VOIP on your mobile - What's the use?

G

Gfeyjkuid

New member
I realize I'm probably dead alone on this, but with the recent announcement of Fring and the hoopla over Skype Mobile, I have to wonder what's the point of VOIP on a cellphone?

In the U.S., you have to have a voice plan in addition to a data plan on your mobile. So unless you're calling internationally, is there some fascinating use for VOIP that I'm missing? I don't have a home line cause I just use my mobile for everything. I use quite a few minutes, but I can't imagine having ANOTHER phone number. And then buying SkypeOut minutes on top of all that!?

I'm just lost in this whole VOIP thing. I know the technology behind it, I just can't find the practical use, other than international calling. Do that many people have international friends?

Could you also hypothetically get a wireless card from Cingular or Sprint, with the unlimited data plan only, and put that SIM card in a phone and use VOIP like that?

Someone help me out here, or side with me.
 
I use VoIP exclusively for international calling. With my provider (Cingular) there is no decent international calling plan that I know of and VoIP allows me to make international calls to many, many destinations for free! My company is global and I also have friends in living in many countries as well as many friends scattered around the globe (unfortunately) in the US Army. Before I upgraded to IE firmware on my N80, I would dial into my company's phone system and dial through to international destinations. For business related calls this was OK but I didn't like making personal calls and having my company pay for them. Now I just use VoIP for business and personal calls and no one pays for anything...

fring is a great app but it doesn't allow you to call landlines for free. Also most VoIP providers have less lag and better audio quality than SkypeOut.
 
Well I've installed the app (and blogged it, cause someone other than me cares, lol) and found that if nothing else, it's a fantastic Gtalk app. Auto-start, low memory usage, I'm a fring fan. Whether I'll use it for MOIP or not, probably not. Now, if I could get a data-only SIM card, that would be a different story.

Someone brave, see if you can get Cingular or T-mobile to activate a data-only SIM and pop it into your phone. That should work, shouldn't it? Too bad unlimited "naked" data is so expensive.
 
I wondered about this too until recently. I'm starting to look into this since I'm getting tight on cash. I figure if I can drop my T Mobile plan down to the least amount of minutes, and make all my calls over a wifi connection while at home, I could save some decent amount of money. A lot of my friends use Skype, so this could turn out to be a good deal.
 
If you got lot of minutes (roll over) you can use calling cards to call overseas, but since my calls are 30 minutes each time, voip makes sense. The calling card I use is inexpensive and is a 800 number, but on the phone you lose minutes, & it happens that the lines are busy and you have to call 20 times to get thru, so you lose 20 minutes each time, in wifi, this is no biggie.

Voip to US is a different topic, since most plans give you lot of minutes for nights and week-end, might as well your minutes.

-H
 
I like fring a lot as well but I've been using Shape's Skype solution to talk to my Skype contacts and I'll probably stick with it since my PCs are always on anyway.

As for the Cingular data, do you mean unlimited data along with a normal plan? I pay an extra $20/mo for unlimited data and 200 sms per month (I use an app for free unlimited sms so no worries ). That's actually really cheap compared to what others pay around the world. Not sure if they still offer it but check it out!

On another note...

Another option for you international callers. Even if you don't want to use Internet Tel on your phone you still shouldn't bother with calling cards etc.

Your new best friend: http://freecallplanet.com/

Free calls from any cell/landline to over 40 countries and very cheap rates elsewhere. You call a US number (their VoIP servers), get a dial tone, and then dial the destination. Love it.
 
I have Viatalk voip line at home & I configured it with my N80ie. Not only I make calls using voip over wifi for my long meetings & international calls, it is convient to receive viatalk line calls on my cell!! It is like having two lines on my cell!
 
lol, point taken (though I do also find it interesting that you're one of FEW people I've encountered who also opted for the mocha N73). However, you're wrong, in the S60 forum there are ZERO threads questioning the practicality of MOIP.
 
I checked Fring, it's pretty interesting, I had some trouble(s) with Gizmo @ work with connection issues, I'll test Fring tomorrow to see how it fares.
 
The best use for VOIP is for business calls, I use Truphone for Voip and since I am based out of home and when I go to an office or to school I can access a Wifi network, nearly 80% of my calls are off network. I use the 450 minute cingular plan plus unlimited medianet and my bill is around $70 after taxes and I probably log over 2000 minutes in calls a month. I also call internationally a lot as my parents live in Zimbabwe and I have friends globally, mainly UK and South Africa.
The native VOIP support is one of the main reasons I bought an E70 instead of an E50 which is the phone I really wanted. If it was quadband I would have the perfect phone.
 
Yeah, don't listen to him. I've lost count of all the newb threads he's started.

I'm looking for a reason to switch to Cingular (if only to open up the opportunity to use 3G sooner than T-Mobile and have all ports open), but the plans are killing me. To equal what T-Mobile's giving me now, I'd be paying over $100/month, still wouldn't have unlimited text messages, and I really think I'd be sacrificing service as well. I don't want to get started and bash Cingular, but I can count on one hand the amount of dropped calls I've had over the past 2 years with T-Mobile, and I lost count of all the times my friends told me about dropped calls on Cingular. But that's neither here nor there.

I'm still waiting for the text message from fring. I'll fill out a help ticket too in a bit.
 
Since you're in Chicago, Cingular is pretty nice and if you're in downtown, you'd get fast 3G service. Isn't T-mobile's data like $5 a month for web connect ? or is it the standard $20 a month like Cingular ?
 
For their basic unlimited package, T-Mobile is $5.99 a month. That plan is fine and good, except I can't use Symella and Symtorrent because a lot of ports are blocked. I still get EDGE speeds and everything else works fine except for these two applications. I could upgrade to the full T-Mobile Web package, which would be $19.99 a month, but I don't think it's worth it right now.
 
I have to say that while I also question the point of MOIP, unless it's for unlimited international calling, Fring is still a great program -- and I'm actually going to leave it installed for two reasons:

1.) (primary reason) it has a great gtalk and skype messaging interface... there's a real lack in good IM programs out there (that are free that is), so I'm going to leave it for that reason.

2.) It's nice to be able to impress someone with making a MOIP call over EDGE... it works, though not flawlessly, at least enough for a quick call.

-olly
 
2 reasons why I need fring:

1) International Calling. My parents and relatives are in India and I have friends who're studying in quite a few countries. We all use Skype.

2) Lack of coverage at the University. No GSM carrier provides in-building coverage in my university. But my entire university has wi-fi coverage. So I can forward all calls to a SkypeOut number and use Fring over wi-fi to answer calls when I don't have gsm coverage.
 
I'm with Olly. I'm leaving it installed, despite not having a Skype account (though I do know an increasing number of people with Skype...) because it's great for gTalk, and it runs in the background, without taking up much memory.

As for using it for MOIP, I suppose I can see some different benefits, though I think the real benefit would be seen if I could get an unlimited data-only SIM card for ~$30/month.
 
I just looked into this fring app, and well, I'm totally sold on it...I just signed up for a an unlimited $14.95 skype plan which has free calls to the usa and canada. I have a lot of friends in canada and it was getting annoying buying phone cards or running up my phone bill so I could talk to them, so, this seemed like a perfect solution.

With my N80, I can now call them using my new skype account and it actually sounds pretty good. And for only 15 bucks, I was willing to try it just for the heck of it.

Yet another reason I love S60.
 
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