Skype leads international calling & the death of the home phone
March 26, 2009 – 12:20 pmThere’s an article today over at xchange called Skype Becomes No. 1 International Voice Provider that highlights the growth of the company.
For those unfamiliar with Skype, they provide free software for consumers and businesses to communicate through voice, video & instant messaging. I’ve used Skype a few times, but I don’t make that many international calls. They also offer a paid service to communicate with phones outside of the Skype network.
There are several other companies such as Vonage that utilize the internet for calls.
Below is the description about how the service works from Vonage:
With Vonage’s VoIP service (Voice over Internet Protocol), you make and receive calls through your pre-existing high-speed broadband Internet connection using your existing home phone. Vonage converts sound into data, sends it over the Internet, and converts it back into sound at the other end. The people you talk with will never know the difference because a VoIP call sounds just like a regular phone call.
The person you’re calling doesn’t need to have Vonage or an Internet connection on their side, they just need a phone. And, just as it always has, your phone rings when someone calls you. You use your same touch-tone phone, you’re just connecting it to Vonage instead of your old phone company. Also, using Vonage doesn’t affect your computer usage…continue to surf the web or send and receive email with no problem!
We utilize Vonage for Lora’s home office. Overall, I’d have to say that it’s been OK. Not great, but not horrible, especially considering the cost differences for the same features and 2 lines from the phone or cable company. The main problems that we have had have been more related to internet connectivity than any problems with the hardware or service. Lora uses her mobile phone as a backup when the service does encounter problems, which, unfortunately seems to happen in the middle of some large group conference call.
There is also a growing group of “mobile only” household, such as ours. According to a study last fall by Nielsen, about 17% of households were mobile only at the time and the number has probably reached over 20% now.
Have you cut the cord on your home phone service yet? If not, what are you holding out for?
2 Responses to “Skype leads international calling & the death of the home phone”
We played around with both Skype and Vonage, but eventually landed on cable-based VOIP via first Time-Warner and now the fiber-optic flavored version that’s part of the AT&T U-Verse package. We’d give up our home phone altogether if it weren’t for our alarm system.
By Average Jane on Mar 26, 2009
We played around with both Skype and Vonage, but eventually landed on cable-based VOIP via first Time-Warner and now the fiber-optic flavored version that’s part of the AT&T U-Verse package. We’d give up our home phone altogether if it weren’t for our alarm system.
By MM on Oct 5, 2009