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Free voice call war?

Somebody told me to check "VoipStunt" out. It's a free internet phone service. In some countries you can even dial PSTN for free with VoipStunt. (You have to pay with Skype.) Unfortunately, you still have to pay for Indonesia. (Currently, there is a big VoIP fiasco in Indonesia in which directors of Indonesian Telecommunication company were jailed. So, free telephone is not in the horizon real soon now.)

Has anybody make a comparison between these free calls? (Skype, Yahoo! Call, VoipStunt, and the rest of the gang / what else?) I am not keen in installing all these programs in my computer. There are too many programs as it is and I am running out of disk space. Right now, if needed, I use Skype (but it is limitted to people with Skype account only - no PSTN).

Comments

Anonymous said…
Sorry Pak Budi, komentarnya pake bahasa Indo ya.

Saya sudah coba bandingkan antara Skype dan VoipBuster (sepertinya tampilan halaman web VoipStunt mirip sekali dengan VoipBuster , mungkin masih saudara ya?). Dari segi harga, VoipBuster lebih murah beberapa sen daripada Skype kalau saya gunakan untuk menelepon ke nomor telepon rumah/kantor (dari Hamburg ke Bandung atau Jakarta). Sedangkan dari segi kualitas suara, VoipBuster jauh lebih jelek daripada Skype, seringkali VoipBuster malah tidak bisa nyambung ke Indonesia. Jadi, saya lebih memilih Skype untuk hubungan telepon Hamburg-Bandung/Jakarta.

Untuk penggunaan seputar Eropa/Jerman, VoipBuster memberikan harga yang sangat murah bahkan gratis dengan kualitas suara yang cukup bagus. Lumayan Pak, cukup membantu program pengiritan.
Anonymous said…
I was one of those people who are easily drawn into these free goodies. Unfortunately, it is too easy for me to be eaten by their ads.

I tried Skype before, and bought the SkypeOut credit for the sake of trying. Quality-wise, it's not as good as the ordinary Voip card I used to buy in street kiosk (I reside in Singapore, btw). Most of the time, there were a lot of noises, and disappearing voice. I tried calling US, thinking that two countries with advance communication system would result a better quality. However, it seemed that the quality which I get is the same! But some other times, I found the quality is okay for conversation, and the good quality remains for the rest of the time in the call. So my conclusion on Skype is that once you can get a good quality, keep on talking. If you don’t, just hang it up.

Sunshine is the calling card which provides the best quality. However, I found Skype to be more reliable in the cost calculation. Let's say I use 7.45 minutes for calling Indonesia, I would be charged for 8 minutes with their stated rates. No more, no less. That was not the case when I used Sunshine, which can charge me more talk time than what I’ve used, even though their stated rates are actually comparable with Skype.

Few weeks ago, Yahoo! Singapore started their voip for Singapore residents too. The ads says a cheaper rate (which is indeed true), and a better voice (questionable). So I tried buying 15 SGD of the credit. For this one, I never be able to get a good connection. No noise as in Skype, but the voice is lagging, and sometime I couldn’t hear anything. Well, maybe that’s what Yahoo is referring to, a better voice, if you could hear any. I don’t really know the technology behind it, but I was assuming that if I call nearer destination, I would get a better sound. However, the sound doesn’t improve even when I call Singapore number.

I really want to try VoipStunt, but it seems to be a bit scary. A trojan or any malicious script behind it? Please enlighten me :D

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