S.A. VoIP Service Provider

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soutie

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Hello, I am a South African working in England and I am desperately looking for a decent (or any for that matter) SIP Service Provider offering a free local telephone number. ;)

In the U.K. there are dozens of companies that you can subscribe free to and they all give you a local 0870 number. Once you have setup your account (takes seconds) you can enter the SIP account information into your SIP telephone device and that acts like a normal land line. I can even open the same account in the USA and have a local USA number. When people in those countries dial my allocated number (0870 **** ***) my IP phone rings and they get charged at the local rate of that country. Cool huh.:D

Now, what I am looking for is a company that is doing the same thing in S.A. that I can subscribe with (preferably free) and then get a local S.A. number to use. Once I enter the SIP details into my ADSL / VoIP Router (DrayTek 2800VG) and someone in S.A. dails my allocated S.A. number, my IP phone will ring and the person in S.A. that is calling me only pays a local rate on their Telkom account. :confused:

I have searched the Internet flat and found nothing. I am begining to wonder if Telkom (the richest Telco in the world) has made this difficult for S.A. VoISP's so that they dont loose income from over seas calls. :mad:

Can anybody shed some light and fill me in with whats happening? Oh and yeah, we (U.K.) have just released ADSL2 so now we get up to 8mbs ADSL for like £14.99 (R150) a month. A company called Bulldog Internet announced this week 18mb for £9.99 a month (in selected areas). I love Broadband!!
 
Howzit Soutie,

I think we are close to getting what you want. The problems are still interconnections between Telkom, Vodacom, MTN and others. What we can do is give you a local 087XXXXXXX number, you register here and then all your calls from the UK are at very reasonable rates. If family/friends also do this at this end, your calls are then free and mahala as long as they're connected too. Send me a PM, and I can give you more detail (if you're interested?)
 
ALit : I am also very interested in this (Since Skype wont give us SkypeIN) and I am sure many other people are as well. Could you post more info?
 
Being new to this forum, the ONE thing I know is that this is not a sales platform, so I will try to keep sales out of it. I am an agent for this service, so any PM's will be dealt with accordingly. Let me try to explain the technology however.

True Voip means end-2-end comms via the internet. Right?
IP Telephony means a combination of internet to fixed line/gsm comms. Right?

1. 087 to 087: free if it's the same service provider (SP). (True VoIP?)
2. You still pay for the 087 number: R60 p/m single user, R130 p/m for a business, and you buy a prepaid amount of airtime - anywhere from R100 upwards.
3. The airtime allows u to call to anywhere, GSM South Africa (means u don't need premicells), local and long distance calls, international calls. The advantage here is to the SoHo and SMME market in that they don't sign premicell contracts. (Think of December when everyone's on leave and fewer calls are made). (IP Telephony?)

The real issue at this stage is that outward calls from your 087 number to fixed line/GSM is no problem. 087 to 087 costs you nothing more than your monthly line rental and the portion of your broadband that you use up. It works fine as long as your broadband connection is stable and can support VoIP traffic. The inward dialing from fixed line/GSM to your 087 number is still a problem - this is called the interconnection. Calling out is fine, the VoIP SP pays someone money for the service of using their network for outward dialling, and that's what you pay for.

In-dialing to your 087 is the problem. Let's say u call from Cape Town to me, from a landline. You pay Telkom up to a point, now Telkom need to route the call to my 087 number which in essence should be free. Question is, how does my VoIP SP benefit from this? Do you pay a premium, or does Telkom give a kickback?

Another issue here is that ICASA are issuing the 087 numbers in blocks to several SP's. Thus if u r with SP "A" and call someone else also with "A", your calls are free. However, calling from "A" to "B" means interconnecting from one SP to another, and how are bandwidth costs dealt with now?

From this I hope you can see that we have many unanswered issues, but I do believe they will be dealt with in time to come. For now the best answer is if you have a network of friends/businesses/franchisees etc. dealing with one SP that they're all linked to will benefit you. If you need to "breakout" to GSM/long distance/international often, you will save on costs.

What you need to get connected?
A SIP device at your side to make calls anywhere globally.
SIP to SIP using the same SP: free calls! (but remember you pay for your number)

Once again, politics, monopolies in SA and money come into the debate. Bandwidth will be an issue for some time to come, just look at what Soutie is paying for full ADSL in the UK!!

I hope this has helped a bit?
 
ALit cheers boet, your comments are very valid points. I am not sure which way to go really. I just want to get a local SA number so my family in SA can call me with it. This is the way I assume it would work:

My brother dials my 0870 on his landline in Natal (local call rate at whatever) >>> pstn jump to IP at service provider >>> VoIp traffic is then routed to my IP and SIP address which resides on my ADSL/VoIP router >>> my IP phone rings in my house in England.

As I mentioned before the VoISP subscriber service (allocation of 0870 number) in the U.K. is free so I dont pay for anything except my Broadband and hardware cost.

The trick is that 0870 subscriber account which I assume is what costs R60 p/m in South Africa. If that's is the case its the equvilent of £6 worth of SkypeOut calls to England which would probably do the job. I was hoping (praying) that somewhere in SA was a PSTN/VoIP gateway offering a free service. The money the ISP makes here is by having huge numbers of subscribers and the spin off products you can sell to them. Since I have had both my 0870 accounts I have also bought about R2,500 worth of kit from my VoISP. Swings and roundabouts :confused:

The other lekker point would be if a mate or family member in SA had broadband and a SIP account (or 0870) we could chat for ever at no cost (other than the monthly broadband cost). But as there is no decent supplier of cheap broadband in S.A., I dont see this happening.:p OH WELL!! Maybe ONE DAY.. Thanks for the help anyways. I must go light the braai.
 
Ja Soutie, see my comments in between.

My brother dials my 0870 on his landline in Natal (local call rate at whatever) >>> pstn jump to IP at service provider >>> VoIp traffic is then routed to my IP and SIP address which resides on my ADSL/VoIP router >>> my IP phone rings in my house in England.

As soon as the Telkom-to-SIP provider interconnects are up, they will be able to do this, no problem! Just bear in mind that the local okey is still paying for a local call> at 56c +- per minute! If I call you VoIP-to-landline in the the UK, its less than 40c/min!


The other lekker point would be if a mate or family member in SA had broadband and a SIP account (or 0870) we could chat for ever at no cost (other than the monthly broadband cost). But as there is no decent supplier of cheap broadband in S.A., I dont see this happening.:p OH WELL!! Maybe ONE DAY.. Thanks for the help anyways. I must go light the braai.[/QUOTE]

Convince someone to go for 192 ADSL with 1 Gig package. For +- R300/month its not that much more than just having a normal phone line and its more than sufficient for VoIP. Pricing must come down, 512 DSL has already halved in cost since it's launch.

By the way, braai's in the UK just cannot be the same as a hardekool fire at home!
 
ALit - That is what I was hoping. So long as I can get a local SIP number (087) without having to pay for it that will be fine. Ja ek weet that the local yocal will have to pay around 56c a minute but for those ol fogies that dont know how to use a puter its their best shot. Naturally if they had a PC with VoIP then they could call my SIP direct or my UK 0870 landline for 40c per minute. My plan is to make the availability to them should they want to use it. I am sure the 56c for Telkom-to-SIP usage is far cheaper that Telkom-to-BT landline rates!!

You are so right about the hardekool, charcoal is kuk here boet. But you must cast your eyes on my lekker braai, its the BIGGEST in southern England. Its 1.92m long (3 grills) and a meter wide by a meter high (like 2 half drums). I am a member of the Pioneer Club (Rhodesians World Wide) and the local Swindon South Africans club so I need a BIG braai. The pommies are amazed because they never seen one so big (my braai that is) ha ha ha ;-) Lekker bly.
 
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check out
www.voipdiscount.com

Your relative will be able to make free calls to a host of countries from SA, including the UK.

I am successfully using it to call Oz for free, call to SA for 1c (Euro) per min, and the US for free. Call quality is great on my service, I've got 1.5Mbps ADSL.

I was a regular user of Skype when still new to the technology but now I've switched over, and I found that there is very little if no difference in the call quality. My uninitiated friends continue to use skype and I also sometimes use it as a chat tool and for video calling. Its a good tool except for the cost.

Hope this helps.

abk

PS. forgot to mention that they dont need ADSL for this, can initiate a call from the site and the system will call you back on a landline, as well as call the destination party on their landline. So even on a el-cheapo dial up, there's no problems.
 
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Draytek 2800VG

Hi Soutie,

I have heard a lot about the Draytek routers. The word is they one of the best routers out there. I did some research and the Draytek’s have a point to point VoIP connection maybe that's the better option until SIP is in place in SA.

Enjoy the fast, cheap ADSL
 
Draytek 2800VG

Ja gcu65 you do mention the Draytek products pretty often.
But to answer your question I have Draytek router and it works fantastically.

I was running another popular brand and was constantly rebooting it. I have a mate in the UK and we run point to point VoIP connections and I'm very impressed.
 
087....... there a way that I can get the same but with a +2721 number? Then my home office forwards the call via internet to wherever I am? Hoe do these things work? 087 is not good enough, sadly.
 
Warwick: can I also set this up on my smartphone? It has functions for internet phone / sip but I am really dumb with this. on their website it says one need a voip phone.
 
You receive a sip account, so I don't see why you wouldnt be able to use your smartphone.

Mine is connected to my Asterisk server for home.
 
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