by indirectly siphoning away some of the money that these people's overseas relatives send home.
Anyway, without the large sums received from hiked-up international call charges, many of these telcos would fall apart. In the current post-1998 climate, this might not be a bad thing - eliminating communications-cost friction certainly would bring about long-term productivity improvements in developing economies. But you can't expect the telcos to be excited about it.
Hate to be cynical .. (Score:2, Insightful)
When they attempt to shut it down, will anything like Peek-a-booty [peek-a-booty.org] be able to come to the rescue?
The Internet has had an impact for me to (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact the connection we get with NetMeeting is by far more reliable than using phones! Phone calls are (in my experience) about 25% likely to be unusable. They are also quite expensive. Even researching the best "10-10" numbers gets you down to about $0.22US per minute. Calling from Ukraine to the US is extremely expensive.
The Internet has made a lot of things possible that just 5 years ago were out of the hands of most people. The economy of calling that far and that cheap is amazing. When I was a kid I always wanted a video phone. The Web Cam is it.
I think the effect of wireless communication and integrated web communication will stall the growth of physical phone lines and we will start to see them disappear in a few decades. It seems to fit the natural order of how technology progressess. With 3G coming to Sprint PCS phones this summer and all the other carriers later this year and next year I predict that even how we connect to the Internet on a daily basis will change. I see the majority of IP traffic coming from wireless devices rather than desktop computers in 5 years time.
Re:The Internet has had an impact for me to (Score:2)
Youi shoud be using openphone. cross platform and uses the OpenH323 VoIP protocol that is supported by everything that is a true VoIP device or program. (Yes, I made a phone call with openphone over our companies phonesystem whis is a VoIP based system.. the Voice Server routed my call from my PC over the voice T1-s we have in place to a telephone in a office 75 miles from here. worked great.)
Re:The Internet has had an impact for me to (Score:2)
is the place to start.
it's a tiny program and if you know the ip address of the other end you do not need any server or VoIP gateway to communicate.
Re:The Internet has had an impact for me to (Score:2)
This can't last. (Score:1)
If the usage of net-phones increases in Africa, and the previous story [slashdot.org] was also true - someone somewhere is going to end up paying more. Seems a loss-maker in the making for third-world ISPs.
nic
PS. This comment clearly side-steps many, many obvious points. (e.g. the super-poor countries with no network connectivity; countries where no-one who can afford a phone-call of any price, etc., etc.) Please don't just state the obvious in any reply.
nic
QoS is the big issue here (Score:3, Interesting)
So the reason you pay 0.05$ a minute for a long distance call with your telco and next to nothing with an ISP [e.g. using some VoIP program] is because Telcos are reliable. I mean if I go and call a buddy in British Columbia I am fairly certain of a few things
a) The call will go through
b) The quality of the signal is consistent
c) There is no lag or strong echoes
If I call with an ISP I may not be able to reach him [e.g. local fiber problems.. stupid rogers], or my mic/speaker setup may sound too bad, or worse there may be annoying ping times.
If all you want is an informal chat with a buddy then VoIP programs are ok. But if you need to conduct reliable communcation then telco's are about all you have to choose from.
As towards third world countries perhaps the calls are so expensive because maintaining a relibable connection is costly.
Tom
Re:QoS is the big issue here (Score:3, Informative)
As for more third-world countries and the like... let me assure you....
Okay, I live in Costa Rica. It's not even third world.. but my internet connection here is more reliable than my phone connection.
Re:QoS is the big issue here (Score:3, Informative)
Except in the worst third-world countries (which are technically, "fourth" and "fifth" world countries!), the technology is the same as that found in the U.S.
The difference is they have crashing monopolies and there is a cultural tendency in Latin America to steal every last "peso" you can. The owners of the telcos pay top government officials so they won't regulate the telcos, and the telco owners and top government officials earn major bucks at the expense of the phone-using public.
That's why calls are so expensive in Latin America, not because it is any harder to maintain a reliable connection.
Re:QoS is the big issue here (Score:1)
This telco charges me about US$2.50 (that's two and a half dollars) at peak time to call Ireland. Net2Phone or Go2Call (I have accounts with both) connect me to Ireland for US$0.04 (four CENTS) a minute.
No contest.
Don't forget Monday were (Score:1)
As an aside: I have mine on order, I should be getting the unit today. I checked my web interface and saw that I have had 3 telemarketer calls to my new number. A number which I have yet to be give out.
Re:Don't forget Monday were (Score:2)
i gave up oon long distance after getting slammed by the phone companies (sprint, at&t). i currently have no long distance on the phone, and use a 20$ 500 minute calling card from sam's club to make a long distance phone call. portable minutes too (yeah, yeah, the pay phones jack on additional charges, but it's still portable.)
personally i kinda like using voip to some degree (quick chats to family/friends), but it's a matter of a square peg through a round hole. ip isn't the be all end all. everyone is jumping on some HUGE internet hype and trying to put every service over ip. microsoft might have said it best when they said that IP may not be the best protocol for distributed applications.
Re:Don't forget Monday were (Score:1)
OTOH, while IP may not be the *best* protocol for distributed apps, how many people use it directly? You work with something that sits on top of it, some communications layer designed for distributed work...say ACE [wustl.edu] and similar things. Generally distributed apps don't require real-time response, so it's not the end of the world if something takes a bit to go across the pipe.
Re:Don't forget Monday were (Score:1)
That's a little over 16 minutes a day.
my 2 cents... (per minute) (Score:2)
Seriously, I get offers for long-distance in the mail for 7 cents a minute, or maybe 15 cents per minute "anytime", and they're trying to make it sound like they're doing me a favor. Then, when I decide that I'll go with a company like bigzoo [bigzoo.com] for my long-distance needs, then they tack on some very dubious "taxes" and "surcharges" onto my bill to recoup their losses. I mean, I have to pay, not to have a long distance carrier! Is this fraud or what?
The telecom companies know that they're fighting a losing battle. It would be nice if they got on board and tried to lead the technology revolution, instead of getting dragged behind it. But that's asking a little too much of them, I guess. In the meantime, let them get screwed for promulgating such a stupid business model -- preying on people's ignorance.
Well, all the better for students and the less priviliged people around the world. Hopefully, at least in this aspect, the internet will set them free.
Re:my 2 cents... (per minute) (Score:2)
Choices..
I had this same issue with Verizon. I recently switched to AT&T calling cards that I got from from a warehouse club. Costco and Sams each have similar plans, Costco is MCI or Sprint, Sams is AT&T. Anyway I pay only
This is much better then the
To the point. After cancelling my MCI LD service on my line, I started getting extra charges by Verizon. $5/month for an interstate access fee, described via a customer service rep as "a fee authorized by the FCC that we charge because we [Verizon] are an interstate provider" and another fee for not having a LD provider, this was described as "a fee to block long distance calls, which could be avoided if I choose Verizon as my in-state LD provider" which in fact, has a higher per minute rate then my AT&T access card.
These are added to the growing list of monthly charges that I also pay for being unlisted and unpublished, tone dialing, the ability to cancel call waiting, access to run lines via public "right-of-way" which happens to run past underground on MY PROPERTY (so I pay them to let them use my yard) and whatever else they decide to add.
You can not win when it comes to the phone company.
Sorry for the rant, the more I thought about this the more angry I got.
How long until legislation? (Score:2)
You know, like the RIAA is doing? Gee, don't try to embrace new technology and make money off of it, just buy some legislation to make sure you may remain entrenched in your old ways...
Re:How long until legislation? (Score:1)
Fast forward a few years, I could see an "Internet Appliance" (I hate that term), being a phone hooked up to the net through a native ethernet connector, having its own IPv6 address. This address would correlate to a phone, regardless of who it is. This way, you buy a phone, you already have a number. Plug and play sort of thing. THEN it would be accepted by the masses, when you don't need alot of equipment/knowledge to set it up.
The current Telcos will either embrace new technologies, and become ISPs ... or, as you said, become like the **AA's of the world.
pgpfone (Score:2, Interesting)
Reliability of service (Score:2)
not just geeks and college kids (Score:2, Interesting)
quote of the day (Score:1, Funny)
And at some schools [rpi.edu]
My recent experience of this... (Score:2, Informative)
In the larger cities (Kathmandu, Pokhara) you could call the UK over the internet for about 25-50Rs/minute. Using a traditional phone line costs 125-200Rs/minute. When I was there 10 years previous it was US$5/min!
The exchange rate is something like 72Rs to US$1.
The costs are differences aren't as much as this posting said, but it's still quite a saving.
Personally I shopped around for a cheap real phone call (125-150Rs/min) as the quality was so much better.
Voice from the trenches (Score:4, Interesting)
I work on voice over IP telephony products, and I think that the market is ready to switch (pun intended).
SME's are figuring out that they can use their DSL lines to make net calls and video conferencing, and they're starting to ask (big time) exactly why they're paying per minute to make voice calls. And telcos are listening, and worrying.
There is a huge demand at the low end for true all-in-one products that encorporate an ethernet switch, DSL uplinks, a firewall and web server, handle IP-to-IP calls as well as IP-TDM, TWIF, ISDN (yuk), voicemail, door answer, that come with web browsing hardware phones and PC softphones and value added applications like videoconferencing. You would not believe the amount of software and hardware that we have in our current product; think 128Mb RAM, 128Mb compact flash, a 10 GB hard drive and a PCB that would make your head spin, in what's traditionally been a market for small (embedded devices.
And we're not developing this stuff simply because it's fun; there's a real demand from SME's for it. Initially we intended selling these boxes at retail (unheard of for a full featured telecomms switch); we've backed off from that now, simply because telco's are so keen to sell them as part of packages, because they know that if they don't, we will sell them at retail, and they'll lose a stack of voice money.
Note that the features that we enjoy today on residential lines - caller ID, call waiting, three party, callback - all came out of SME private branch exchanges. Telcos just realised that they could make extra money selling them to residential customers as well. They'll dig their heels in (hard) to stop us moving from TDM calls to VoiP, but - bearing in mind that once your call hits the local exchange, it hops to an IP backbone anyway - they can't hold out forever. Sooner or later, a residential provider will crack and start offering realistic VoiP to the home, and then all the rulebooks get ripped up. Roll on the day!
Re:Voice from the trenches (Score:3, Informative)
Uh, of course, I blinked and missed that residential VoiP is already here [slashdot.org]. Yeee ha!
The TWIF-IP [cisco.com] adaptor bundled with this service supports two analog 'phones. Whee. Now picture one that'll talk to any DSL or cable uplink, has a 10/100 switched hub supporting 8 IP devices ('phones, PC's, NAS) with a DHCP server built in, that supports 6 analog devices ('phone, fax, trunks), any number of PC screenphones, that has a fully featured call control that provides any service you could imagine (and quite a few that you've never dreamed of), stores 10Gb of voicemail, and supports full RAS services (i.e. you can dial in to your home, then hop out from there, like a mini-ISP), all with a multi-lingual web based front end that you can access locally or remotely over IP or diallup. You want one? You know you do. ;-) You can't get one yet at retail, but give us another 18 months for the telco's to saturate their SME's with these [mitel.com], and you might see a version hitting retail.
Re:Voice from the trenches (Score:2, Informative)
Currently medium and larger companies have the ability to negoitate better rates then the residential rates. This is pretty key for preventing/slowing the deployment of voip.
The only easy savings that you can incurr from voip is conference calls. Most of the conference calling services are
While in tech circles there is demand for voip, nobody (finance, etc) cares about this technology. These people are just looking at bottom line cost.
Re:Voice from the trenches (Score:2)
True. Sorry, when I said SME, I really meant Small enterprise, actually down at the mom and pop corner store (or gas station) level. There's a huge market down in the sub ten lines, and that's also where the customers live who don't really want a service contract, and are prepared to try out new solutions if it'll save then a few bucks a month. But you're right, VoiP is being used (today) as part of packages to preserve call revenue. Give it a year though.
Re:Voice from the trenches (Score:2)
Re:Voice from the trenches (Score:2)
Speak Freely is a 100% free Internet telephone (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.speakfreely.org/ [speakfreely.org]
VoIP illegal in some countries (Score:5, Informative)
VoIP termination is certainly illegal. Even though the phone company, who also have a monopoly on bandwidth, make money whatever you do. They're getting local call rates (Billed at $2 an hour inc taxes), bandwidth money from the ISP, and they still don't want to lose the international telephony deals, where they make ridiculous amounts of money.
All over Europe, telcos don't want to lose lucrative internation traffic. Real third world countries (rather than emerging economies) have neither enough bandwidth nor the latency required to provide adequate VoIP anyway.
However bandwidth in Morocco is pretty good. Check out www.tiboo.com for a site hosted in Morocco with high visits and reasonable serving of pages.
Ask Slashdot... (Score:1)
Trouble is, I have a dynamic IP, and I haven't yet found a SIP address registry that works with linphone, and it's a bit of a pain to set up a routine to post my current IP to a webpage form (since I know my non-geek friends won't know what to do with it).
Has anybody found a registry that plays friendly with linphone?
What about the super-monopolies in the Caribbean? (Score:1)
I suppose it's fitting that it's $0.05/minute to the third-world, and $0.50 to an island of luxury villas...
Ow ow ow... (Score:1)
Who needs big Telcos anyway? (Score:2, Interesting)
I can go on and on, but I'll tell you this: I do not have a phone at home anymore, and I have long since abandonded my much loved 5 static ips and dsl as well, in favor of dynamic-only port-80 blocked sometimes-slower-than-M$-fixes-security-holes cable modem.
And I'm MUCH happier.
I will never in my life use SWBell's services. If I am running from rabbid wolverines and my only chance of survival is to purchase SWBell local phone service, I'd rather dive into a swimming pool filled with double-edged razor blades, followed by having my face eaten off by said wolverines.
I only make calls through dialpad [dialpad.com], ($9.99 a month for 400 minutes). That's all my long distance AND all local calls. No incoming calls. My wife has gotten use to it. Sure beats $50/month for voice mail/caller id/call waiting/call waiting caller id/caller id call waiting calling/made up services to charge you extra in hopes you won't notice (slamming & cramming)/to just look at the caller id, and ignore the call.
Yeah, maybe it's a pain in the butt to connect the handset [communitech.com] everytime I need to make a call (that's what wireless+laptop is for), and 911 isn't supported (that's what cell phones are for). But at 2.5 cents a minute, (and best of all NO SWBell), I see no comparison. People just page me, and I call them back. It's a plus, because none of our friends/family have to use long distance to get a hold of us either.
Oh yeah, and no spam calls/wrong numbers either...
I haven't tried this [communitech.com] out yet, but it allows you to connect a regular (cordless) phone to your computer, eliminating the wire-fumbling.
OgreInsde
South Africa (Score:3, Interesting)
This means that something like a net phone is a revelation in terms of cost. I have a friend who has been talking to his brother in Germany with a net phone for a while now. The only problem is that this is illegal because ISPs are not allowed to carry voice traffic! In fact the telecoms monopoly tried to destroy ISPs by citing a law that states that nobody is allowed to resell bandwidth. Fortunately the lost the case, but it was touch and go for a while.
My greatest sadness is that new technologies promise so much for countries like ours, but our government makes horrible mistakes like legislating a monopoly. If we can just learn to embrace new technologies and learn from trends round the world, we can rapidly pull ourselves to the front out of the mire we are in at the moment.
I want rj-11 hookup, and a local phone number (Score:2)
I want a service which will let me make phone calls to real phone numbers over my high speed broadband connection, using my existing telephone equipment (rj-11 cordless phone, etc.)
In addition, I would like to be able to recieve calls on it, using a number which would be free for people who live close to me to call.
Does such a service exist? I don't use my phone very often, and hate paying Verizon every month. I have a cable modem which usually gets very high thruput.
-Pete
Re:I want rj-11 hookup, and a local phone number (Score:1)
But the service doesn't seem all that cheap. I fail to see what AT&T, SBC, or any of these other people can't give me minimal local service for $8 to $16 a month. It seems to me that's what it should cost by now.
Its called a cell phone (Score:2)
You don't need rj-11. You need a good net connection (check out wireless), and a good voice connection.
Seriously, I pay the same amount as a voice line for a phone that has a number not where I live, but where the people who call me live, and free long distance anywhere in the US, free roaming (but no service outside of cities, but still everywhere I travel) I get caller id, unlisted number, and voicemail included, all of which are extra charge for a regular phone.
I don't care who provides my service (though if I have a choice I will choose someone who isn't lobbying goverment for laws I don't like) I care that I get good service. One number to call that always reaches me is nice. (I do not always answer the phone).
Re:Its called a cell phone (Score:2)
Why are these people complaining about 80 cents? (Score:4, Funny)
There are other good ways to make cheap calls (Score:2, Interesting)
Depending on which country you're in YMMV, but I have found that using the canada direct service is fairly reliable and cheap. Basically you call 1-800-222-0016, and that gets you a line in canada, from there you can just use a calling card to place the call. So basically the call isn't going to cost more than a call within canada.
THe cool thing is seeing on the phone bill $50-60 in savings on a call that costs $2.50
Cayman Islands Phone (Score:3, Interesting)
(begin RANT) Even 800 consumer service numbers are billed. I picked up my first copy of Windows 95 upgrade while there. (it was a few years ago) After installing it, it couldn't find the CD drive it was installed from, the modem, or the sound card. At 1.50 per minute for service, I simply chose to wipe the drive and recover the old OS from backups. I finaly upgraded after I returned to the US. An hour on the phone would have cost about what the upgrade cost. Dialup internet was about
Re:Cayman Islands Phone (Score:2)
More current info may be useful. Here is what I found.
10 hrs/mo is $17
20 hrs is $27
30 is $36
50 is $50
unlimited is $79
For all plans there is an additional $35 setup fee plus additional charges on all except unlimited plan.
ISDN is avaliable in a 10 hr and 20 hr/mo package.
Rates are in CI dollars. These rates are the Dial up rates. Would you pay over $100.00 US per month for unlimited dial up?
I also think they have some serious bandwidth problems. Surfing to candw.ky is like surfing into most
Dialpad (Score:1)
And here's what I want... (Score:2, Interesting)
I want my computer to be a single point of access to phones. I want it to automatically choose the cheapest method for me, whether it is a local call over standard phones, VoIP, or something else.
There has to be some hardware involved, for instance, I guess I need a card that is capable of making a call over the classical phone lines. Could a modem be used for this?
Then I could have a single front-end in my house, for example, I'øø have a Bluetooth access point, connected to the computer. Then I have a Bluetooth headset lying around. If I put it on, there is voise recognition, so that I can say "call ma", and if the cheapest call to ma happens to be a local telephone call, the computer will use the telephone card to make that call. If it happens to be VoIP, it makes a VoIP call, if I have to call on her cell phone, it dials that number.
This "while-we're-waiting-for-VoIP" card that I have in mind, anybody know if that's easy to make?
Re:And here's what I want... (Score:2)
Its what service you have. Calling ma may be a free telco call, but if you pay $40/month for the line, and only use it to talk to ma, for 10 minutes a month, you are paying far more than to pay $.50/minute for the most expensive voip line which is otherwise you cheapest alternative. (costs made up)
The problem is you have to know at the start of the month. I don't know who I'm calling 30 days from now. It dad suddenly has a heart attack I'll probably be on the phone with mom for hours and I'm better off with a telco line, but normally I don't talk that much so I'm better off without. Good luck finding a comptuer that can perdict the future.
Calling Honduras (Score:2)
Reminds me of something.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I just wonder if this technology would do anything to foster local communities, rather than just connecting people over great distances. Certainly, talking to a relative who is away is important, but it's important to look at what can be done to improve the local infrastructure as well.
Don't Say "Third World" (Score:1, Offtopic)
Also, for what it's worth, technically Europe is the "First World," and North America is the "Second World" or New World.
Re:Don't Say "Third World" (Score:1, Funny)
The term was an analogy comparing pre-industrial nations pre-Revolutionary France. Pre revolutionary France was the Third Estate -- a downtrodden shithole of poverty, hence the Third Fucking World.
Read up on the fucking etymology of this shit before you assume far too much.
Re:Don't Say "Third World" (Score:2, Insightful)
THIRD WORLD -- the economically underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America, considered as an entity with common characteristics, such as poverty, high birthrates, and economic dependence on the advanced countries. The French demographer Alfred Sauvy coined the expression ("tiers monde" in French) in 1952 by analogy with the "third estate," the commoners of France before and during the French Revolution-as opposed to priests and nobles, comprising the first and second estates respectively. Like the third estate, wrote Sauvy, the third world is nothing, and it "wants to be something." The term therefore implies that the third world is exploited, much as the third estate was exploited, and that, like the third estate its destiny is a revolutionary one. It conveys as well a second idea, also discussed by Sauvy, that of non-alignment, for the third world belongs neither to the industrialized capitalist world nor to the industrialized Communist bloc. The expression third world was used at the 1955 conference of Afro-Asian countries held in Bandung, Indonesia. In 1956 a group of social scientists associated with Sauvy's National Institute of Demographic Studies, in Paris, published a book called Le Tiers-Monde. Three years later, the French economist Francois Perroux launched a new journal, on problems of underdevelopment, with the same title. By the end of the 1950's the term was frequently employed in the French media to refer to the underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America.
Re:Don't Say "Third World" (Score:2, Informative)
This was happening in the sixties, when all these countries were immersed in de-colonisation processes. Sadly, what they have in common today is mainly their poverty (but not all of them!).
In this context, the "First World" were the US allies, while the "Second World" were the Communist countries.
Enlarging the installed base (Score:3, Informative)
So why is it so cheap? Because of the large installed base. The most expensive part of the infrastructure -- the copper "last mile" -- is already in place, and has been for nearly a hundred years. For the most part, that copper is already paid for. Plus, there is a lot of competition.
By sake of example, my long distance carrier, Opex [opexagent.com], charges me $0.045/min for interstate and $0.09/min for intrastate calls. International rates are reasonable.
In third world countries, there isn't a very large installed base. The cost of installing new copper is high, and in many cases equipment is still being paid off. Plus, many countries have telco monopolies that charge whatever they feel like. So naturally, people will turn to promising alternatives such as internet telephony. When I was in Guatemala two years ago, it seemed there were more cell phones than landline phones. Cell towers were everywhere, it seemed. (On a side note, I walked thru a village where the houses were mud huts with no running water... but they had TV's and cell phones... priorities???)
Summarizing: U.S. landlines are higher quality than internet telephony and at reasonable cost; 3rd world landlines low quality high cost; might as well try VOIP.
Zambian Cellphones (Score:2, Interesting)
3rd World Beats 1st World Again (Score:2)
Funny, the way that the 3rd world is leading the charge in this particular area of new technology: VoIP.
It reminds of what was going on back in the early 1990s, when cell phone markets in India and other countries were booming, largely because cell phones provided so much more reliable service than the creating infrastructure of their land line telephone system.
I've heard that the cell phone business in many African countries is still lucrative, screwy government policies notwithstanding.
They will be banned (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a monopoly created by the government.
There have been cases in which some people install a satellite link between honduras and the USA, install local telephone lines in Honduras, and sell phone cards in the states.
The long distance called would only costs the local call price (2 cents a minute plus the satellite link) and you could charge 40cents a minute for a long distance call from USA to Honduras. So you only need 20 local telephones lines and a satellite link to make a lot of money (if you dont get caught)
You can make up to 1 million dollars in 6 months..
Sorry for my english...
rb.
Re:There are more important things they need (Score:1)
Re:There are more important things they need (Score:2)
Besides, cell phones are often more widely used in third-world nations. They're only luxury goods if you already have a copper network in place. I'm quite sure that if we had it all do over again here in the States, we'd build cell towers rather than run thousands of miles of wire, just as many people are "building" WiFi LANs in their homes rather than running Cat5 through the walls.
Re:There are more important things they need (Score:3, Informative)
Because if you are starting from scratch it's a lot easier to set up a telephone system with cellular phones than it is to install lots of cable. It's also a lot quicker and cheaper to get a cellphone system back operational following a major natural disater or war.
Re:There are more important things they need (Score:2)
Given that he's verifiably dead I'd hazard there's a good reason you can't reach him by cell.
Max