Netgear phone says bye bye PSTN, hello VoIP

Stan Beer
Sunday, 25 November 2007 15:40

Opinion and Analysis

In Australia, if you subscribe to the Skype Pro service, you'll pay a bit less than $6 per month (if you include a 12 month SkypeIn subscription) rental, 6 cents a SkypeOut call untimed anywhere in Australia, about 2.7 cents a minute for SkypeOut calls to most major overseas destinations and 27 cents a minute to mobiles. That's a bit more expensive than some local VoIP services but incomparably cheaper than the PSTN service I now subscribe to.

In addition to being cheaper than the PSTN, Skype and other VoIP services enable you to take your phone on the road, including your number. Wherever there's a broadband connection, you can simply plug in your base station and phone or your laptop and make and receive calls at low rates.

The Netgear SPH200D, however, is not really made for Skype road warriors. As a DECT phone, it is particularly suited for the home or small offices, where handsets move around and the base station stays put.

A Wi-Fi handset version, the SPH200W should prove more suitable for travellers looking to take advantage of the growing number of hotspots to place Skype calls.

If there's a deficiency in the Netgear SPH200D then it's that I couldn't find a way to send SMS messages like I can from my computer. This is a pity because Skype SMS messages are half the cost of those sent from mobile phones. However, I hate sending SMS messages from anything but a QWERTY keyboard anyway.

The big objection I always get from people when I tell them I'm thinking of disconnecting my PSTN service and using VoIP is what will I do if there's a power failure (as if I have old fashioned PSTN handsets and not cordless phones that need power anyway). What if Skype goes down again? My answer is always the same - well I guess I'll just have to use one of the three charged up mobile phones that are laying around the house until the power and Skype come back online.

So now I have two telephone numbers running off the same base station - my cheap and versatile Skype VoIP service and my expensive, limited and inflexible PSTN service. Guess which one I'm going to disconnect?