| | |  Technology News | October 2009 
VoIP Options For ExPats
 Mark de Leσn - teknogeekz.com
October 15, 2009
| TeknoGeekz Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico Tel: 044-322-205-5236
Guadalajara: (338) 995-6824 USA/International: +1 206 203 5561
Email: markosjal(at)gmail.com Website: TeknoGeekz.com | |
Update: There has been a recent development at Vonage. Although it was not the intention of this article to discuss calling plans, Vonage is now including calls to all fixed phones in Mexico as well as 60 countries and destinations on residential plans. This means local users can now use their Vonage line to call Vallarta, Bucerias, Mexico City and all of Mexico, not including cellulars. (To visit the Vonage website click HERE.)
So if you are in Bucerias and frequently rack up more than 25 dollars in Long Distance to Vallarta or Guadalajara fixed (landline) phones, that alone makes it worth the 25 dollars per month. Sorry, Vonage still does not offer local Puerto Vallarta numbers.
Many Expats in Mexico rely on VoIP services to call back home, whether it be to the USA, Canada, or Europe. Although most are familiar with Skype Vonage and MajicJack primarily, there are a slew of other providers that may be better suited to many uses. For instance a Business Vonage User may find they save money by switching to paying by the minute if they do not make so many outbound calls.
Majicjack users may find they do not like to carry around the USB device and a phone and may prefer to use a softphone such as X-Lite (counterpath.com).
An unlocked ATA such as a Grandstream or Linksys/Sipura or a SIP based desk phone will open the door to a world of options however, and offer much higher quality than most Softphones.
For business users, consider the terms of service of your provider. Many Businesses are excluded from residential plans. This may extend to a Real Estate agent working from home to return clients' calls on a flat rate residential account.
Many businesses in Vallarta are using flat rate residential accounts in a business environment. For those using residential accounts in your business you should consider the consequences of having your service terminated by violating the terms of service and losing your incoming number and all outbound calls as well. Some providers even prohibit the use of accounts outside of the USA.
For any user there are the solutions mentioned earlier such as MajicJack, Vonage and IconnectHere among others, but many do not know of companies that offer no monthly fees Les.net, Voip.ms, and callwithus.com, and many offer a low rate of $.0105 USD per minute to the USA and even less to Canada.
These services allow you to purchase any open SIP device such as those mentioned earlier, and if you do not need an incoming number they are free of monthly fees. Of course they also offer DIDs for only a few dollars per month.
What about calls to other places?
Calls to Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey as well as most fixed phones in Europe and Australia can generally be had for only pennies per minute. Recently, we were asked to help a customer to find a solution for calls to the Philippines.
Are there really "free" calls on the Internet?
As you may know users of Skype may call other users of Skype for free. Is this a phone call though? NO. Most VoIP providers as well as MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger that handle these kinds of "internal" calls never have to pass them to the telephone network at all. Even a Vonage user calling another Vonage user remains on the Vonage network more than likely, this meaning it is not truly a telephone call, rather an Internet call.
Well, the REAL answer is YES, there are free calls to telephones in the USA and Canada on the Internet, but it may take some work in understanding how to configure and use. Once you get it though, you are off and running.
Google Voice will give you a free inbound number as well as web activated outbound calling. Normally Google Voice does this by way of your existing USA phone line, however, once your Google Voice Account is activated from the USA, you can combine this with a free account from SIPPhone.com to use these services from anywhere on the Internet. Of course if you look at SIPPhone's way of doing this you will pay SIPPhone for the privilege of using Google Voice from their network.
Using these two services it is possible to make and receive calls completely free of charge to the USA and Canada. Once a call is activated on the web you receive and incoming call, and after answering, the second leg of the call is made to the destination you choose.
For many geeks like myself that always have a computer turned on anyway this avoids ALL monthly and per minute fees. It is also worth noting that Google Voice is currently offering free SMS (text) messages to cell phones in Mexico, as well as the USA and Canada. For Mexico SMS just enter the number as +52322XXXXXXX, and NOT as 521.
We can help customers to integrate and procure VoIP services, VoIP devices, VoIP based PBX systems as well as activate and use Google Voice service from Mexico. For more information, contact Mark de Leσn at markosjal(at)gmail.com or visit TeknoGeekz.com.
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