I'm going VOIP, who's with me?

SolarNexus

When I finally get myself an iPhone4, I'm going to take the plunge and cancel my current contract with o2 and switch to the 15GB data pan and use it for Skype/VOIP and mobile interwebs.

I checked the coverage maps, it looks pretty good in Dublin now to make a complete switch over to 3G, of course if it doesn't work I can put the sim into my iPad and go onto PAY2GO on the iPhone instead.

Anyone got any thoughts on this idea?

The Big Gig

Great idea. How will you live without text messages? Or will you have a geographic landline number people will text? Also data roaming is punchy!

SolarNexus

The Big Gig wrote: »

Great idea. How will you live without text messages? Or will you have a geographic landline number people will text? Also data roaming is punchy!

I'm not worried about data roaming, if/when I do leave the country, I'll pick up a pay2go sim in the country like I would if I was on bill pay and setup skype to forward the calls to the new number temporarily.

Texts, well I'm not mad on them, email is my thing, but I'm sure if it's important you can get it from a SIP provider, the same one providing the VOIP. I'm only going to go with skype at first because it's easy and cheap, I already get unlimited calls for 5 p/m.

The Big Gig

Cool. Good plan. Also skype will be charging for mobile use from possibly august this year.

lafors

SolarNexus wrote: »

When I finally get myself an iPhone4, I'm going to take the plunge and cancel my current contract with o2 and switch to the 15GB data pan and use it for Skype/VOIP and mobile interwebs.

I checked the coverage maps, it looks pretty good in Dublin now to make a complete switch over to 3G, of course if it doesn't work I can put the sim into my iPad and go onto PAY2GO on the iPhone instead.

Anyone got any thoughts on this idea?

How would you get out of your contract with O2?
I'm assuming you mean you'll get an iPhone 4 (without a contract) when your current O2 contract ends?

Good idea, would be interesting to see how you get on.
Can you set up SIP on the iphone 4? If so that would be the way to go.
I use blueface and have the sip up and running on my android device. Works very well. You can use txt on blueface too now, I think.

You still would be dependent on the 3G network holding strong and they're not as good as they say, sure their maps show full 3G coverage in my area (Dublin 9) but I can't get a 3G signal at my house or my parents down the road, thats with O2 and on multiple different phones and my house is 950m from an O2 3G mast as the crow flies and at the same elevation!! I've notified them of this but they haven't done anything about it.
I'd say 3 might be any option if you're in Dublin, free skype to skype too!
Would 15gb cover you for a month? I'd expect it would but again interesting to see what the average person would use.

SolarNexus

The Big Gig wrote: »

Cool. Good plan. Also skype will be charging for mobile use from possibly august this year.

I heard about that, they're out of their tree if they think they can double charge and get away with it, they aren't a network operator, they aren't providing infrastructure, so no reason to charge extra.

If and when Skype does that, Its an easy enough switch to go to another VOIP provider using an app that supported SIP.

SolarNexus

lafors wrote: »

How would you get out of your contract with O2?
I'm assuming you mean you'll get an iPhone 4 (without a contract) when your current O2 contract ends?

Good idea, would be interesting to see how you get on.
Can you set up SIP on the iphone 4? If so that would be the way to go.
I use blueface and have the sip up and running on my android device. Works very well. You can use txt on blueface too now, I think.

You still would be dependent on the 3G network holding strong and they're not as good as they say, sure their maps show full 3G coverage in my area (Dublin 9) but I can't get a 3G signal at my house or my parents down the road, thats with O2 and on multiple different phones.
I'd say 3 might be any option if you're in Dublin.
Would 15gb cover you for a month? I'd expect it would but again interesting to see what the average person would use.

I was just looking at the 3 website this morning, they've got a 30GB plan for 26 Eur, so if 15GB isn't enough (id be surprised tbh) then theres another option. Vodafone have an unlimited plan, but they charge double if you don't want your VOIP traffic shaped, and their site sort of indcates its only 10Gig add to that their three strikes talks and I think I'll avoid voda like the plague.

There are actually quite a few different SIP apps for iPhone at the moment, the graphics are all horrendous IMO, but if they work, who cares.

Your right though, you'd be stuck in some area with poor to no coverage, that's why I keep checking my phone recently to see where I can get 3G and where not. so far Clontarf is the only black hole for me, and its a black hole for talk too, so no change there.

Edit: I already got out of my contractual requirement last week thanks to the change of service thing, I'm still on o2 but I'm not contractually obliged to be.

lafors

With regard to the amount of data you'd use on VOIP, this is from the blueface forums.....

Blueface wrote:

We made a test some weeks ago from an iPhone:

1 minute of 3G call :
It used up half a Mega up and half a Mega down.
We were using the default g711 codec (there are lighter ones).

For 1 hour that would be : 30Mb up and 30Mb down.

2GB is MASSIVE.

Note that the voice quality with 3G can vary a lot depending on your coverage!

SolarNexus

lafors wrote: »

With regard to the amount of data you'd use on VOIP, this is from the blueface forums.....

Ah that's great news!

There will always be a tradeoff by going ahead of the curve, I think this is the direction we're all headed anyway, I'm just skipping ahead. I'm betting they'll try to improve 3G coverage more and more until it's equal or better than GSM. At least, it wouldn't surprise me if that's how it went.

So a couple of less than perfect quality calls in return for much cheaper bills... I can live with that

lafors

No offense to the iphone 4 but would you not consider an android device e.g. HTC Desire? (Yes thats what I use )

SolarNexus

lafors wrote: »

No offense to the iphone 4 but would you not consider an android device e.g. HTC Desire? (Yes thats what I use )

Well I'm getting an iphone4 anyway since I'll be making apps for it. I've thought about getting an Android, and if it suits my day to day needs better then sure, but for the immediate future, it'll be the iPhone 4

The Big Gig

When you get up and running would be great to keep us up to date on it... Like coverage etc.
Couldn't cancel my number as it's used for business but very interesting.

SolarNexus

The Big Gig wrote: »

When you get up and running would be great to keep us up to date on it... Like coverage etc.
Couldn't cancel my number as it's used for business but very interesting.

Sure, I'll be writing up my experiences on my blog anyhow

banquo

I'm in. When i (eventually) get an iPhone I'm going voip. It's the future and we need people to start doing this to force the industry to improve services.

Hopefully it'll be cheaper too.

keithclancy

Mobile Broadband is not good enough for VoIP due to out of order packets.

Skype is crap on 3g

banquo

Boo-urns. infrastructure is terrible in this country. We should all start making voip over 3g calls to force the service providers to provide packages for this.

The Big Gig

What app you gonna use as sip client? Not sure which one has been updated to work with 4.0

SolarNexus

The Big Gig wrote: »

What app you gonna use as sip client? Not sure which one has been updated to work with 4.0

Skype will do for the immediate term, haven't decided on a SIP client yet, will try a few out and see which works best for me.

Khannie

Sounds like a really good idea. Can you choose codec with skype somewhere? (I don't think so) If you had the 3g unrestrictor working and a decent voice codec at a reasonable enough bitrate you could easily get away with VOIP over edge.