This was the result (bearing in mind we pay quite a lot comparitvely for 8 megabyte broadband):

What a load of rubbish!

More than 1.8 million people are currently taking advantage of the benefits of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in the UK (Ofcom, 2006). With around three million PC to PC VoIP users predicted by the end of 2007, another million using the new technology to call traditional landlines, and businesses starting to get in on the action, we looked at why internet phone calls are proving so popular.

1. What is it and how does it work?

In its simplest sense, VoIP means using the internet to make phone calls. By taking ordinary analogue signals and turning them into digital signals, it allows you to ring people using your broadband connection. VoIP manifests itself in a number of ways:

• A headphone and microphone headset via an interface like MSN Messenger between two computers. Calls made in this way are completely free.
• A headset plugged into a PC to connect to someone else who is using a normal landline or mobile.
• A VoIP phone or adaptor that plugs into an old phone to make calls in the same way as a landline.

2. Will I get my own number?

Yes. You can get any phone number that you want ? so you can get a traditional geographical number for the city that you live in. Then other people can ring you on your VoIP line.

3. What equipment will I need?

If you?re going for option one or two, all you need is a headset and microphone that you plug into the back of your computer (the pink and the green jacks either at the back or the front of your PC).

This costs from around £5 upwards. Check out Amazon.

You will also need to download an instant messenger. Try Skype, Google Talk, MSN Messenger or Yahoo. Then you (and your friends) need to sign up and get an account. Simply add each other to your contact lists, request a ?voice conversation? and you?re ready to chat. But don?t forget to make sure you have plugged your headset in.

If you?re more comfortable using a traditional handheld phone, you will need to buy a VoIP phone or adaptor. VoIP phones look and behave exactly like normal phones, and both the phone and the adaptor allow you to make calls as you always did.

BT and Orange, now offer VoIP as part of their broadband packages, making the whole process much easier.

If not, VoIP phones start from around £10, and adaptors from around £20 from Amazon.

4. What will VoIP cost me?

Once you have bought your headset or phone, you have to decide which pricing option is best for you.

• Vonage offer an anytime calls package with inclusive UK minutes and international calls starting from 0.02p a minute for £7.99 a month. There is an activation fee of £9.99 but they do give you a free adaptor for your home phone.
• BT offer an anytime plan from £4.99 a month for BT Broadband customers. Calls to international landlines are charged from 1.25p per minute (with a 3p set up charge). Mobile phone call charges vary from 5p a minute at weekends up to 13p a minute at peak times.
• Orange offer VoIP with their Broadband Unlimited package (£19.99 a month). To make calls you just plug your normal phone into your Orange Livebox modem, and it works even when your computer is off. Calls to 01 and 02 national numbers are free, calls to UK mobiles are 10p a minute and calls to 100 international destinations are free too. If you are also a pay monthly Orange customer, calls to other Orange mobile phones are free too.

But VoIP can also be completely free. If you know what time your friends will be online you can make your calls PC to PC and you won?t have to pay a penny.

5. How does it compare to using a standard landline for cost?

The fact that 70 per cent of UK households rely on a landline that costs around £11 a month for their broadband (Ofcom, 2006), does cause some problems for specialist VoIP companies like Vonage as you don?t want to be paying two line rental costs.

Also, the fixed line telecoms business has become very competitive, so a great as it sounds, it?s also a good idea to check the fixed line market before committing to a VoIP line. Click here (link to www.homephonechoices.co.uk) to compare fixed line prices.

6. Reliability and quality issues

Despite Ofcom estimates of the number of active VoIP households, actual user volumes are difficult to track; early users suffered with poor quality connections, echoes and delays. The quality of your call can also be affected by your bandwidth, so if you have an ADSL line with a contention ratio of 50:1, your connection might not be as good during peak times.

But while these issues have improved, your broadband still needs to be switched on to make calls, increasing both your electricity bill and the chance of your network being infiltrated. In addition, you will have difficulty making calls any time you?re experiencing broadband connection problems.

7. VoIP in an emergency

Because you need electricity to make VoIP calls, since your broadband connection must be on, and, because you cannot ring emergency services from all VoIP networks, the chances are that you will still need a normal phone in an emergency.

Even if you are able to call emergency services, Ofcom still recommends that you check with your provider to see whether or not they will automatically know where you are calling from. Click here to see if you can ring 999 from your VoIP provider.

8. Call features

If the last two paragraphs have put you off, VoIP has some great call features that make up for its early teething problems.

Apart from the obvious cash savings, you can also make easy three-way calls ? great if you have friends in different parts of the world.

A host of other features include online message centres for retrieving messages, a facility that allows
you to send voicemails via email and the excellent benefit of being able to take your landline wherever you go. With VoIP you can make free and very cheap calls from any PC, any time you have access to a broadband connection ? even from your mobile if you have a Smart Phone.

9. Should I bin my landline?

Unfortunately, most of you can?t since you still need your traditional line for your broadband. However, if you have cable, it?s worth comparing the cost of the calls you make against the costs of a VoIP provider.

Even if you can?t get rid of your landline, using VoIP for PC to PC calls is also a great way of getting a second landline without paying for another line rental at £11 a month.

In the USA, where you can purchase a pure broadband connection without a phone line or having to pay line rental (known as a naked DSL), VoIP is a much better option. At the moment though, Ofcom has decided that it is up to service providers to decide if, and when, they will offer naked DSL in the UK without a cable connection.

10. The future

BT is now offering a VoIP cross-over phone. This ?intelligent? mobile phone uses the mobile network when you?re outside, and then switches to your VoIP connection when inside your house, allowing you to make calls from 5.5p for an hour. Orange should also be offering something similar soon.

Read our long form internet phone to find more about making calls using your broadband connection.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Bergin
http://EzineArticles.com/?Ten-Tips-For-Making-Internet-Phone-Calls-(Voip)&id=375632

In Britain at present there are over 50 million mobile phones; that?s double the figure counted 6 years ago, and the number only looks set to keep on rising. With an increasing number of mobile network providers in the UK market, the pressure is on to expand the goods and services offered by these companies, with many British mobile networks trying desperately to outdo each other.

A perfect example of mobile networks working against each other is shown in the recent controversy surrounding TV broadcasts on mobile phones. ITV signed a deal earlier this month with network operator ‘3′, which allows them to broadcast primetime ITV shows on mobiles as they are simultaneously being broadcast on television. The service is available to ‘3′ customers for only an extra £5 a month, or 99 pence a day, and was at first expected to be used by other networks as well, once the 6 month exclusivity deal with ‘3′ customers is over. However, developments since have seen Vodafone, the world’s largest mobile network provider, actively discourage mobile phone makers from putting mobile TV chips in their handsets. Apparently, this is because it wishes to encourage the use of its own 3G network, with new HSDPA and HSUPA for mobile TV, as well as other multimedia capabilities. By discouraging phone makers from using DVB-H and T-DMB TV capabilities, it is effectively setting the trend for mobile TV handsets. Steve Harrop, the technical architect for Vodafone’s mobile applications and content services, said:

“There is an obvious risk disintermediation, and that’s a background business reason for us choosing this approach. At the end of the day we have 16 million customers in the UK and we decide which phones we are selling them.”

Other leading mobile network providers in Britain – most notably, 02, Orange and T-Mobile – have been experimenting with unique products and services as well. In the US, T-mobile appear to be branching out into a range of other services, most specifically launching a new generation of Internet phones, in order to attract customers away from wi-fi and land-line services. Similarly, Orange recently launched the “Unique” phone; the company’s first converged service, the Unique phone offers the benefits of a fixed-line and mobile phone in one handset, exclusively to customers in Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Poland. The idea is that you have one phone for all your requirements; in your home, the handset connects via wi-fi to the Orange Livebox, and outside the house functions as a normal Orange mobile. Best of all, you can move between home and mobile conversations on the same phone without interruption.

02 have gone in a slightly different direction, by developing their own branded mobile handset; the 02 Ice mobile phone comes complete with their 3G bells and whistles and, with its slim, clean white appearance, is generally expected to appeal to the “fashion buyers” in the phone market. In Britain, with mobile phone companies like dial-a-phone continually making mobile phones more affordable through a never-ending series of special offers on both pay monthly and pay as you go phones, the mobile revolution doesn’t look like it’s going to end anytime soon.

Andrew Regan is an online journalist who enjoys socialising at his local Edinburgh rugby club.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Regan
http://EzineArticles.com/?Mobile-Networks-Broaden-Their-Services-As-The-Number-Of-Mobile-Phones-Keeps-On-Rising&id=312580

Remember, if your PS3 is already working with the Livebox, don’t fix what isn’t broken, and ignore this post!

1. Go to http://configuration.adsl and log in. See my post on default login details if you are unsure what your login is.
2. Navigate to Configuration -> Advanced -> Wireless on the left navigation area
3. If you live in a well-populated area, write down the name of your livebox, which could be something like “Livebox-B1F1″.
4. Change the security level to “WEP Security Only” if it not already, by selecting the radio button on the left hand side of the text.
5. Change “Maximum Pairing Time” to “–”, which means unlimited. Make sure “Wi-Fi Easypairing” is on.
6. Click submit to confirm the changes.
7. Now go to Security -> Wireless Connection
8. Take a note of your WEP Key (this helps keep intruders out of your network, so don’t be tempted to change it to something simple for ease!)
9. Go to your PS3 and bring up the Cross Media Bar (called the XMB), then go to Settings -> Network Settings -> Internet Connection Settings.
10. Answer “Yes” when you are warned that you may be disconnected.
11. Select the wireless option, then select “scan”.
12. If you are in a built-up area, a long list of everyone’s wireless routers should appear. I would advise that you choose yours so that you don’t get your neighbours complaining about losing their connection! It will be the name of the Livebox (see step 3!)
13. Check the box next to your Livebox name
14. According to several sources, your signal strength should be at least 30% for a good connection without lag or drops. If it’s lower than this, consider moving your Playstation closer to the Livebox, if you can!
15. In the “WLAN Security” section, select “WEP”
16. Type in the WEP key that you got from step 8
17. Select “Continue”, then select “Easy”.
18. Now you need to configure your Livebox Firewall to allow games to be played. First, on your PS3, go to Settings -> Network Settings -> Network Connections -> Status List. Look for the IP Address of the PS3, which should begin with 192.168 (unless you have specified something different on the Livebox). Note it down, we’ll need it in a second.
19. Go to http://configuration.adsl, log in, then go to Configuration -> Advanced -> Router and click the “Add” button.
20. Select the “Manual Service” radio box, and in the box to the right, type something meaningful, like Playstation or PS3.
21. Next to the word “Protocol” there is a dropdown box, select UDP, not TCP.
22. In the “external” and “internal” port boxes, type 4658.
23. Next to “Server IP Address”, type the IP Address that the PS3 gave you in Step 18.
24. Hit submit

And you’re done

Just to say that I’m really glad to see so many people finding the content useful, please let me know if you have been helped. If you feel like you can lend a hand to other users, please do via comments or the discussion forum.

Thanks again

I’m still here, and I’m still seeing many comments with success stories, which is good . Just remember, I am active, and will do my best to answer queries, but don’t be too upset if I can’t, because some fixes require firmware upgrades which Orange havent released in a while.

Hopefully they will release one soon, with many fixes for the Livebox! Not likely, but still – one can hope.

In the latest of my posts on the Orange Livebox, here is some handy advice for using your home computers as web servers with the Orange Livebox.

The router includes some handy port forwarding functions, but something else which it includes as standard is automatic updates for Dynamic DNS Services such as No-IP.com.

A dynamic DNS service allows your livebox to be assigned a domain name, or subdomain, so you can remember a simple address like mylivebox.no-ip.com, rather than your IP address, which is something like 85.165.23.12. This can be very useful for people who can’t afford a professional hosting service, or who want more control over their data.

First, sign up for the free no-ip.info service, and make a new subdomain.

You can then log on to your livebox, and go to the advanced tab, then dynamic DNS updates. You can then enter your username and password, as well as the domain you are using. The livebox will then update your settings on every IP address change to reflect your new domain.

So you could go to example.no-ip.com and your livebox will be contacted to provide the end user with some content. But we’ve got a problem! There’s no content at port 80 (which is the default HTTP Port), so the user won’t get any content.

That’s where my handy guide to port forwarding comes in. Just read it through and configure a computer for Web Serving (port 80), you should then be able to access the computer with content on from your new dynamic URL.

Thanks, Tom

Haven’t posted in a while due to the fact I’m now in paid employment. Anyway: If you use your second line service, and are NOT an Orange Pay Monthly (Contract) Mobile customer, do not use second line to make calls to Orange Mobiles. They’re website says they are free at any time to all Home Select and Max customers, but take it from me they are not. I just got a bill for £300, due to me calling my girlfriends mobile (on Orange).

The website is very unclear, and you only find out when you get the bill!

It is located here:

http://livebox.tomhallam.co.uk/forum/index.php 

What you need: 

• A LAN Hub
• A Patch Network Cable
• A Livebox

First, examine your livebox. If you have two network ports (Lan) then you are ok to proceed. Have a look at this image:

(click to make it bigger)

You can see the livebox, and the two LAN points that it has on it’s right side. The Red-tipped cable that I have plugged in leads to my hub. This is the patch cable.

Now you need to take the cable and plug it in to your hub, as in the above picture. It can be plugged in to any of the ports apart from the “X-Ovr” port, as this is for a crossover cable, which can be bought and plugged into another computer.

The data will still be sent as it sees the livebox as another peer.

You can now plug further cables into the hub and use the internet (and any other services) through the livebox!