I use Skype all the time for long international calls to countries like South
Africa ,Zimbabwe, Australia etc. and "sometimes" then I notice delays, but most
often they are quite useable. I also use viber a bit too and had some low
quality while traveling in Peru recently in remote places over shared hotel
wifi. Amazing it works at all!
South Africa and worse zimbabwe at certains times of day is quite slow as they
have limited pipes,but so was my landline, probably went via satellite?
Sometimes you can hear your own echo and that gives you a very good idea of
roundtrip delay.
A friend in Germany uses a domestic US Skype out number for his property rental
business, so he can take calls at home in Germany. Not perfect but good enough
for the modest call volumes.
It is easy to use dslreports speed test, to look at your latency to remote
server as they have cities you can select all over the US for test.
I must test to some remote isps sometime, to see if I can find 5000mS,
interesting that you say that would happen routinely?
I have had 100% free ooma voip for years, as I got in under the wire years
before they added the you pay the regulators fee of a couple of $.
I have never experienced anything like 5sec on domestic US calls, but maybe I
don't call the Carolinas often enough!
The nice thing about ooma is, if you choose a particular codec when setting it
up, it works for Faxing albeit most reliably at a slightly slower than max rate.
So all those legal and financial documents, they wont accept any other way,
still can be sent on voip without a landline or paying for overpriced eFax.
Many voip systems don't handle faxes at all, not even if you try throttling
back speed.
If that is important, then worth considering if it is supported, when you
choose a supplier.
Tim
________________________________
From: Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Olympus Camera Discussion <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, December 3, 2014 9:13 AM
Subject: Re: [OM] Changing the question: was: Any suggestions for a VOIP
provider?
> Changing the question. How about a simple long distance provider as I used
> to have many years ago? One where you dial the service number and then the
> number you're calling.
Buggy whips.
They still exist, but barely. Many of us have free long-distance as
part of our cell-phone plans. Check with Verizon, ATT and Sprint for
those packages. The free long-distance is for your land-line phone,
but is tied in with your monthly cell-phone contract. I think you can
still find pre-paid long-distance calling cards at Wal-Mart.
The thing about VoIP is that there are two "types" of VoIP. There is
the carrier-provided VoIP and then there is the "skype" type of VoIP
which uses your Internet connection to attempt to do real-time
communications over a network designed for non-real-time data. Carrier
VoIP is a different animal because it uses VoIP technology/protocol,
but uses dedicated "pipes" for the purpose. When you are checking your
email, it doesn't matter much if the latency on your broadband
connection is 5ms or 5000ms. But if you are trying to talk over that
same connection, it really does matter. Keep in mind that the majority
of VoIP (via the Internet) sessions terminate to one particular phone
switch in Las Vegas. A call from the Carolinas to somebody in New York
will have about a one second delay--on a good day.
Businesses with SIP phones that want to stay in business don't use
Internet connections for their telephone service.
AG Schnozz
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