I just took the plunge – and took my family with me – into the wild west of mobile voice. We just abandoned our iPhone cellular plan in favor of turning these wonderful devices into fat iPod Touches, and it looks like we will save at least $80 per month on our family cellular bill.
The current primary experiment is to use Skype over wifi at home and the office. That works well. The two numbers are $30/year each with a Skype Premium plan. That works out to $11/month for 2 accounts.
We also added a Clear Wireless mobile hotspot that provides 4G and 3G connectivity for cellular data. Early experiments with that have worked well too. This service is running $55/month + $9/month for the personal wifi hotspot. We could save a lot here if we went 4G only, but one of our requirements was to be able to make calls over 3G when we travel around the country.
That adds up to about $75/month it seems (not clear on the tax differences yet – though it seems we will avoid the many taxes for USF and 911 service).
Total Savings: about $80 per month!
If the 4G data rates are good and stable, we will be looking at replacing the home cable modem with a second service from Clear. They need to prove themselves at our location first. And the additional savings from that switch would probably only amount to about $20/month. Nothing to sneeze at for sure, but hardly the dramatic budgetary axing we are getting with cell service!
There are certainly glitches. I tried several times this morning to call a work colleague over a weak wifi connection where only one of us could hear the other. Once I got things setup to connect to a strong hotspot all went well.
We have to make sure to add the local police/fire/hospital to our contacts – just like when I was a kid – since you don’t get 911 access on a setup like this.
I have to say though that the voice quality – when it works right – is spectacular.
The solutions we are experimenting with so far in addition to Skype are Google Voice and Pinger.
I am using Google Voice to handle text messages with Skype, since for some reason they don’t offer any kind of unlimited SMS plan and charge over 11 cents per message. Seems bizarre to me.
Pinger gets kudos for free SMS and Voice sponsored by ads, jumping through hoops, or cold, hard cash. I still have 100 Pinger minutes I need to use up, so I will experiment with them some more most likely.
So far though, Skype gets the nod for best voice quality and overall call experience.
What are your experiences with internet-based calling?
