Dialing Canada Really Cheap

In general, Canada is very friendly towards VoIP technology, so if you live inside Canada as I do, you must have a long list of telecom carriers that offer you good rates to call Canada. But if you are outside of Canada and want to call your families and friends inside, you probably don’t have any handy options to call cheap. A little clarification first: by saying “call cheap”, here I mean the calling rate to be under 5 cents per minute.

So what are the quick options, if any? To me nothing is quicker than downloading a pc to phone software, deposit some bucks, then start calling. If you have the similar mindset we can narrow our search to an array of VoIP software for worldwide internet users. Let’s take a quick look at them:

1. Skype

Skype is quite popular nowadays, and it’s no mistake to go with Skype, the price is 2.1 cent, but with VAT added, it will be 2.4 cent per minute. Skype also offers an unlimited calling plan but it has nothing to do with you – it only offers to North American users where phone calls are already cheap. So you have to go with Skype’s pay as you go plan.

Upside: popular, sound quality and pricing.

Downside: none

2. Vbuzzer

Vbuzzer is a Canadian product, it offers cheaper rate than Skype does when dialing Canada – 1.5 cent per minute. It means 40% cheaper than Skype, and with $10 deposit, you can almost double your calling time with Vbuzzer then with Skype. In terms of quality, Vbuzzer is slightly better than Skype, in voice clarity, much better in voice consistency, according to my experience.

Upside: excellent quality, good pricing, also an excellent instant messenger with multi protocol support.

Downside: none, except as a Canadian company, I don’t know why they are charging fees in US Dollars.

3. Betamax series

I call it Betamax service because it has many affiliate websites, all with voipxxx.com such as voipbuster, voipcheap etc. Believe me there are a lot of them. Each of the sites, at their early launches, are typically offer free minutes to many countries: US, Canada, UK, and many other European countries. Once they build up the user volume, they will require you to make a $10/$20 deposit and they tell you it is good for the next, say, 4 months of free call. You are happy so you make the deposit, but it happens that you don’t call a lot in the next 4 months, Betamax is then charging the full payment and raise their price to very high. Then the next site will be born shortly, if not simultaneously.

As a user, you can play their game by searching the new born site, and take advantage of their “free promotion” – but don’t make any deposit as they may require, because you simply don’t need to, why pay them when there will be always new promotions ahead?

Upside: free or very cheap minutes when promoting

Downside: questionable business practice of revoking deposit and raising price

4. Yahoo Voice

Yahoo Instant Messenger is a very popular IM, but I have no stats to show how popular Yahoo Voice is, it could have millions of users, but not myself yet. In writing this blog, I checked Yahoo Voice website, and surprisingly find that their call Canada rate is very cheap, 1 cent per minute, yes one cent per minute. I probably should try it next time. This company has very broad product lines, but the problem is that none is dominant. What a pity!

Upside: no comments as I have no direct experience

Download: no comments as I have no direct experience

Toronto Phone Service Review

A Review of Toronto Telephone Service and Canada VoIP

I still remember the time when I first moved to Toronto and had  to pay $200 cash deposit to Bell Canada in order to get a phone line installed, after that a $50 monthly bill followed,  for the service including caller ID, call forward, voicemail, call transfer etc.

A few years have passed, the landscape of Canadian telephone service has changed a lot, thanks to VoIP technology. Now Torontonians have many alternatives, actually so many that some good homework is required to choose a good, reliable phone service.

As an early user of VoIP in Toronto area, I experienced quite a few VoIP service and had to switch among providers from time to time. I think it’s worth to share the lessions learned to help my fellow Torontonians to make wise choices.

I will start with a few major players and add more later…

Vbuzzer Toronto Phone Service

Vbuzzer is my favorite VoIP phone service provider, I’ve subscribed 2 phone numbers, one for home and one for business, and a fax number; all 3 numbers with just US$75/year. The service performance is solid and reliable.

Pros:

Fast – you can literally get vbuzzer service within 10 minutes, compared to a few days from other VoIP providers.

Price – Vbuzzer is so far unbeatable, a stunning $25 per year for a phone service. Now the promotion is over, but still, $50/year is the cheapest I can find in Toronto market.

Quality – So far very reliable, back in 2005/2006 some glitches from time to time, starting 2007 it is steadily becoming always-on for me.

Easy to use – the software is very intuitive to use.

Here’s a video of how to download Vbuzzer and signup Vbuzzer Toronto Phone.

Cons:

No hardware, software only – that’s why you can signup the

service in 10 minutes, – company provides software only. It means

if you want to use it the same way as a good old telephone, you

need to buy a VoIP adaptor by yourself and have someone install

for you. There are adaptor and its vendor information on vbuzzer

website.

No Number Portability

No 911 – Vbuzzer is positioned as a computer program and doesn’t provide any 911 or E911 service. You can bypass it by setting a special dial plan on your VoIP adaptor to forward your calls to a police station,- but again you need to be a guru or have a guru do the job for you.

Vonage.ca

Vonage provides reasonably good VoIP service in moderate pricing in Canada.

Pros:

LNP – local number portability, if you want to keep your old  telephone number to switch to VoIP, Primus can do it for you, after a few weeks waiting.

Price – $19.99/month for local phone service, better price than the incumbant Bell Canada, but not as good as many smaller VoIP providers.

911 E911 – supported

Cons:

Quality – Vonage provides fair quality overall, but there are many reports complaining the VoIP quality. It looks like that the quality can be bad if you are in bad luck.

Customer service – not bad if you can handle all the isuses alone, otherwise it can be long waiting and no effective solution, other than having somebody listening.

Contract lockup – it is fine if you like the service, but not fun if you don’t and want to cancel…

Rogers

Rogers is an active alternative phone service provider, if you’ve already used other Rogers bundled service like Rogers TV, Rogers Cable, Rogers Wireless, you probably can get a good deal for your home phone service for the first 12 months.

Pros:

LNP – Rogers provides number portability

911 E911 – supported

Hassle free installation – Rogers will send someone to your home to install it.

Quality – I couldn’t find many quality complaints, no news is good news.

Cons:

Price – $29.95/month is expensive in this VoIP age, Rogers is obviously targeting Bell canada – try to be slightly cheaper when it makes its price.

Features – Again they add up the price – if you choose 4-6 features your phone bill can be $41.95, even a moderate feature list can make the price of $33.95 per month, it is definitely expensive compared to vbuzzer’s $50 per year.

Contract lockup – be aware of it and be clear with it when you signup.

Bell Canada

Still the same price modle and price level, you can have a good

old telephone line at the “good old” price.

Interestingly, Bell Canada claim that they win back customers due  to the poor quality VoIP provides.

Will gather more materials about other telephone service providers in Toronto…

Other related information about Toronto Phone Service can be found at:

Toronto Phone Service

Toronto Phone Service Review

Toronto Phone Service At a Glance

Toronto Phone at Youtube

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!