Freetalk (PCWorld, Dixons, Currys)

[scgf]

I have been paying around £40 per quarter for my phone line & calls. That's a lot of rental for £3 - £4 of calls a month. I decided to try out VOIP and did lots of reading on the web to work out which way to go.

The conclusion I reached was that the completely 'free' VOIP providers do not appear to provide a reliable service. I was interested in replacing my BT service with a VOIP service, in conjunction with my mobile phone for when there are problems, so wanted something with very good uptime.

One service that seemed to get glowing praise from users was Freetalk, the PCWorld, Dixons, Currys offering. Those that commented mentioned 100% uptime etc..

I went to my local PCWorld and bought the one year boxed Freetalk product - £79 for a year, which covers all calls to UK geographic numbers. It came with a small black box (basically a router) which simply connects to a current router and allows you to connect a standard telephone. I plugged the box in to my Buffalo wireless router, and connected my phone. A simple web-based registration process was all that was necessary. Within minutes I could make and receive calls.

I must say, I am very impressed. Zero problems. Not only that, my wireless telephone is doing all sorts of things it never did - the caller's phone number is shown on the phone's LCD display, and a little icon appears when there have been missed calls so I can go through the numbers.

I have now cancelled my BT telephone service - I get broadband through NTL so am able to do this and keep my broadband connection.

I hope this is of interest to someone here!

[JohnM8]

Very interesting.

I too have been thinking of changing to VOIP. My phone rental with a 'Talk Unlimited' service is about £26 p/month, not to mention additional call charges. By switching to 'Free Talk' I will save about £20 a month, what a saving!

I'm going out today to make a purchase and later to cancel my phone line.
I like you, have NTL broadband (2 meg service).

Just one question to you, does surfing the web or downloading affect the voip?

Thanks for the info.

John.

[scgf]

Hi John.

I don't know - I haven't really stress-tested the system, but I have heard that if you are playing a very graphics-intensive game, using the phone will slow it down a little.

If you have a 2Mbit service I really wouldn't worry. I just use the phone without thinking about it and haven't noticed anything untoward.

Report back later when you get it set up!

[38H21543]

You might want to try this site to check your broadband line performance before jumping in with both feet.
I have a bad echo using VOIP through a PC softfone, and want to buy an adapter to use a normal phone.
But, my NTL line / router arrangement shows not too good results at the moment using this site (Your score: 3.3).
Maybe this explains the poor VOIP performance.

http://www.testyourvoip.com/

[scgf]

Yes, I tried this site before buying and my score was consistently poor at 3.3 - however, I decided to take advantage of the Freetalk 14 day money-back guarantee in order to try it out for real.

At the end of the day, the test site isn't using the same servers or routing as you will be using.

As I said before, despite the poor score I got on the test site, I am actually getting excellent phone audio quality, no echoes and no dropouts.

IMHO the best way forward is to use a service where the conventional phone is plugged into an adapter which is in turn connected to your router. I wasn't prepared to use anything that needed the computer to be on, or that connected with usb - which is why I rejected the Tesco offering.

I have never had much satisfaction using Skype, for example. . . The Freetalk service is for real and works just like a normal landline.

[scgf]

I just tried the testyourvoip.com site again. This time I got a score of 2.9! Still getting an excellent phone service though.

[JohnM8]

Also tested and got a score of 1.0. However, I am a heavy download user.
If this is a problem, I will restrict the downloading and just download over night.

Well, I've made my purchase and will look at setting this up tomorrow.
One question I asked in PC World, which they could not answer; can I connect up more than one phone? Hopefully you could advise me.
I thought about wall mounting the little black box next to my modem, where it's out of site. I really don't want to trail cat5 cable from my phone back to the modem.

Thanks for your help.

[scgf]

There is only one telephone socket on the adapter, but you could try connecting a splitter to it, like you might to any BT socket to allow for an extension or second phone.

There is quite a lot of help on the Freetalk website - there might be an answer there.

Remember you've got that 14 day money back offer if it doesn't work to your liking.

Originally Posted by 38H21543

You might want to try this site to check your broadband line performance before jumping in with both feet.
I have a bad echo using VOIP through a PC softfone, and want to buy an adapter to use a normal phone.
But, my NTL line / router arrangement shows not too good results at the moment using this site (Your score: 3.3).
Maybe this explains the poor VOIP performance.

http://www.testyourvoip.com/

How far from the exchange do you live? I ran the test even though I dont currently have any VOIP stuff installed on my laptop and my score came out at 4.2! am interested on how the scoring system works.!

[scgf]

Both 38H21543 and I use the NTL cable service. Distance from the exchange is not relevant. I believe the lower score with NTL may be because the upload speed is lower with cable than with ADSL.

[JohnM8]

I now have a score of 4.2 (NTL). Of course for this I had to disable my P2P software.
I've now activated my 'freetalk' account, setup was very simple although I have a telephone extention line down my hallway between the freetalk adaptor and my normal BT (corded) phone. Alternatinely, the same length of cat5 cable would be required in order to have the freetalk adaptor near my phone.
It's not that necessary to have it near your phone, although it would be handy to know if you have any messages left on your voicemail, indicated by a red LED, but as my phone has an answering machine anyway, messages can be left in the usual way.

Initially with the first call, which took about 10 seconds to get a ringing tone, there was a speech delay and break up. The moment I disabled the p2p there wasn't a problem and reception was very good.

I have the '1 year' account £79.99 which would work out @ £6.66p/m, this compared to my current bill of approx £26+p/m is a big saving.....not to mention freetalk's inclusive services: ID blocking, Call Waiting, Caller ID etc etc.

All seems very promising and with the 14 day money back offer I will certainly put this service to full use before I finally decide.

oh and just to end, a second phone can be used with the splitter as you suggested and there's no limit if you have a cordless set up.

So glad I came across this thread, thanks again for the info.

[scgf]

Hi JohnM8. Glad it appears to have worked out for you.

Just remember that calls to non-geographical numbers will be billed to the card you registered with your account. Beware of 0870 numbers - have a look at www.saynoto0870.com to find alternative geographocal numbers.

[JohnM8]

Thanks for the advice scgf.
I noticed their customer service number is a 0871 (10p/min).

I'm all neatly wired up now. Ran another ext. from the phone junction box and disconnected the live NTL line in to be on the safe side.
I've also configured my p2p software to gain more bandwidth and all seems to be fine now.

Thanks again.

[Chair]

I am also using Freetalk, but despite contacting their help service still have very crackling phone quality. Have used the testyourvoip.com and had a good score of 4.1, so not sure why the poor quality. Their help service was not particlualrly helpful. I am using Blueyonder ( Telewest) as my broadband supplier. Unless I can improve the quality I will need to go back to my normal phone line. Does anyone have any ideas of what I could do to improve the quality ?

[38H21543]

I decided to try the Linksys PAP2 adapter on my NTL cable line, which wasn't scoring too well at testyourvoip.
The voice quality is so much better than through the PC softphone. Seems just as good as my landline, so I will be using it for most of my outgoing calls and see how reliable it is.
I can't believe it really.