Hi Stuart

How did you get on with this? I am interested generally since I would like to contain my phone bills a bit and also specifically since I am trying to discover how I can get a UK phone number, both for folks back home to dial me on, but also outbound, so it looks like I am dialing from a UK phone number....

...keen to upgrade my Sky service from the free to air stuff to the subscription service and, conscious of admonitions in other posts, don't want to be identified as a jonny foreigner by the blighters at Sky when I phone them to match the card to the box.....

Thanks for any update you can provide!

Ddejay

Ddejay - http://www.sipgate.co.uk/ as mentioned VERY early in the post gives you a localised UK number

Perhaps you should take the trouble to learn German instead.
I've been using sipcall for about 2 years now - very reliable service and good rates for Switzerland (cell + landlines), Western Europe and the States - horrible rates for Eastern Europe. I use Skype to call my family in Hungary, lots cheaper.

oh, and as for the equipment: I have a FritzBox! Fon ATA, works like a charm behind a Swisscom VDSL router

As our landline is on it's last legs... I'm looking at buying a new phone. Alternatives at the moment are the Siemens C455 voip phone or an S455.
I'm uncertain if voip is necessary for the future and if there will be a significant reduction in cost. We have ADSL (bluewin) and swisscom Fixnet landline. The Swisscom page says they would charge an extra Fr. 18.90 for sip (?) monthly for Bluewin Phone. Somehow, this doesn't make much sense to me. We call one number in UK per week on average, so call costs aren't that expensive - it's the landline and the adsl that bumps up our costs. We are not considering changing from bluewin or swisscom at the moment, as they have been very reliable so far...
The S455 has the advantage of an answering machine - I hate combox !
So - my question is, does anyone have any advice or opinions: shall we go for the voip or for the answering machine?

__________________
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Hi
Like many I am not interested in anything proprietary like Skype.

I have recently setup an account with voiptalk.org in the UK
Their prices seem pretty competitive and the advantage for me was they gave me a UK geographic number for free and I was also able to purchase a second (Swiss) number.

So now I have cheap calls to the UK (free on SIP) and my customers in the UK and in Switzerland can still call me whereever I am without them having to incurr an international call.

I use the excellent freeware X-lite softphone on my Mac portable (PC version also available) and also SIP using a normal phone plugged into my Vigor Router in the office. Both work fine, and the SIP gives my proper number as the CLI on outbound calls so would probably fool Sky and the like.

Am still looking for a local VoiP gateway provider to reduce the cost of my calls in/to Switzerland.

Hello there,

Switzernet charges 9 Fr/month for unlimited free calls to CH, US, UK, FR, DE, and for a Swiss phone number 021 or 022. Rates to Swiss mobiles are the lowest according to http://www.comparis.ch/

[1], [2], [3], [4]

Rounding of calls and call setup fees are hidden costs which "secretly" increase the displayed price by 40%. Switzernet’s does not have any hidden fees. The billing is second by second [5], [6], [7].

The only expense is 9 Fr/month and a 12 month commitment, but you can cancel the contract within the first 15 days (the trial period is counted from your first successful call).

Until September 30 the shipment is free of charge (instead of 9.50 Fr). During this period Switzernet offers 42 Fr for referred customers (you can self-refer your new accounts). As a referrer, your phone number or your name should appear on new contracts. If it is not made you can inform later to contracts@switzernet.com. There are no limits on the number of referred customers. The amount credited to your Switzernet account can be transferred to your bank account at any time. More info: http://www.unappel.ch/public/070914-parrainage-refer/

Anyone having experience with Switzernet, please post here.

Regards,
Switzernet

You can order a Siemens C450 IP (wireless VOIP phone with a PSTN backup port) here:
http://switzernet.com/public/070608-subscribe/index.php?modele=C450IP
(it does not have an answering machine)

You can test it for 15 days (starting from your first successful call) and return it if you do not like it.

Calls to UK and CH are free.
Regards

The problem with switzernet is that they force you to pay this 9 CHF per month, regardless if you need a Swiss number or not.

And commitment to 12 months?! What kind of service is it? First rule for getting new costumers is to allow them easy way out, anytime.

In my case, I wanted to talk freely with my parents back in the home land. For that I bought two SIP modems one for me and one for them. With switzernet I would have to pay 9 CHF for my parents' line just to talk with them over SIP, which should be completely free. This is because I have found no easy way to call across SIP networks.

After an extensive market research I've chosen callcentric.com and I am very pleased with them.
They give you a Swiss number for $6.95, less than 9 CHF.

$6.95 = 8.34 Fr (CHF)
9 Fr - 8.34 Fr = cts
For the difference of 0.66 cts/month Switzernet offers unlimited free calls to UK, USA, Switzerland, France and Germany (not mentioning a couple of minor destinations).

What concerns a point-to-point connection only between you and your parrents, I believe that you can configure your SIP phones and routers on both sides so as to make free direct calls without any SIP provider.

Excellent, here is an idea: add a documentation about how to do it to your site. I am sure I am not the only one who was put off because of this reason.

Here is a doc for BudgeTones
http://switzernet.com/public/070501-sip-docs/
On the vertical navigation bar select [Direct calls between two SIP phones without passing through an SIP proxy]
In this example we assume that the phones have public IP addresses and are not behind NAT (e.g. Internet access offered by Cablecom is based on public IP addresses).
In case you are behind NAT, you should use a STUN server (the STUN of Switzernet stun.4z.com is free) and you should route the 5060 port to your UA in your NAT router (like when you are using peer-to-peer). Hopefully this will be all you need.

AFAIK there are several open free sip servers for internal communication between local SIP phones. Using such servers make everything much easier.

Regards

All of this thread sounds terribly complicated.

We're moving from Paris to Nyon soon. Here we have a Freebox ADSL connection with Free.fr and no landline fixed charges. For about 66 CHF this gives us 4 Mbit internet, hundreds of channels of TV, unlimited free calls to landlines in 50 countries including mobiles in US and Canada. For our phone, for instance, I just plug a normal handset into the ADSL router. For the TV, I can use either VLC on the computer or plug in the big screen or even watch TV over WIFI on the laptop which works surprisingly well. Our router was also providing the phone service via WIFI (to any ISP customer within range of our router) but I never had the quadriband handset that made use of the facility. Mostly just plug-n-play too.

As you can see, we have no need for Skype or any of the other services here. Anyway, there is no point to my message other than to show what the future might look like one day. Guess it is time for us to get used to the new country...

It is just because Yaniv asked something special. Otherwise, with Switzernet it is simple. You pay 9 Fr/month, you receive a SIP phone account with a Swiss phone number (you can travel with your SIP phone and your Swiss phone number will follow you without the exhorbitant roaming fees), you have REALLY unlimited amount of calls to CH, FR, US, UK, USA, .. and the calls to Swiss mobiles are the cheapest (btw mobiles are included in USA anyway, there are no differentiation in USA, Canada, Singapore, ... for the calling party). Rates to other international destinations are as low as possible (e.g. China 4 cts/min while with Swisscom 125 cts/min). The billing is second by second (no traditional rounding to the next minute, or call setup fee, or any other form of a hidden cost...).

Hey Lob I have the very same configuration as you but using an Italian VoIP provider (http://www.euteliavoip.com/) from which I have around 50ms of latency with Cablecom. Not bad. The best codec I've tested is g711a, they say it's better to select a-law instead of u-law because the first one is used in the PSTN infrastructures, therefore selecting already that codec you don't get signal conversion when it gets to analog.

Only problem I encountered is that with some numbers I get a sort of voice jittering but that really depends on the number I call.

New special offer of Switzernet:
During 5 days until the September 30, all referred customers will have a discount of 50 Fr on all devices. E.g. Linksys adapter PAP2T (which handles 2 voip accounts):

costs 48 Fr instead of 98 Fr

Customers do not pay until after 15 days of free test with a righ to return.

Best greetings
http://www.switzernet.com/