VOIP, VOIP, everywhere

Using a telephone in Australia is an expensive endeavour. If you use your cell phone (or mobile as they call it here) you are often paying 90 cents per minute plus a 35 cent connection fee. I know, it's a rip-off. It is not any better with your landline (home phone). Each local call will cost you a 30 cent connection fee with no charge for additional minutes, while calls to other cities will incur a connection charge AND a long distance charge. Don't even think about calling a cell phone as that will cost you arm and a leg.

Never being one who likes paying too much for anything (aka 'cheap'), I looked for a cheaper alternative. I have been using a VOIP solution in Canada since 2005 (Primus TalkBroadband) and have loved it (plus it saved us a LOT of money). I was amazed by the number of companies offering cheap VOIP service in Australi. Seeing that there are over 20 VOIP companies here I was sure to find something I liked. And I did! I actually found several companies that have great rates and provide all the services that a normal phone provides.

We (my brother-in-law and I) are currently testing one provider that gives us a ton of local, long distance and mobile calls for $15 a month. That is a great deal, but I've found another provider with more features and excellent rates to most countries. I will be trying it out soon! The coolest feature is the ability to make calls from your computer and have it look like you are calling from your home phone number (also called a softphone). Really COOL!

I know, I know, I just can't stop finding these new services. Not that VOIP is new, but the way it's implemented, priced and enabled here is very advanced. I'll let you know when I finalize on a VOIP provider that's worth the money.

I know that you can do a lot of these things with Skype, but with the VOIP setup that I am describing, you can wire up the house to use the same phones that you were using before, which makes it easy for the rest of the household to use all the benefits of the inexpensive/full-featured phone service. Try that with Skype!