The growing availability of different Voice over IP
(VoIP) plans in the past few years has led to some creative techniques being employed by customers to save money on their phone bills.
One such strategy is for customers with loved ones overseas (outside the U.S. and Canada) to purchase a VoIP
calling plan from a company like Vonage (News - Alert) and send the associated analog telephony adapter (ATA) to family or friends in other countries, who plug the ATA into their broadband connection and thereby gain access to more affordable phone calls.
Because the overseas user has a U.S. phone number associated with the ATA, he or she can be called by loved ones back in America without incurring international calling charges.
For those not familiar, an ATA is a small device used to connect one or more analog phones to a digital network of some sort—usually a broadband Internet connection. The ATA is encoded with information about the phone number associated with the purchased plan, and can therefore be ported to any location where there is broadband service available.
There is one downside to the “send an ATA overseas” strategy, though: in most cases, the person subscribing to the service must have a U.S. address and a U.S.-based credit card. This means that the person actually using the service can’t subscribe directly, but must instead rely on a “sponsor” in the U.S.
VoipBar.com, a Dalcom Telecom (News - Alert) property, looked at this limitation and saw an opportunity. The company offers VoIP service plans that don’t require the subscriber to reside in the U.S. in order to get a U.S. phone number—not does the subscriber need to have a U.S.-based credit card.
The most affordable plan for many users available through VoipBar.com is vHome Lite. This plan provides 200 outgoing “anytime” minutes per month (to numbers in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico) for $9.99. It also includes unlimited incoming calls, and very competitive international rates.
To learn more about VoipBar.com’s services, please visit the Residential VoIP channel on TMCnet.com, brought to you by Dalcom Telecom.
Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. Today’s featured white paper is Direct Push Synchronization over the Air, brought to you by CommuniGate Systems (News - Alert).
Mae Kowalke is an associate editor for TMCnet, covering VoIP, CRM, call center and wireless technologies. To read more of Mae’s articles, please visit her columnist page. She also blogs for TMCnet here.
Internet Protocol (IP) | X |
IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data
in packets over the Internet. I...more |
Voice over IP (VoIP) | X |
A real-time communications system that converts voice into digital packets containing media and signaling data that travel over networks using Internet Protocol....more |