VoIP using o2 broadband dongle

ronano

Using skype or something similar would greatly cut down my phone costs, is it practical over an o2 broadband dongle?

FSL

The best thing to do is to sign up for a trial with a VOIP provider and see how it goes.

The quality of the connection of a dongle depends on where you are and how many other users are concurrently connected to the same mast.

matt-dublin

I suspect that it wont be overly great but somewhat acceptable.

there will be high latency on the o2 dongle but won't stop you making a call, the quality won't be great and will reduce depending on the signal quality

Mr. G

I generally don't recommend using mobile broadband for voip, unless its the only option.

I know the National Broadband Scheme try to get you 3G and fast broadband, for €20 a month. If you can't get the router working, they will give you an attachment and if that doesn't work they install some sort of wireless aerial/dish.

Due to the high latency, you will experience the voice dropping however if you change the voice codec it will be much better in terms of voice quality.

Again, try to get wireless broadband as that's a lot better in terms of voice quality. As for video qll struggle unless your in a city with 3G or on top of a mountain!

witnessmenow

Good quality 3g signal isn't as high latency as you might think, It latency could be around the 70-80ms mark, which is inside the 100ms recommended "limit" for voice traffic.

One thing to check is voice data is blocked by some of the mobile providers (i think it works on 02 though). Vodafone defintly used to block it anyways unless you paid an extra €10 "to guarantee quality for voice data".

Jim_Kiy

The minimum bandwidth required for a voice call is 30 kbps (kilobits per second) for both upload and download speed

Ive ran much more bandwidth intensive applications over 3 g ,,it can be very stable and I agree with witnessmenow Dunno about O2 do they block voip ports ? Reminder they blocked the torrents ports few years back..returned to source.The successor three I still rate highly today.OP try it out and see and report back.

Mr. G

Jim_Kiy wrote: »

The minimum bandwidth required for a voice call is 30 kbps (kilobits per second) for both upload and download speed

Ive ran much more bandwidth intensive applications over 3 g ,,it can be very stable and I agree with witnessmenow Dunno about O2 do they block voip ports ? Reminder they blocked the torrents ports few years back..returned to source.The successor three I still rate highly today.OP try it out and see and report back.

if your using compressed codec, you will get away with 50 kbits, but 90-100 is recommended for uncompressed codec which is the best quality.

I generally stress that mobile broadband is the last resort, but if its the only option, its the only option. Three run on the vodafone network as an MVNO. Blueface is a new mobile mvno on the three network.

3 manage the network, and have a deal with the NGS so you can get 3g. Vodafone block the ports, I've a mobile but that doesn't work on 3G as it uses blackberry.net apn.

Re what ports they block and don't block is really what you have to ask the network.

Don't forget, many providers like goldfish allow you to use ports like 8060 for example.

witnessmenow

(Excuse me if i'm wrong but I havent really been involved in anything SIP in about a year)

I think its more than blocking the port, Im pretty sure the call establishes which means the sip port isnt blocked, iirc the call is just garbled (like a really overloaded wan connection). Since the Voice data is coming in on a pretty much random port that you negotiate with the sip server it means they are sniffing the packets for voice (and dumping most of them)

Either way, I do not know how it is legal ....

Also, I agree with Mr_Grumpy, voip over 3g should not be considered for a business scenario imo. It would be grand(pending good signal) If its just for yourself at home.