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Our Blogs The BeerFiles Netgear phone says bye bye PSTN, hello VoIP
Our Blogs The BeerFiles Netgear phone says bye bye PSTN, hello VoIP | Netgear phone says bye bye PSTN, hello VoIP |
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| Written by Stan Beer | |
| Sunday, 25 November 2007 | |
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Page 2 of 2 In Australia, if you subscribe to the Skype Pro service, you'll pay a bit less than $6 per month (if you include a 12 month SkypeIn subscription) rental, 6 cents a SkypeOut call untimed anywhere in Australia, about 2.7 cents a minute for SkypeOut calls to most major overseas destinations and 27 cents a minute to mobiles. That's a bit more expensive than some local VoIP services but incomparably cheaper than the PSTN service I now subscribe to. The Netgear SPH200D, however, is not really made for Skype road warriors. As a DECT phone, it is particularly suited for the home or small offices, where handsets move around and the base station stays put. A Wi-Fi handset version, the SPH200W should prove more suitable for travellers looking to take advantage of the growing number of hotspots to place Skype calls. If there's a deficiency in the Netgear SPH200D then it's that I couldn't find a way to send SMS messages like I can from my computer. This is a pity because Skype SMS messages are half the cost of those sent from mobile phones. However, I hate sending SMS messages from anything but a QWERTY keyboard anyway. The big objection I always get from people when I tell them I'm thinking of disconnecting my PSTN service and using VoIP is what will I do if there's a power failure (as if I have old fashioned PSTN handsets and not cordless phones that need power anyway). What if Skype goes down again? My answer is always the same - well I guess I'll just have to use one of the three charged up mobile phones that are laying around the house until the power and Skype come back online. So now I have two telephone numbers running off the same base station - my cheap and versatile Skype VoIP service and my expensive, limited and inflexible PSTN service. Guess which one I'm going to disconnect?
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