[LINK] Call Canada: cheaper than Katoomba

[Chirgwin, Richard]

<mode=idealist>
>From the Firefly Website:
>What can I do with Firefly?
>You can make phone calls to any other 
>Firefly users anywhere in the world.  

One of the things which concerns me about the manner in which VoIP is taking
off is that it abandons a fundamental premise of the phone: any phone should
be able to contact any other phone.

In some cases, like Skype and Firefly, it's simply a closed user group. In
others, eg Vonage, the restriction is more insidious (no emergency call
support). 

Now, when we're talking about Link, we're talking about a community of
people who are able to make an informed decision; the tradeoff is fair. But
out in the community at large?

And, like books, the phone could be considered the wrong place to make
people live "under license".

<hiding in the flameproof bunker>

RC

-----Original Message-----
From: Ash Nallawalla
To: link at anu.edu.au
Sent: 10/06/04 00:09
Subject: RE: [LINK] Call Canada: cheaper than Katoomba

> From: Tim O'Leary

> I call my daughter in Taiwan every week for an hour.
> 
> It costs me $10 for a card that gives me up to 5 hours time.

Yes, my $10 cards tend to expire before I use them up.  It might be
worth finding
a pair of VoIP phones with a common carrier and talk for free all day.
The
cheaper ones plug into the USB port.  They are popular with expats.
This was on
the local news a few days ago: http://www.virbiage.com/firefly/

I've only just received a Vonage VoIP "digital phone adaptor" (made by
Motorola),
into which I plug in a standard phone and it becomes a local number in
the US. As
my client pays for it, I chose the same suburb as their office.  It's
made a big
change from punching in about 20 digits to make a calling card call and
made it
easier for the Yanks to call me.

- Ash


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