Skype announced on Monday that Skype Out will be free until the end of the year for customers in the United States and Canada to place free phone calls from their computers to any land line or mobile phone in the two countries. Skype is a VoIP program that you install on your computer to making calls over the internet. It’s always been free to call from one PC to another but now you can call regular phone in the US and Canada for free. Since it’s now free, I’m going to have to try out the quality of their network.
UPDATE: I just called my cell phone from Skype because I was curious to see what number came up in my caller ID, 1-000-012-3456 is what came up.
Tag Archives: VoIP
Vonage
I signed up for Vonage the other day. I picked the $15 per month for 500 minutes. The sound quality is just as good as a regular landline phone. The only downside to it is my name doesn’t show up on caller IDs. It displays as ‘Unknown Name’. I picked up the Linksys PAP2 Phone Adapter for Vonage Internet Phone Service for about $50 and then there’s a $50 rebate, so the final cost is FREE. The neat thing about the adapter is it maintains your phone number wherever you are in the world. You can take the phone adapter from New York, with any area code you want, and plug the phone adapter in California and still have the same phone number. Vonage is coming out with a Wi-Fi phone. The Wi-Fi phone will be an additional handset option to be used with your current Vonage service. It’s an inexpensive wireless phone to use at Wi-Fi hotspots. I might get one of these when they come out to try it but I would rather have a cell/wifi phone. That way I can use cellular minutes when I’m not near a hotspot and Vonage minutes when I am, especially since cell phones don’t work too well inside some places.