Hi guys
I wonder if there is someone on here who could advise me.

I have just purchased a freetalk adaptor which gives me an extra telephone line and unlimited free calls to landlines (01 and 02) 24 X 7.  The yearly cost is £79.99 which is cheaper than a second line on its own and you can use quite a few extra services like call divert for free.  I need a second line so cancelling my existing arrangements will pay for this.  I also had a deal from tiscali whereby I took their broadband package and talk unlimited package and cancelling the telephone package will save me another £5 per month.  So I am quite pleased but out of interest does anyone know of a better deal than the freetalk?  

The call prices for Non Geographicals and mobile numbers could be better though.   Hence the real purpose of my post.  

Does anyone know of a better deal than 18185 for dialing mobiles (connection charge of 4p and then either 5p per minute weekdays or 2p per minute weekends with per second billing)?

What is the cheapest deal to mobile phones that does not involve paying a minimum connection charge?

What is the best deal for dialing Non Geographical number (0871, 0870 and 0845 mainly) as they seem to be everywhere these days.

Thanks for your help.

David

Hi

Thanks for the reply and the suggestions.

Yes, I still have BT line as it is necessary for my broadband and the freecall adapter only works if it can plug into a broadband enabled line.

I would be interested to hear about any of those bad reviews - do you have any on-line references?

That could be a good suggestion to take out a mobile contract with anytime minutes - I will have to do my sums and check through my bill to see how many minutes per month I am paying for - it is quite a lot!!   I can't find that particular offer you were referring to  - most of the half price line rentals I can see are for 9 months but they are expecting an 18 month contract instead of 12.  Again have you got any online reference to that sort of offer as I would definitely be interested.

Thanks again for your help.

David

Hi

I like the idea of the using the 02 mobile services - if it is cheaper but I need to research it a bit more.  I clicked on the link which is the order page for Sims but can’t find the details of that specific order.  I can find one saying free 300 texts if you spend £10 monthly though.  That is a good deal if you use texts but I only use about 3 or 4 a month - so if you have a link to this specific offer details of 100 minutes that would be great.

I spend £20+ per month at moment calling mobiles from the home phone, there are lots of calls (family of 5 all with mobiles) and some calls are short and some are long.

If the 02 offer allowed me to buy another 100 minutes with the £10 spend then that would be the ideal as that would work out at 200 mins for £10 or 5p a minute.  I am assuming these minutes are any time to any network.

18185 are also 5p a minute but with a 4p connection charge and in my case these connection charges would add up.  I think I would still register with 18185 for the longer calls though.

     18185 weekday            18185 weekend      02

1 min            9p            6p               5p
2 min            14p            8p            10p
3 min            19p            10p            15p
4 min            24p            12p            20p



It also depends on whether 02 bills in seconds or in minutes, so you can see why I would like read the specific offer details.

As for Freetalk, it only works on a broadband enabled telephone line.  So if it goes down or I need to telephone 999 I can use my main BT line.  I need a second line and I am saving the cost by cancelling my existing arrangements so this suits.  I also use wireless ADSL broadband/router (they can be had for about £40.00) so I have the means to plug the adapter in and use it when my PC is switched off.

Thanks again for all the help.

David

mmmm.  Can't quite find the call charges here - I know I am probably being stupid or blind - or both.  Also, if I am reading the t+c correctly then the first 3 minutes of the day cost 25p and the call allowance does not go towards that first 3 minutes of every day.  And that is the cost to landlines and 02 mobiles.  Somedays there will only be a few short calls so I am not sure that this package is going to help me.  I am coming round to think that it will be a lot easier to understand, and possibly cheaper, to stick to 18185.

Thanks for the help anyway.  I suppose the good thing about 18185 is that there is no contract and I can stop using it at any time if it proves too costly or a better deal appears - I will keep watching these pages.

Thanks for all the help anyway.

Regards.............David

daities wrote on Nov 13^th, 2005 at 7:41pm:


You should have bought a Linksys PAP2NA unlocked voip adapater for your router for about £45 and then used the free voip calls service of say www.1899.com or www.voipcheap.co.uk ; You can then use that hardware for several years without any ongoing monthly subscription cost to Dixons group.  Also the overseas call costs of Freetalk are not good as also with 084/7.

Personally I would have thought that going for www.tele2.co.uk uk's £7.50 per month deal for conventional telephone calls was a better bet.  You can still get a second voip line for incoming calls for free with www.sipgate.co.uk and that provides a voip number on your local exchange.  I haven't gone the voip route myself properly yet because what experience I have had at a software level (rather than using an ATA which is the only serious way to use voip) suggests call quality is suspect and there are a variety of technical glitches.  Of course if you need to move around though voip is great as you can take the calls anywhere on your voip NGN number with a notebook PC without paying call diversion fees.

See www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/default_ShopGroup.asp?ShopGroupID=77 for more info on the Linksys PAP2NA.  Make sure you don't get the locked version that works only with Vonage though (doesn't have the NA in the name).  I'm sure if you go back to Dixons or PC World just claiming that your Freetalk adapter doesn't work properly etc, etc that they will give you your money back without question.  They know this is a product that a lot of customers are going to struggle to make work.  Even if you are technically over the 7 or 28 days money back I'm sure they would at least let you buy something else to the same value.

daities wrote on Nov 15^th, 2005 at 11:20pm:


Yes basically the 1899.com or voipcheap.co.uk voip service can be successfully configured, I am told, if you plug the Linksys PAP2NA into a port on your router and it has two ports for two different voip incoming lines on top of your one conventional phone line.  If you have an ATA (which the Linksys PAP2NA is and the thing Dixons supply is but will only use the Dixons Voip service as it is a locked ATA like a locked mobile phone) then you can just plug your ordinary phone or DECT phones in as you no doubt currently do with the Dixons ATA box.  You don't need your computer on to make or receive calls.

But if Dixons are going to charge a rental for unlimited 01/02 calls then it should be less than what they are actually charging as for that money you can get unlimited 01/02 conventional phone calls without buying any new phone equipment.  And the customer service of their chosen voip operator seems to be notoriously crap.

You could either use voipcheap or 1899 for outgoing calls for so long as they remain free (which they won't forever) or use sipgate who don't charge a monthly rental and have more sustainable call prices.  Sipgate don't charge for the incoming voip geographic numbers.

Interesting discussion thread here.  If I needed two lines from home or made lots of outgoing voice calls I would get round to this stuff myself more urgently:-

http://www.voipuser.org/forum_topic_2340.html

daities,

You don't need to have your computer on to make voip calls with the Linksys PAP2-NA that is the whole point of the device.

If you have DECT phones you can then plug your DECT base station into one of the two phone ports and if you use a doubler or whatever on the phone port you can also connect a normal phone I think.   Or you can put the normal phone into the second port and configure that for a different voip provider and incoming phone number (so two phone lines on top of your BT line).

The key think is that you are not under any 12 month contract with voipcheap or sipgate etc so if another voip provider becomes much cheaper you can sign with them instead.  And you can use a different voip provider for your outgoing calls compared to using sipgate for your incoming calls.  And you don't pay Dixons £90 a year times 10 years for the hardware......................

The thing with voip calls is that they don't always seem to be quite as good quality as old fashioned PSTN on occasion so it only makes sense to use it a lot if it is much cheaper.  But as you have seen this is not always so.  Using it for a second phone line though and saving yourself BT's rip off £126 a year line rental for a second line is obviously the key thing.

The Dixons product is locked down to only their phone provider and preconfigured so you don't have the hassle of setting that up but at the penalty of not being able to choose the cheapest voip provider.  If you get stuck with configuring the Linksys PAP2-NA I understand theer are clear instructions at www.sipgate.co.uk for the Sipura 2000 models which this is identical to as it is made by the same factory in China that make the Sipuras (it isn't supported by Linksys uk as this isn't an officially uk released product).  The manual for it is also downloadable off the websites of the companies selling the Sipura adapters.  I hope you ordered it with an connector for a uk phone socket that includes a ring capacitor or that the firm you bought it from may have given you one of these.

So the whole point of an ATA like this is so your voip phone works all the time without any computer being in service.  And as somebody else has just pointed out to me in another forum keeping a 100w computer base unit on 24/7 and 365 costs about £60 in electricity alone!!

daities wrote on Nov 17^th, 2005 at 8:09pm:


My understanding is that you can use voipcheap for outgoing calls without having your PC switched on.  That is the whole point of having the ATA.  You could use voipcheap with just the computer alone and a headset for outgoing calls without needing the ATA/Linksys PAP2-NA device.

voipcheap doesn't give you an incoming number.  But you can use Sipgate to give you a free voip geographic number for incoming calls on your local exchange.  You can also use Sipgate for outgoing calls but they charge 1p a minute instead of being free like voipcheap.  Since you can have Sipgate for the incoming calls at no fee and configure voipchheap for the outgoing calls you can have the best of both worlds without needing to have your PC switched on for any phone calls.  voipcheap don't offer an incoming phone number service as yet.

Well that's the theory but I haven't made the leap yet.  So good luck with it all.

I think avoiding a long term contractual relationship with Dixons for your phone calls has to be good as in my experience Dixons always have shocking phone service and in any case the Freetalk customer service is in the USA and they don't seem to understand many aspects of the uk phone system.