For a cheap phone; I'm interested in this new "MagicJack" that is being advertised. You pay $40 (pr year) for it, plug your phone into it and then plug the magicJack into a USB port on your computer. You get a USA phone number where you can call aywhere in the USA and Canada for the one year cost of $40 that you spent for it. As I understand, you can simply buy two of them, register them both in the USA and then give one to your wifes family... she can then talk for one year for free. Of course thay would need to have a computer with a USB port for it to function.
For any conversation over the internet one needs a reasonable internet connection, 2 homes ago I was getting 5mb and it was OK, my last home I was only getting 1mb and "forget it", where I am now I'm getting 7mb and conversation is fine.
But if they're on a weak landline, wifi or indeed satellite internet then it doesn't matter what gadgets they use, any conversation is going to be crap if at all.
actually Martin I beg to differ. When my POS internet/phone company was being bought out and changing hands the service went to crap. I lost connectivity for almost a week. What I did was use dial up - low end service for free. To download on the net was excruciatingly painful. But skype conversations and chat did not suffer at all.
I'm not sure what strengths of broadband & Dial-Up you get in US but it is reknowned that, in this respect, UK is way behind the times as may be some FSU countries.
When I tried internet calls from Dial-Up 3 years ago even attempting to converse was a waste of time.
MagicJack gives them a USA phone number, this means they will have unlimited phone calls to all land lines, cell phones and of course your computer. The nice thing about this is they can still reach you when your computer is turned off.
A phone conversation only uses about 7 kb of bandwidth. Think about it, if you use the phone to talk then whats the difference talking through the computer on a phone link rather than a handpiece? It is more to do with link stabilty than bandwidth.
Only the other day I was on a normal landline phone to PayPal's call centre, calling to an Irish telephone number, part way during the conversation it all went haywire, tell tale signs that I recognised, and when we managed to converse again I questioned if we were talking via internet and where was he located, PayPal's call centre is in Manila, Philippines and we were indeed talking via the internet.
Now let us say their call centre enjoys 8mb, perhaps 16mb, broadband speed then, if only 7k were being used, something like 99.9% of their speed could be lost and without the quality of the call being affected.
I don't know if a conversation only takes 7kb or not but there's obviously more to it than that, how many guys have experienced similar crappy calls to call centres or via internet phone connections!
This is not a simple issue (and way off topic, but I'll continue in memory of Ralph the king of the random rant :))
The bandwidth used depends on the compression and error correction methods in use. A GSM line has a maximum capacity of 9.6kbps, of which around 7 is for the actual voice transmission, with the rest for 'header and footer' data.
A call centre historically runs (as does every telecoms allocation) on the Erlang Theory, and the given ratio a few years ago was 64 channels for 1800 phones.
This has changed with VOIP, which is the real problem. Voice is not suited to packet data, which is why even the more modern telecoms systems like 3G (as "modern" a design as 20 years old) still have a "circuit switched" system for carrying voice calls. Voice requires a permanent, guaranteed bandwidth, which only circuit switched connections provide. Packet switched systems (of which Internet Protocol is) are designed to be variable and flexible by nature (if your neighbour downloads a massive movie file, your local switching centre lowers everyone else's bandwidth to compensate. The tradeoff is it does the same for you if you're the big downloader).
With corporate VOIP systems, there is a guaranteed minimum bandwidth (unlike the "consumer" version, where we pay for the maximum bandwidth we can expect, and hope we'll occasionally actually get it). There's a dedicated hard cable put in, a network switch on the company's site, straight to the telecoms network infrastructure - no local street corner network switch.
Of course, this assumes you're a well funded corporate, and not a cost saving mickey mouse outfit in Manila (and not relying on Filipino engineering, which I can't guarantee). It also assumes you've not simply put in more telephones in your call centre than you've paid for bandwidth to support.
Even then, between the call centre's link and your ISP, there's a LOT of switches and gates for those data packets to go through - and the design of IP is to allow plenty them to get lost or go slow. Traditional phonelines guarantee your call quality - the internet will not. Ever.
Even when I've been chatting on an internet phone and opening up a new webpage on the computer I have heard the quality of call deteriorating and, particularly when on as less than 5mb speed, I had to learn not to open webpages whilst trying to converse.
And ..... surely a conversation of, let us say, two people shouting at each other uses more bandwidth than two people not talking, or whispering, to each other!
1: 5mb is usually given as a "typical" speed, which your ISP will give you occasionally, but its far from guaranteed. Virgin are currently doing an online ad campaign about how far typical speeds offered by BT are from the advertised speed. To add insult, the speeds available are 'reactive', meaning your local switch will allocate more bandwidth if you start a large download, then slow you down afterwards. I'm not sure if VOIP would trigger this or not. There's also the issue of your processor, modem, and the application you're using. I can't see that many of them would make that much difference, but anything's possible.
2: The equipment samples sound (recording the mic's diaphragm position as it reacts to soundwaves coming out of you), which is a sequence of numbers. These numbers are transmitted, and the receiving headset/handset moves the speaker diaphragm to the corresponding positions recorded by the senders mic (thereby replicating the soundwaves), as per the data received. The volume is just another number, so there's no difference in the amount of information sent regardless of whether one is shouting or whispering (a 0.00000001 mm mic movement takes as much data as a 0.10000001 mm movement). The real difference is sample rate (how many times per second the mic position is recorded). The higher the sound quality, the more recordings, the more data sent, the more bandwidth required (landline phones sample at 12 bit, CD quality is 16 bit). Depending on the application being used, no-one speaking at all would probably result in no bandwidth being used - it depends on the sensitivity of the mic and the lower audio threshold of the application (below a certain level of decibels being ignored - the kind of thing to eliminate background noise).
Ultimately though, it just comes down to the inherent unreliability of VOIP. There's just so many things that can affect quality, which are out of our control. Phone's are made for phone calls - anything else is a workaround (regardless of claims made by internet phone providers)
Well as you will know when, in UK, =signing up with a provider they will estimate the speed of your line based on your distance from the local exchange. Well, previously, I was with Virgin and, having estimated my line at 1mb, that's all the b@stards, at best, ever provided to me, even if 2mb were available they restricted me to 1mb!
But with regards to the affecting of calls I'm talking about the middle of the day, not during peak times, whereas one knows one has good speed from the opening of windows etc. yet the quality of call can be affected, as Tommy Cooper would say, "Just Like That" :)