[Wylug-discuss] Re: Linux-friendly POTS-to-VOIP-to-POTS

[John Hodrien]

On Thu, 13 Oct 2005, Peter wrote:

> Am Donnerstag, 13. Oktober 2005 12:42 schrieb John Hodrien:
>> I'm quite happy for BT to be the Transco of the telco world (quite...), but
>> that doesn't mean I want to send my phone calls their way.  But as I
>> understand it (and I could be wrong) I can't sign up to their low user type
>> tariff and route my calls via an alternative carrier.  I don't see why
>> there isn't a wires only price and a phone price.

> You can here (in Germany). It's pretty much the same: The Telekom used to have
> the monopoly like the BT in UK. Now, you can choose:
> - Move completely to another provider. He will rent the line from Telekom.
> - Have the account at Telekom, but use another carrier by pre-dialing a number
> like 010xy. This works call by call! So for every destination, you can choose
> the cheapest carrier.

Effectively you can do this in the UK.  You can sign up with Telco4u/OneTel
and get that.  What you can't do is pay less and not have a phone service but
have ADSL.  My sister was rejected for BT's low usage scheme because she owned
a mobile phone (annoying through BT at the time).  I don't really have a
mobile phone (it's always off), and I only have a landline so people can call
me cheaply.  Now I could try and switch to a receive only setup and use a VoIP
setup for outgoing, but I suspect that would save me too little to be worth
it.

> I love it, prices dropped dramatically in Germany since then! The cheapest
> numbers are in every newspaper or on webpages (like www.teltarif.de).
>
> BTW: I got the impression that ADSL isn't very common in UK, people are using
> cable modems instead. Is ADSL kind of upcomming now?

ADSL is the probably the dominant service, with cable modems being quite
popular too.  ADSL2+ is just kicking off with 24Mbit connections being
sprinkled around London.  As I understood it Germany was quite a fast mover
with SDSL/ADSL/VDSL.

> P.S.: Why do i get "wylug-announce" when I just hit "reply"?

No idea.

jh

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