[sclug] phones, photos and PC's

[Welby McRoberts]

Neil Haughton wrote:

>
> Along similar lines, has anyone had decent results with Skype? I tried 
> it to a landline (SkypeOut or whatever it is), and the quality was 
> appalling - my correspondent on the landline end complained that his 
> voice was echoed badly with a couple of seconds' latency, making it 
> pretty difficult to hold a conversation (because his echo overlaid my 
> reply) so we ended up doing a lot of 'Roger Roger' and 'Over and Out' 
> stuff, which takes me back to shortwave radio and is jolly nostalgic 
> but hardly modern comms. Is this echo effect (and talking-down-a-pipe 
> effect too) something we can look forward too when VoIP takes off in 
> the consumer market, I wonder?

In my opinion skype is damaging the VoIP/ IP Communications 
market.Everyone thinks that skype is the be all and end all of VoIP. 
Which is most infuriating as my experience of skype is much the same as 
Neils. whilst I have to admit i've not used it in a few months I still 
dont see what the big whoo haaaa about skype is. IMO its just yet 
another free VoIP Service. I've used VOIP for my home communications for 
the last 2 years now having sampled a few providers (i've always gone 
via a internal asterisk server) and i'm appaled at the lack of quality 
skype seems to have. In my opinion if its not supported via Asterisk, 
its not worth considering :P I've currently settled for a few sipgate 
DDI's and a couple of voip provider accounts (one of which being 
broadvoice).  I'd say the quality overall (excluding a few hicups) is 
equal / better than toll.


W