hi all,

for those specially interested in VoIP in this forum.. Its interesting that VSK got inspired by my earlier post, and ordered two SIP PHONES to speak to his relatives in India..

I had my phones for some time now,, and we both had a little chat on phone for around 20 mins.. and the voice quality was pretty good and on par with the regular telephone..

Whats still remaining is testing the sipphone in India with the available bandwidth and the reliability.. Yesterday we had some initial problems like didnt get voice for first two times.. then we were able to talk freely.. So as a note of caution, i would like to mention that its not completely free of problems.. Some times its hard to get connected.. This I guess is the problem on the side of directory service which maps my ip address to my number and vice verca...

All in all it was exciting idea to have ones own telephone exchange(not really but close to having a dedicated line for free).. I am eagarly waiting to set it up in india.. I will be doing this december and let you guys know.. I would encourage the experiances of others in this area..

Cheers,

Cmreddy

Hi Cmreddy,

Really it was a great experience. Initially I could not able to configure my router as I bought old router, so we have to update firmware. So I bought another router to connect this SIPPhone and it was connected immediately and we could able to talk very clearly. Offcourse sometimes we have to wait for few rings i think.. since it is connecting through IP i think. But the voice clarity is very clear. It is just like normal landline. If anyone wants to stay here for long time I will encourage you to install one at your house and other at your parents house. So that you can talk with your folks daily with free of cost. Except your Broadband connection and your parents broadband connection expenses. You could save lots of money on long distance phone calls. The advantage is you don't need to do anything just connect your broadband(ie., DSL or any other Internet connection which should be faster or equal to 64 kbps speed) cable to your router and from router to phone.. thats it... anyway if any guys interested just let us know as we are using them successfully.

VSK

can you pls explain in detail how it works and what wud be the expenses..

Hi Cmreddy,
what's ur impression about VOIP phones. Do they work fine with long distance calls.If they work kindly provide installation details and hardware details.

Cheers,
Hari

Hi All,

the quality is very good. All you need is a DSL connection and a router. Now a days you can also use softphones available on www.sipphone.com or fwd.pulver.com . I would suggest you guys start with a softphone before wanting to buy harware. Sipphone are now outdated and what we get now is a sip adapter which will plug into your regular phone and the other end is into the router. For details see www.grandstream.com or www.sipura.com . I would prefer sipura.com over grandstream products.

If you have an account in fwd.pulver.com you can call many toll free numbers across europe and usa. Even www.sipphone.com is also getting better with its service. Both these guys sell adapters and phones.

Checkout their sites.

And the infrastructure in India is not yet ready for this kind of activity. The ISPs there are too greedy and when you mention something like VoIP, they pepup the charges or some intentionally deactivate the protocols to promote their own VoIP services. So i have decided to wait for somemore time before trying it in India. I tried with every known ISP in HYD but the charges are simply very high and doesnt consumate with the usage. They are chargin like 3000 Rs and higher for a 64 kbps line and 300 MB transfer traffic. You should consider 1 MB per min transfer traffic while using the SIP Phone at the speed of 128 kbps.

I guess, in another 6 months the situation should change.. Lets see..

Cheers,

Cmreddy

Please try www.skype.com and let us know about results.

Regards.

Hi I have tried Skype long ago.. Its pretty good and infact sometimes it scores more points than a sipphone in quality.. But the advantage a sipphone has over skype is that it requires no computer and itself looks like a normal phone. And sipphone has many providers and its a open platform with many players and there is possibility for interconnection among players. Skype is a propreitary protocol and you can talk only with other skype users.

Cheers,
Cmreddy