Blueface - some questions for the experts please....

justagirl

Apologies in advance for boring you all with my simple questions!

I currently have Eircom landline and Eircom wireless broadband (using their netopia wireless modem).

Q1. Can I assume that my phone line is not 'dsl'
Q2. Can I use my existing Netopia wireless modem as usual?
Q3. When my blueface is up and running - can I get rid of my line rental with Eircom? (how long does this typically take - do I have to wait until everything is sorted out before I cancel my Eircom landline - I am reading about 'everything going to port .. etc ' and have no idea what any of this means)

(I don't know what 'dsl' means and the blueface faqs say that if I have 'dsl' I have to keep my eircom phoneline)

Q4. If I subscribe to the blueface Freedom World package - does this mean I just pay €24.99 per month and all my calls are included (except to mobiles/latvia/lithuania/slovenia/slovakia/malta) ..... ?.... Have I read this right?

This all seems too good to be true - if it works out for me I could save €65 plus cost of my international calls .. per month ...... tell me it all true!!!!

adrian.s

justagirl wrote:

Apologies in advance for boring you all with my simple questions!

I currently have Eircom landline and Eircom wireless broadband (using their netopia wireless modem).

Q1. Can I assume that my phone line is not 'dsl'
Q2. Can I use my existing Netopia wireless modem as usual?
Q3. When my blueface is up and running - can I get rid of my line rental with Eircom? (how long does this typically take - do I have to wait until everything is sorted out before I cancel my Eircom landline - I am reading about 'everything going to port .. etc ' and have no idea what any of this means)

(I don't know what 'dsl' means and the blueface faqs say that if I have 'dsl' I have to keep my eircom phoneline)

Q4. If I subscribe to the blueface Freedom World package - does this mean I just pay €24.99 per month and all my calls are included (except to mobiles/latvia/lithuania/slovenia/slovakia/malta) ..... ?.... Have I read this right?

This all seems too good to be true - if it works out for me I could save €65 plus cost of my international calls .. per month ...... tell me it all true!!!!

Well if you're using eircom's broadband, it's DSL, so yip that's what's being provided to you by eircom.

Basically, how blueface will work for you is as follows. You order an ATA box from them which you have to plug into your netopia wireless modem, I'm not sure of the model, but I'm sure there'll be an ethernet port on it. There's another port on this ATA box that you plug your phone into. If you've subscribed to blueface, you then dial the number you want to use on your phone and it's business as usual. You are correct with you assumption on the call costs, it's a brilliant saving alright.

Since it's DSL you cannot cancel your line rental, sorry 'bout that.

Hope this helps,
Adrian.

bhickey

justagirl wrote:

Q1. Can I assume that my phone line is not 'dsl'

You do have ADSL. It just happens that the eqpt that Eircom provided you with also serves as a router/hub & wireless access point.

Q2. Can I use my existing Netopia wireless modem as usual?

Yes. VoIP is just another service (like web surfing, e-mail, gaming etc.) running on your Internet connection

Q3. When my blueface is up and running - can I get rid of my line rental with Eircom? (how long does this typically take - do I have to wait until everything is sorted out before I cancel my Eircom landline - I am reading about 'everything going to port .. etc ' and have no idea what any of this means)

No. ADSL means Eircom line rental. The only way you're going to avoid line rental is with a wireless or cable Internet service.

Q4. If I subscribe to the blueface Freedom World package - does this mean I just pay €24.99 per month and all my calls are included (except to mobiles/latvia/lithuania/slovenia/slovakia/malta) ..... ?.... Have I read this right?

Yes. Normal landline alls to the countries listed will be free.

voxpop

you dont need your phone line if you switch to either a wireless broadband supplier or ntl

RangeR

voxpop wrote:

you dont need your phone line if you switch to either a wireless broadband supplier or ntl

Only if you want to make normal phone calls over your phone linse or if you have other equipment that relies on a phone, like Sk2 mirrored sub multiroom.

Other than that, if you get a wireless or cable internet solution, you can dump your line rental altogether and get a VoIP subscription. You just have to be aware of the VoIP limitations.

Some of them are:
* If you have a power cut, you have no phone. There are ways around this sometimes.
* Dialing 999 for emergancy isn't as simple as a land line as you have to make sure you tell them exactley where you are. They have no real way of tracing the call
* If your broadband provider is unreliable at certain times, your VoIP may not be useable or quality may be bad.

justagirl

Ok - I understand all that now - thank you all very much...

SO! In order for me to ditch my Eircom landline - can anyone recommend an alternative provider thats reliable/cheaper .....?....

I'm getting there!

voxpop

Im using NTL for my broadband and I've had very little problems with it over the last 2 years - NTL broadband is only available in certain areas though.

wexfordman

Try this link and see a list of BB suppliers in your area. You will be looking for a wireless provider, not adsl or sat

http://www.broadband.gov.ie/bbinfo/ServiceByLocationSearchWF.aspx

Blueface do another package for 15 yoyo a month which gives you ireland and uk free, and really cheap rates for anywhere else in the workd (us or switzerland is about 1c per min for example, thats a lot of minutes to make up the 10 euro extra for your world package).

If you do decide to go the blueface route, try it out for a month or two before taking the plunge. mY expereince with them is very positive, and I have jusr ported my old eircom number over to them (means I keep my phone number, similar to moving from O2 to Vodafone for example).

Regards,
Wexfordman

Blaster99

justagirl wrote:

Ok - I understand all that now - thank you all very much...

SO! In order for me to ditch my Eircom landline - can anyone recommend an alternative provider thats reliable/cheaper .....?....

I'm getting there!

Where are you? Most decent alternatives are only available in a few select locations.

Blueface or VoIP may also not be as cheap as you think it is. It depends on your usage. If you make a lot of landline calls nationally or internationally they will probably save you significant sums of money, but otherwise probably not. It's not quite the golden route many people make it out to be. And you have to spend money on equipment too so you probably won't see any savings for at least half a year. The quality of the calls can vary significantly also.

If you end up being "stuck" with ADSL, you should use BT Ireland instead. They're significantly cheaper than Eircom. Some people have had frustrating experiences with their customer servicea and billing departments, though.

Freddie59

Blaster99 wrote:

Where are you? Most decent alternatives are only available in a few select locations.

Blueface or VoIP may also not be as cheap as you think it is. It depends on your usage. If you make a lot of landline calls nationally or internationally they will probably save you significant sums of money, but otherwise probably not. It's not quite the golden route many people make it out to be. And you have to spend money on equipment too so you probably won't see any savings for at least half a year. The quality of the calls can vary significantly also.

If you end up being "stuck" with ADSL, you should use BT Ireland instead. They're significantly cheaper than Eircom. Some people have had frustrating experiences with their customer servicea and billing departments, though.

Can't agree with you there Blaster99. €10 per month for UNLIMITED local AND national calls to landlines in Ireland - 24 Hours a day - and for another fiver you can get UK calls as well.

The quality problem with me was overcome by selecting a different CoDec in the Blueface Router. A couple of years ago I was paying Eircom €60 per month for line rental and calls. I now have NTL analogue TV, NTL digital TV, NTL Broadband and unlimited telephone calls to landlines 24 hours a day with Blueface for a combined total of just €65 per month!:D.....and no line rental to Eircom.

wexfordman

Show me one other place where you can get international calls to usa and switzerland for 1c and I might start to agree with you. Show me another way, where (no adsl of course) you can get all your calls in UK and Ireland for 15 quid and not have to pay 25quid a month for the priveledge of having a crappy pair of wires in your house.

Cost of hardware up front is not an issue. 65 quid for an ATA would payback in 2 and a half months compared to eircom line rental, and thats before you stat talking about how much you will save on call costs.

You dont need to make a ot of calls to save, Lower tarifs are availalbe for ireleand only, or even a prepay service. You an get the service for as little as 5 euros a month. No one can beat that!!!

After year one, you have saved yourself 250 quid on line rental alone. Quality of calls is not an issue from my experience, although you do have to have a good internet service. NTL would have very good quality I expect. I have only a wireless 512K bb connection, and I can guarantee you will not know I am on blueface if I call you.

Wexfordman

whowantstwoknow

Freddie59 wrote:

Can't agree with you there Blaster99. €10 per month for UNLIMITED local AND national calls to landlines in Ireland - 24 Hours a day - and for another fiver you can get UK calls as well.

The quality problem with me was overcome by selecting a different CoDec in the Blueface Router. A couple of years ago I was paying Eircom €60 per month for line rental and calls. I now have NTL analogue TV, NTL digital TV, NTL Broadband and unlimited telephone calls to landlines 24 hours a day with Blueface for a combined total of just €65 per month!:D.....and no line rental to Eircom.

Freddie,

Looking at their website the only national unlimted calls is the irl/uk bundle of €15? I have the €99 offer for irl only. I dont have a huge need for the UK and would like to stay with irl only, will they do that for €10?

Mike

Blaster99

Blueface doesn't charge 1c per minute for any calls, from what I know, but ignoring that you can use Telestunt for 1.25c per minute off-peak with an Eircom line to nearly every landline destination in the western world and beyond.

You can certainly expect a line rental saving but if you like me have a bill that is mostly made up of mobile phone calls, then that's about it. These call bundles may look cheap but if you're not making many landline calls then you're spending €10 a month on nothing. Still cheaper than Eircom's line rental of course but not as cheap as it's often made out to be.

VoIP does have some cool features as well, which are perhaps difficult to value. You can do 3-way calling, IP phones allow you to do automatic call forwarding if you don't answer within a certain time, you can easily forward calls mid call, you can add foreign incoming phone numbers quite easily, Blueface allows you to setup another number that rings simultaneously with their number, so you can pickup the call on your mobile for instance. Most of this requires an IP phone which is a fairly expensive piece of kit, but Blueface can simulate most of these features at "exchange" level.

Freddie, before you congratulate yourself too much, you're paying NTL about €20 a month for freely available TV.

wexfordman

Blaster,

If you have a bill thats made up mostly of mobile calls, then you probably should not have a landline. Mobile to mobile is normally cheaper. As for blueface not charging 1c per min, compared to your telestunt offer of .0125 cent, blueface offer .011c for offpeak irish calls.

If your not making many landline calls, as you say, then you dont have to pay the 15 euro pm, you go for PAYG.

Wexfordman

Aquos76

Blaster99 wrote:

Freddie, before you congratulate yourself too much, you're paying NTL about €20 a month for freely available TV.

But for that €20 he also gets free multi room viewing for as many rooms as he likes. So that approx 18 channels he can view through any tv point throughout his house.

Freddie59

madunphy wrote:

Freddie,

Looking at their website the only national unlimted calls is the irl/uk bundle of €15? I have the €99 offer for irl only. I dont have a huge need for the UK and would like to stay with irl only, will they do that for €10?

Mike

No Mike it won't. The €10 per month offerthat I subscriber to is called Eire no limts which gives unlimited calls to Irish landline for six months. The routher was included and €100 covered the calls for six months also.
The normal €10 per month one only gives 300 minutes per month, which is useless to me.

I'm transferring to the €15 per month one which includes UK when it ends.:)

Freddie59

Aquos76 wrote:

But for that €20 he also gets free multi room viewing for as many rooms as he likes. So that approx 18 channels he can view through any tv point throughout his house.

Thank you Aquos - you're like myself... a man/woman with an eye for a bargain and convenience.

Freddie59

Blaster99 wrote:

Blueface doesn't charge 1c per minute for any calls, from what I know, but ignoring that you can use Telestunt for 1.25c per minute off-peak with an Eircom line to nearly every landline destination in the western world and beyond.

Compare the Blueface rates for the USA.

http://www.blueface.ie/rates/rates.aspx?choice=U

http://u.tv/talk/tariffs.asp?loc=ie

Gas thing was that I couldn't get a tariff list on www.eircom.ie - www.u.tv/talk was the only other place I could go. All Eircom had was some kind of call calculator....but I couldn't see all the tariffs at once.:) If you kind folks check other tariffs you will see Blueface chargeing......wait for it.......9c a minute to some destinations which are normally 221c (€2.21) a minute!

bhickey

Freddie59 wrote:

Gas thing was that I couldn't get a tariff list on www.eircom.ie

They're very well hidden but they are at :

http://mmm.eircom.ie/Callcalc/res_costs_alt.asp

ikoonman

You have to keep in mind that Blueface (I am sure there are other VOIP SP's as well) that (with some of their products) offer 300 minutes free local IE, UK, near EU and USA calls.

Blaster99

wexfordman wrote:

Blaster,

If you have a bill thats made up mostly of mobile calls, then you probably should not have a landline. Mobile to mobile is normally cheaper. As for blueface not charging 1c per min, compared to your telestunt offer of .0125 cent, blueface offer .011c for offpeak irish calls.

If your not making many landline calls, as you say, then you dont have to pay the 15 euro pm, you go for PAYG.

Wexfordman

You've got a point. For me it would be a lot cheaper to ditch the landline and just use a call bundle from 3. And I suspect I'm not all that unrepresentative either.

I use Blueface in work and I've noticed that we get very little value for these landline call bundles as nearly all calls are to mobiles, whether in Ireland or abroad. This is why I sometimes highlight that these "unlimited" packages may not be all that cost effective. The reason it is cost effective for us is that we can add a new number for €5, which basically saves us €20 per month over Eircom per phone number.

I haven't tried to do this admitedly, but if you have an unlimited Ireland package with Blueface, you should be able to use Telestunt with Blueface to include international calls in your bundle as Blueface treats 1890 calls as Irish landline calls.

HelterSkelter

wexfordman wrote:

Show me another way, where (no adsl of course) you can get all your calls in UK and Ireland for 15 quid and not have to pay 25quid a

Witn UTV talk you get unlimited free calls to Ireland and UK landlines for €25 a month. Now you are paying €15 for blueface but you haven't included the cost of your NTL connection. Does that work out cheaper?

RangeR

HelterSkelter wrote:

Witn UTV talk you get unlimited free calls to Ireland and UK landlines for €25 a month. Now you are paying €15 for blueface but you haven't included the cost of your NTL connection. Does that work out cheaper?

I'm not sure of UTV pricing, but does that €25 include line rental? If not, then Blueface still works out cheaper. UTV deal is also for evening and weekend only. They charge you for peak calls.

And you cannot incorporate the full cost of your broadband connection in your "phone" charges as the connection is used for many more applications than VoIP. However, your line rental is just dead weight if you can get broadband from a different supplier.

Aquos76

IrishTLR wrote:

I'm not sure of UTV pricing, but does that €25 include line rental? If not, then Blueface still works out cheaper. UTV deal is also for evening and weekend only. They charge you for peak calls.

And you cannot incorporate the full cost of your broadband connection in your "phone" charges as the connection is used for many more applications than VoIP. However, your line rental is just dead weight if you can get broadband from a different supplier.

Yes it does include line rental and as you have pointed out, its only evenings and weekend calls. You are also spot on about line rental been dead weight. The sooner everybody dumps there eircom line the better.

Freddie59

IrishTLR wrote:

I'm not sure of UTV pricing, but does that €25 include line rental? If not, then Blueface still works out cheaper. UTV deal is also for evening and weekend only. They charge you for peak calls.

And you cannot incorporate the full cost of your broadband connection in your "phone" charges as the connection is used for many more applications than VoIP. However, your line rental is just dead weight if you can get broadband from a different supplier.

I was with UTV and it is an excellent service, but it is misleading to say that the offer of €25 includes line rental. The Line Rental IS the €25 per month. They give you free local and national calls to Irish and UK landlines (off peak) and charge you for everything else. But it is the next best thing to Blueface if you don't have Cable or Wireless Broadband.:)