Skype number and Subscription

To this day I still use and pay for Skype with unlimited subs and a number - but are there any better services out there? Not cheaper - but better.

I have no issues with Skype and it costs around £10 a month as I have had it for years - it's cheaper than when I used to have a landline with inclusive stuff (but that was only for the internet to run anyway)

Just wondered. A search brings up lots of providers - but none really with reviews.

Thanks

Difficult to answer without you defining 'better'...

I've never used Skype as a replacement for POTS telephony but I have used a variety of VOIP providers (AAISP, Sipgate, Localphone, Voipfone etc)

I've never had an unlimited package as I don't make enough phone calls to make it worthwhile. YMMV of course...

Hey mate

If you can live without video calling, it might be worth trying out a full blown VOIP service. As you say there are plenty of services out there and after trying a few, I've been using yay.com for a year or so. Its a superb business grade VOIP service with excellent reliability/voice quality and with great support - probably the best phone support I've ever received from a UK company. You are not forced to use a POTS or IP phone with yay, they offer a website/desktop app and more recently a very nifty iOS/Android smartphone app. The app allows you to do things like use your calling plan, record voice calls, download answer machine messages and tons of other features. They're not the cheapest out there but not the most expensive either. I'm on their PAYG service for £2.99 p/m with call charges on top, but they offer a UK unlimited call plan for £9.99 p/m or with mobiles included £15.99 p/m. When I signed up, they offered a free 30 day trial with £20 credit included, though not sure if they offer something similar currently.

Yay (like most VOIP providers) can transfer your existing landline number over to their service, I think i paid £20 for this.

I didn't have a great experience with cheaper VOIP providers such as Sipgate Basic whose service was patchy (too many outages) along with p!ss poor support (Germany based). If you make a lot of overseas calls, then you should also consider Vonage as they seem to be very competitive for overseas call packages and they do have quite a good reputation for VOIP services.

Hope this helps

Thank you both of you for your replies

I can't fault Skype its always up = always connects and i dont use the video much (use facetime for that) but the calls to landlines and mobiles all over the world is a god send. I haven't had a landline for years now - I had AAISP for 6 months but that was line only so to me that does not count

I will check out yay.com and hi mate thanks for the suggestion =- I hope the FTTP is going well