VOIP suggestions?

[david365]

I am interested in getting a third party VOIP service. I need one with decent customer support and not too expensive as it wont be used much. It would need to go through my virgin cable broadband.

Does anyone have any good suggestions? I know I can get this through Virgin but customer service has proven inadequate over the years.

[MOD EDIT: Subject title changed for clarity]

[nodrogd]

Firstly, Virgin do NOT sell a VoIP phone service. The hub based phones are on an internal network seperate from your internet connection & still utilise the same headend exchange as the existing fixed lines.

I use Vonage as I have two lines coming into the house (the other one is my Virgin Landline). Vonage provide you with an Ethernet adaptor so you can use any standard phone. With other providers you usually need a VoIP handset.

Just to point out there is NO cost saving if you are thinking of just transferring a existing Virgin landline to a VoIP provider. Their landlines carry a huge discount on your package & your Broadband costs will significantly increase if you drop your Virgin landline. The only real advantage is if you have a second line running on VoIP.

[Roger_Gooner · Accepted solution]

It depends on what services you want in addition to basics like voice and video calls. For example if you want file sending or instant messaging you could consider Skype.

[david365]

Thanks Nodrogd, I'll look at Vonage. It is not just about cost, it is also that although the virgin broadband is fine when it works, any dealings with customer services are a nightmare. Also, they are very expensive. They insist on trying to tie you in to tv and phone to justify their high charges. I pay £60 for what is in effect about 50mb broadband plus phone. If it will increase by virtue of giving up the landline thats even worse value.

Once I see what happens with my phone line I will decide what to do longer term.  I might yet do a Truss U-turn

[unisoft]

If you want a free geographical landline number with no monthly cost and free SIP to SIP calls then sipgate.co.uk is used by many. It also has cheap international rates and is works on any broadband provider that doesn't have insane latency. Works fine with Siemens Gigaset phones too. It is SIP though not newer secure SIP (SIPS) which uses TLS for encryption and they don't encrypt their SIP trunk. So general chit chat, but any personal information discussed could potentially be listened to, same as most SIP providers....

Skype is closed shop protocol and not free to other providers as not based on open SIP.

[Adduxi]

I use Sipgate for VoIP and it's fine.  Just had to plumb in a Grandstream HT812 to the telephone circuit wiring to get my old phones working via VoIP.  Easy enough setup and Sipgate ported over my old landline number as well.

However, I believe Sipgate are no longer suppling the old Basic free tier and are possibly going to start charging £10 pm !

If that is the case, I'll be off to A&A for VoIP services for a much smaller monthly fee.

[david365]

Thanks to everyone for some really helpful suggestions!

David

[Timwilky]

I use sipgate. I have 2  basic lines which cost nothing except for call costs. And a 3 line SIP trunk that costs me £5 oer month  I used to have the trunks connected to an asterisk appliance. That in turn provided a coue of POTs connections and of course SIP phones. But these days I use freepbx on a pi. Both the trunks and sip lines are connected to the freepbx.