What do you use for telephonic communication?

[Krummhorn]

Wondering how many members here use the internet (VoIP) for their phone calls, and if they would relay their experiences be them either good or bad.

Are there advantages to VoIP over a regular land line and vice versa?

[Frederik Magle]

Well, I'm currently using IP telephony, bundled together with my aDSL line. I won't say I "love" it, because I have been experiencing some DSL dropouts which then causes the phone to drop as well (which would not happen with a landline).

But when it works it works well, and saves me some money compared to a regular landline.

[greatcyber]

I can see how dropout would be a problem, but in the past when I have used Skype to call Australia and New Zealand, the quality was quite nice and the fact that it is free isn't too hard to take.

But I don't think I would be comfortable having only VOIP. It's good to have a backup just in case of internet problems. But speaking to someone on the other side of the world for free...priceless!

[Dorsetmike]

I regularly use Skype, not only for voice or video comms but also for instant message text and file transfer. I can send much larger files via Skype than my email allows; a friend of mine frequently exchanges 300Mb flight simulator graphics files using Skype.

I join about half a dozen members of another forum for a weekly "conference call" you can mix voice and text in conference, but AFAIK video is only available one to one due to the required bandwidth.

[Mat]

I use skype to contact my friends from abroad. The idea of not paying for the call is truly appealing. The conference is a nice feature, too. I used it few times when I had to fix an appointment with a bigger group of people. As for the video, the quality is far from being decent, imo.

But I still use the *regular* phone for most of my daily calls.