Anyone using VoIP with 3 data plan?

kazzer · 01-11-2008 11:29am #1

Hi,

Im trying to get away from cellular calls as much as possible and am thinking about changing over from O2 to 3pay with the 1GB (€10/month) data plan.

My VoIP provider is Voipcheap, where ~ €4/month gives me 300 minutes/week of calls to basically any european landline. Calls to Irish mobiles are also a competitive 12c/minute or thereabouts. Im very happy with Voipcheap so far. The problem with Voip is you effectively have to be in range of Wifi which is very often not the case. So this is where 3's data plan comes in.

So guys, has anyone got a similar setup, and what are your experiences? Im using an N95 handset by the way. (will that work on 3?). Thanks.

drunkmonkey · 01-11-2008 1:42pm

Yea it shoud work fine as long as you've 3 3G coverage....do a manual network search on your phone and you should be able to see if your in a reception area....

If you joining 3 this month there giving free sky sports 1 to all new pay as you go customers until January....

Pick you a new 3 phone with a sim and you'll get €80 credit back on the sim....just pop the sim in your n95 and your away in a hack....

flodis79 · 01-11-2008 2:09pm

My experience is that the lag is about 3-6 seconds when using voip over 3g/3.5g, rendering the conversation useless. Guess the uplink bandwidth is too low. I have tried this with the Betamax clones with this result.

kazzer · 01-11-2008 2:25pm

Sh!te.

Whats your experience with Wifi? Ive noticed lag on maybe 20% of calls Ive made mainly to mobiles; landlines seem fine.

flodis79 · 01-11-2008 2:37pm

wifi works fine over 1 or 2mbit eircom connection.

Just experiment a bit with the voip over 3/3.5g, it might be that it is faster in your area.

kazzer · 01-11-2008 2:47pm

Can I ask flodis, what your setup is?

Which SIP provider are you using and what handset(s)?

matrim · 01-11-2008 4:39pm

Over WiFi it should be fine from most phones,although this depends on your setup.

Over 3G it can work fine but lag can really affect it depending on where you are. If you are going to try 3G, try to use a low bandwidth codec, if you can use G729.
The G711 codecs are normally default on most SIP setups, but they are high bandwidth and can have real problems on a 3G connection.

flodis79 · 01-11-2008 9:32pm

kazzer wrote: »

Can I ask flodis, what your setup is?

Which SIP provider are you using and what handset(s)?

Am using E51 and a few different sip providers: Blueface, Voipcheap, Voipbuster and a few other.

matrim · 01-11-2008 9:34pm

are u using the built in nokia sip phone or a different one?

kazzer · 01-11-2008 9:39pm

I use Nokias client sometimes, but mainly using fring now. for both SIP (Voipcheap) and Skype. Im thinking of going for one of the Siemens IP phones, or possiblly this as a 'landline'.

http://www.expansys.ie/p.aspx?i=171963

Thanks for the input guys, btw.

flodis79 · 01-11-2008 9:46pm

@kazzer, do you experience less lag with the Fring sip implementation, than the native Nokia one?

flodis79 · 01-11-2008 9:48pm

matrim wrote: »

are u using the built in nokia sip phone or a different one?

Built-in, it integrates nicely, and you can have many sip urls running simultaneously, in case you want to be reachable on many numbers at the same time.

flodis79 · 01-11-2008 9:51pm

kazzer wrote: »

I use Nokias client sometimes, but mainly using fring now. for both SIP (Voipcheap) and Skype. Im thinking of going for one of the Siemens IP phones, or possiblly this as a 'landline'.

http://www.expansys.ie/p.aspx?i=171963

However, that one does only have GPRS multi-slot class 10/EDGE, so you need to use the wlan all the time, I guess even the G.729 codec won't be enough for edge.

kazzer · 01-11-2008 9:51pm

flodis79 wrote: »

@kazzer, do you experience less lag with the Fring sip implementation, than the native Nokia one?

I havent noticed any lag with fring, so far anyway. I think its a more solid app as well.

flodis79 · 01-11-2008 9:52pm

kazzer wrote: »

I havent noticed any lag with fring, so far anyway. I think its a more solid app as well.

Yeah, but that means you need to have Fring open all the time, and I guess it will drain the battery faster than the s60 sip client.

kazzer · 01-11-2008 9:56pm

I actually havent found it to be that bad. In speech yeah it drains the battery.

matrim · 01-11-2008 10:58pm

if u want to receive calls, fring shouldn't use much more battery life than the built in client as they both need to keep the connection open. I use a sip client on my n95 when am in wifi, which is about 15 hours a day. And have about 1 days worth of charge on my phone. If on a call over wifi i get about 4 hours, on 3g about 3. Standby time is about 24 hour7 on wifi, 5 on 3g. The e51 has a better battery than the the n95 so u should haue a bit more time

Anyone using VoIP with 3 data plan?

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