Free long distance telephone calls
I don’t like being taken advantage of. When I pay $0.10 cents a minute for a long distance call and my friends tell me that they only pay $0.035 per minute I recognize that their phone company still makes a profit and that my phone company is extracting a $0.065 stupidity tax from me for sticking with their dumb prices. For years there have been programs to let you talk from computer to computer, but it required 2 people being at their computers at the same time, running special software… well that doesn’t sound as convenient as the phone, and who wants to leave their computer running all the time?
Skype and Jajah let you make long distance calls for free or low cost.
My friend Dan King introduced me to SKYPE. He had friends in the UK and wanted to call them from Canada but without the ridiculous long distance charges the local phone company would charge. The critical difference with Skype was a service they offer which allows you to make calls to conventional phones. It is called SkypeOut, and it costs about $0.03 cents CAD per minute. Definately a better price than the one offered by local phone companies.
The Skype website says:
“Skype is a little piece of software that lets you talk over the Internet to anyone in the world for free.”
SkypeIn is a phone number your friends can call. You answer in Skype.
Use SkypeOut to call from Skype to traditional landlines or mobiles.
JAJAH – The Difference – The Benefits
Jajah lets you make phone calls for free…
- There is no download and no software
- You don’t need a headset
- You don’t need a broadband connection
- You are using your existing phone (landline or mobile) and so is the person you are calling
- You are not stuck to your computer
- You can call your friends for free – no matter if they are online or not
JAJAH is all about simplicity! Enter the phone number you want to call at www.jajah.com, press call: Your phone will ring – your friend’s phone will ring – start talking! It’s what you’re used to, it’s simple, it’s free and it just works!
I think that is a simple and convincing explanation. I’ll add an explanation that if you want to call anyone who is not “registered”, you pay them $0.025 per minute (much like Skype) When you sign up they give you $3.75 credit. They don’t want your credit card or any other payment until you use up your credit and want to make a call that costs. If you call someone else who is registered, there is no charge.
Clearly this could be the same method Skype is using (with more limitations) give free calls to build up a clientelle, then introduce nominal fees.
What I like about this approach is the freedom from software. There is nothing to go wrong on your PC, just use your browser, use your phone, you are done.
Every now and then there is poor quality, just hang up and try again. The quality is normally equal to that of a conventional phone line (nobody knows the difference)
I’ve suspected that Skype,Jajah and others are able to purchase Voip services from somewhere and I’m determined to find out how this works, so I can buy at wholesale and not retail. I see that voip-info.org has lots of information, that asteriks is a free pbx, that trixbox is a linux distribution to run your own PBX, that most ADSL internet providers offer “naked DSL” (no phone service, only ADSL), that les.net is highly recommended and acanac.ca seems to have an echo on the line for everyone I talk to.
Quality In Life - Living Smarter... 