Can Skype replace your existing landline?

Skype now claims that it is cheaper to use SkypeOut versus your traditional landline phone, even when calling your neighbour across the street! A Skype call to any landline number anywhere in SA costs 50 cents, versus the Telkom rate of 59 cents for local calls and 89 cents for national calls. However, according to Skype, the big question is whether the SkypeOut service is good enough to replace your existing landline?
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Hmm, a small problem with that scenario, I think ?
Your monthly internet access costs !

Have they factored in that cost ?
 
This is probably in context of the assumption that broadband is affordable :D
 
This guy used to do a lot of international calls :

He spent over R14 000.00 pm with Telkom until he switched to skype and
another service.

He now saves R10 000.00 per month.

Also he gives some USB phone to all his local customers and has set
them up with the capability and hopes to save some more, both
for himself and his contacts.

R10 000.00 a month from one customer which Telkom will never get again. :)

His motivation for getting this going - Hellkom.
 
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arni1954 said:
No . It is has been cripled by Telkom
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I too have noticed a degradation in the quality recently. How can we prove its telkom?
 
Isn't it always Telkom? :D

Try an mweb/IS/something isdn dialup vs telkom adsl....

About all I can think of
 
I only have a Telkom SAIX adsl flavored account.
 
From my experience, I've never been able to call locally. I've tried phoning landlines and cellphones. The person on the other side is not able to hear a word I'm saying but yet I'm able to hear them perfectly.

When dialing the UK, both landlines and cellphones, there is a slight delay but the clarity is good and overall a definite cost saver.
 
I use skypeout to call the UK, Ireland and Australia a lot - with almost perfect results.

For some reason calling the USA is not so good, often the person receiving can't hear me, although I can hear them fine.

The combination of my landline, cellphone, skype and skypeout work well together - it is really a tradeoff between convenience, quality and cost in deciding which service to use.
 
This might be causing some issues for certain users:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/08/skype_suitors/

"The problem seems to be: the number of potential supernodes is dropping, and the number of ordinary nodes - behind mapped addresses or firewalls, or both - is going up rapidly.

The result: quality of calls is falling. Bandwidth available is poor compared with a year ago."
 
How is Skype Cheaper?

Isn't the cost of a local call around 40c a minute?? That would mean you'd have to speak for under a minute for it to be cheaper... :confused:
 
You cannot dial 0861,0860,0800 numbers from Skype, or from any other international location for that matter. You would need to know the DDI/DNIS.
 
Well I have no intentions of using it for local calls as for now (I use my free minutes on cell for that :-) ), but we use it to make calls to Portugal often and it is definitely a cost saver. We used to pay a monthly bill of around R1200 and above and we now paying about R900... may not seem much but a R3600 save at the end of the year is not bad savings. :-) (we find the quality of a high standard when compared with Msn Messenger for example).

Cheers
Jose
 
I will be looking for a good solution as well. Always used BuzzMore, which wasn't too bad, although the line quality wasn't that hot, but they have closed down, "due to Telkom dropping their international call rates." Meaning? IMO Telkom bought them out, and closed them down, because all of a sudden my phone bill is doubled!

Therefore, Skype became a real alternative! Am already using it to those friends that have a computer and a :sob: 2Mbit link... but still need something for the rest of the family!
 
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