Which VOIP service is the best value for money and the best service?

Question

I find calling from land phones expensive so i like to use VOIP for international calls. Which systems do people use and what is the best?

Answer 1

VoIP offers many, many ways and VSP's (VoIP Service Providers) for making long distance calling at very low cost as compared to PSTN phone companies.

I don't label any VoIP service as the "best".  

They all offer different features, market advantages, and pricing schemes, and levels of customer service.  This is how they differentiate themselves from one another.

I personally use three different methods of VoIP calling:

1.

PC based VoIP:

If you don't mind using a headset and microphone with your PC, then here are a few options that offer very good LD rates:

Skype

Gizmo5

Efonica

Yahoo Voice

PcCall

EarthCaller - currently, EarthCaller while still in beta dev phase and is offering completely free USA/Canada VoIP calling from your PC browser.  No strings, no gimmicks, no charge.

With the exception of EarthCaller (free), rates vary from about 1 - 2 cents/min across North America.

2.

ATA VoIP Telephone Adapters:

I also use a VoIP telephone adapter, that I self configure to connect to SIP-based VoIP services.  

(SIP - Session Initiation Protocol)

I currently use a Linksys PAP2T-NA two-port user configurable ATA. This means that I can configure the ATA for service with two distinct and unrelated VoIP services at the same time.

I connect my ATA with SIP VoIP services such as:

CallCentric

InPhonex

Voip.ms

Les.net

Rates vary from 0.75 to 2.5 cents/min across North America and many other parts of the world.

These services are primarily BYOD (bring your own voip device), except for InPhonex who also will sell the VoIP adapters to you.

BYOD services are best suited to users who have enough technical ability to configure their own ATA's and softphones.

With BYOD VoIP you also generally need to know enough about your Router to port forward SIP ports 5060 and RTP ports (Linksys ATA's use RTP ports 16384-16482.

3.

Roll Your Own VoIP Calling Cards:

Using a VoIP service as a Calling Card gateway is one of the easiest and lowest cost methods of long distance calling.

Your biggest savings is in the fact that there is No VoIP Equipment Required, no equipment network configuration issues like port forwarding, NAT-Routers, PC's, softphones, or ATA adapters to fiddle with.

Just access your VoIP service by calling a local, or 1-800 access gateway number from your regular phone, or cell.

The services I use for VoIP Calling Card access are CallCentric and InPhonex.  With these services not only can you make calls with a SIP softphone, or ATA, you also have the added benefit of calling card access.  You can learn more about how to do this at http://www.cqvoip.com

These services are pre-paid,  Pay-As-You-Go, no contracts, no commitments, no gimmicks and no nonsense.  Only pay for what you use.

Calling card gateway access is a good way to by-pass your expensive local telco LD service, using a regular phone or cell.