For US,UK & Canada callers - Voip

[Sahil]

Voip has been booming in recent times and phone companys are giving dirt cheap prices for unlimited calling. Companys such as Vonage have been killing the phone market in the US by giving unlimited calling to US and Canada for 30$ a month and all you need is a broadband connection. I subscribed to vonage and got the router they gave me from the US to bombay to use as i had reliance cable connection at home, but little did i know that my cable connection was as bad as dialup! The service didnt work...coz of the low speed the voice was very unclear.
I have discontinued the reliance cable at my house and gotten mtnl adsl connection which is quick as hell, 256kbps which is sufficent for voip routers to work seamlessly. So i have been looking around for voip phone services better than vonage and this is what i found www.lingo.com Its 20$(22$ with tax total) a month with first month free for trail (Activation 40$,including shipping of equipment) Not only is it 10$ cheaper than its competitors and half the activation chagre BUT you get unlimited western europe calling too!
This can be of great help if you have do abroad as not only do u get a US number assigned but you can also get a UK local number assigned to you.
I really wanna get this butt there is one dilemma that i have facing, even though my internet is fast enough with mtnl 256kbps it has a download limit which sucks!! I am sure this voip will not workout practical with this mtnl limit on downloads. Does anyone know roughly how many kbs or mbs will be used in say like a 10min call on voip? Also if you guys know of any cable internet services in bandra which give unlimited downloads at a dedicated speed of 256kbps or so do let me know their charges pls.
Thought i should share this with you guys as I am sure many of you have super fast internet at home and often call abroad so this will save you alot of money.

[srasania]

hey sahil...I've been using PC to Phone service since 3 years through Mediaring.
I use the service almost daily for around 30-50mins to USA..costs me 4 cents a min.
I have a 128kbps unlimited access broadband connection,and the mediaring service works fine..
My friend also faced same problem..his uncle sent a Vonage pre activated router here,and he couldn't get it working..
So,I'm not too keen on getting a Vonage router for here.
And yeah,dude,VoIP applications take up lot of Data upload/download,so,just keep a good unlimited access connection ready to use it !
cheers,
sr

[Sahil]

The tideous hassel of setup VOIP vonage boxes are long gone.
Finally a plug and play usb device is here! http://www.vonage.com/vonagevphone/