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Communications IT

BT to Offer Free Internet Calls 195

Posted by samzenpus from the call-everyone dept.
gnoos writes "The BBC is reporting that BT is to start offering customers free internet telephone calls if they sign up to broadband in December. The offer will be limited to the first 50,000 people who sign up and users will need to use BT's internet telephony software, known as BT Communicator"
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BT to Offer Free Internet Calls More

BT to Offer Free Internet Calls

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  • Yeah, but it's still got a headset that plugs into your computer.

    I'd much rather have a service like Vonage [vonage.com]. It's simple to use, has a nice web GUI, is incredibly clear, and can work seemlessly with your existing telephone number.

    • I fail to see why BT should use a headset and windows-based software when they already ship an ADSL Ethernet router with some of their internet services.

      Surely a digital handset that plugs into an Ethernet port would be a much simpler option, as well as being completely OS-independent?
    • Would it be possible to use your modem port like the RJ-11 port on the Vonage box? Would that even be possible?

  • God Bless Flat Rates.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 11, 2004 @03:47AM (#10785418)
    It's hard to understand as an American how important this maneuver is to BT. Unlike the States, The UK and other EU nations prefer mobile phones over landlines to such an extent that telecos are losing money. The only source for revenue for this redundant system presently is DSL service, and even that is being offered at reduced rates.

    The American business model for telco service has always been charge a little extra for flat rate local calls and save thousands of dollars in not having to itemize billing for something that costs jack squat. BT has clearly acknowledged that this is the only way to compete with the booming mobile phone industry is to go VoIP and following the American standard but because it's a new technology they don't have to say America was right.
    • Exceping that BT has already done it with the standard technology. For a fairly small additional monthly fee they offer unmetered calls anywhere in the UK, it did take a while to follow the US model though, but I think this has a lot to do with the higher concentration of people in local areas due to the higher population concentration (the whole of London and the surrounding areas is local to itself, for example, nearly 1/5 of the UK population is local to everyone else in that fifth) so reduced profit fro
    • Absolutely.

      I have a land line with BT but it's really only there as a way of getting ADSL in to the house. I seem to remember that the actually cost of calls on that line last month were around a couple of dollars. In fact the usage of the land line has just increased a little as I recently invested in a set of cordless (DET) phones for the landline which means I can wander around the house (and the yard) and use the landline instead of my mobile.

      But even then I have an free off-peak call quota bundled
    • European telcos are losing money? Funny, because BT makes a profit of about £100 (~$190) every second. If that's what you call losing money then please help me lose some by donating all of yours to me right away.

      And this crap is modded insightful? How sad.

      • easy tiger (Score:2, Informative)

        by wild_berry ( 448019 )
        That was the good old days of 1993. The market has changed since then, and BT is no longer quite that profitable.

        With a smile, I wonder why you didn't get modded flamebait.

    • Re:God Bless Flat Rates.... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      To characterise this move by BT as related to charge rates (&billing) on local loop phone calls is to miss the point.

      BT operate huge trunk routes AND have a mobile phone network to run as well. So they generate turnover from *all* segments of the market.

      It's been widely recognised that every major telco carrier has to move *all* their traffic to IP else they will go the way of the dinosaurs. Currently BT are running older digital voice switches along side new IP switches and in terms of capacity and f
  • Wow, this is radical stuff. Almost as good as Skype, but without the hassle of simply clicking and talking.... ;-)

  • and they lost most of their customer base here (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DarkTempes ( 822722 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @03:49AM (#10785430)
    Minimum requirements -Microsoft Windows 98/Windows 2000/Windows Millennium/Windows XP operating system (XP recommended) -Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.01 or later not so sure about the latter, because i bet it just requires flash and so would work in firefox. but it probably doesn't work in linux since it specifies: Please note that BT Communicator is not Mac compatible. All in all, how many windows users want to use something possibly IE-based so that they can talk to hardlines and such for free?
    • it actually installs under wine on RH9 - at one point it displays a dialog along the lines of "you don't have IE and you don't have the correct windows something or other.." and gives a choice of pressing Yes or No. If you choose Yes, the installer exits, but if you choose No, the installer continues and offers you Typical or Custom !! Classic !!! Unfortunately, none of the exes do very much once started...
  • Telephone calls via BitTorrent???
    • Bram Cohen sure has been busy!
    • well why not?: Most of the time in a phone call, you call someone knowing what you want to say then have to negotiate the conversation around them to get to your point.

      Much simpler to just make an mp3 file of your point of view, send it and await their considered reply....
      • I don't know; I think I prefer phone calls (or IM). The issue with your idea (or a Slashdot post, for that matter) is that you have to compose your entire argument at once, and with no feedback. I would rather know if I need to clarify some details before I get to my conclusions.

        You might be good enough at extemporaneous speaking to record an mp3 in one go, but I can't. I would have to at least think about, and probably write down, what I want to say before I record, lest I sound like a bumbling fool. I
    • No, you are not the only person to have that thought

  • Dont trust them. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @03:51AM (#10785444) Journal
    BT are lying theiving scum that have exploited the British public with their monopoly for years. This is an obvious gimmick (that will fail) to attempt to steal customers from other broadband providers.

    Their ADSL service is fine up until layer 3, at which point it becomes crap. Their web service will only let you download two simultaneous files, and given half a chance they will cap your downloads. Service is unreliable. I have several remote sites using VPN's - one uses BT at the moment, and VPN is up and down like a yoyo.

    If you want broadband in the UK and you live in an area where you can get cable, use Telewest [telewest.co.uk] (I have a 3Mb line which is 1Mb faster than the fastest BT offering) or if you can't get cable and can only have ADSL, use Demon. [demon.net]

    Oh and don't use BT for regular telephone lines - they are overpriced.

    In fact, don't use them for anything.

    • Re:Dont trust them. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by FireFury03 ( 653718 ) <slashdot&nexusuk,org> on Thursday November 11, 2004 @04:29AM (#10785574) Homepage
      if you can't get cable and can only have ADSL, use Demon.

      I have found DSL to be much more reliable than (NTL) cable, although it is true that trusting BT to do the ISP side of things is a very bad idea (they seem just as clueless as NTL). I used to use Demon for my dialup, but when I switched to DSL a couple of years back their network was in pieces and was generally quite flakey so I moved to PlusNet [plus.net] who have done a excellent job of running a very stable DSL line. I think it's gone down a total of twice in 2 years - once was a very short outage caused by an equipment failure at PlusNet and the other was about 4 or 5 hours which was BT's fault (and also took out most of the DSL lines in the South-East of the UK).

      Admittedly I only use them for the connection, I run all the services (mail, DNS, etc) myself because I frankly don't trust any consumer ISPs to know as much as me about networking.

      I have also heard good things about Bogons [bogons.net] if you want an ISP with a clue and they're aparantly happy to do almost anything with a DSL line (moving portable IP addresses onto it, multi-channel bonding, etc).

    • Re:Dont trust them. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Xrikcus ( 207545 )
      Ok, except that BT's service is considerably better than Telewest or NTL, and other ISPs (Eclipse, Nildram) etc are used by any techie types, noone technical really uses BT for ADSL afterall, it's for the normal people.
      • Are BT better than Telewest? I doubt it. I have had a Telewest connection for almost 2 years now and have nothing but good things to say about it. I bought a 1Mb connection, about a year ago this upgraded this to 1.5Mb for the same monthly charge. The installers came on time and did a very professional job, all rigged up in under half an hour including a very good job of cable laying to my PC cupboard and making good.

        I have only noticed one 20 minute outage in the time I have had the service. Their custome

    • Re:Dont trust them. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by RJabelman ( 550626 )
      > In fact, don't use them for anything.

      Sadly, if you want ADSL, you don't have a choice. I really resent having to pay ~ £15 a month to BT for a phoneline I don't use, just so I can have ADSL.
      • I don't understand people who whinge about the rental cost of their landline, because they don't use it for calls. You're not being charged for calls - if you sign up with a no-frills package, that rental is going towards *maintainance* (it's not that cheap to run a national phone network, you know) and, yes, some profit for BT (they're a company in a capitalist economy). You think your copper phoneline, which is obviously REQUIRED for DSL, should be provided to you for free?

    • Re:Dont trust them. (Score:2, Informative)

      by bairy ( 755347 ) *
      BT are lying theiving scum that have exploited the British public with their monopoly for years.

      Their ADSL service is fine up until layer 3, at which point it becomes crap

      I absolutely agree. I don't know what layer 3 is to be honest however my old job had ISDN 64k and then BT Broadband 512k. They charged £80 a month(!) for the 512k and it would hang on for about 20 mins then die, and even when hanging on the datarate was appaling, listening to even low bw radio was just dire.

      It frequently neede

      • Yep - I'm in the process of migrating back to Zen Internet right now (down to £25/mo for reliable, uncapped 512kbps ADSL!), but you make the slight mistake of confusing BT with BT Openworld. BT have a dept called BT Wholesale - they're fine, and provide you with the connectivity you use to connect to ISPs like Zen. BT Openworld are the ISP branch of BT, and they suck. :-)
    • I haven't found their ADSL to be as bad as that, but one thing I'm sure of - their customer service sucks. Five years ago I ran IT for an organisation, and we were the first business customer for ADSL in our postcode area. You would think they would have looked after us but they didn't. I remember calling once when the service went down, and had a conversation along these lines:

      Me: the router isn't connecting and says authentication error
      Tech: can you please restart the router
      Me: I've done that and it

      • This is almost as good as a mail from BT tech support I saw pasted into an IRC channel a few years ago.

        The guy was trying to get a DSL card working with a Slackware box. BT: "the internet doesn't support linux".

        *groan*

      • FWIW, it just took me 5 minutes of talking to one of their staff [FX: call centre, Indian accents] just to cancel my old dial-up account. They wanted all sorts of background information about why I was cancelling, but I think they got bored after something like "unreliable service, cuts me off randomly, you changed the Ts & Cs unacceptably since I signed up, capped hours on-line in an 'unmetered' service, your web site doesn't work properly with non-IE browsers, your web server is configured incorrectly

  • Free phone in France (Score:5, Insightful)

    by misterbozo ( 735478 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @04:04AM (#10785478) Homepage
    We have free national house-to-house VoIP phone for about a year or so in France. And you don't have to use your computer: just plug your phone in the 'Freebox' given with your Free.fr [adsl.free.fr] subscription. You also get broadband internet (up to 15 mbits in some areas) and TV (not everywhere), all for 30 euros/month. For once that France isn't years behind technologically, I thought I'd mention it...

    • Re:Free phone in France (Score:5, Funny)

      by isorox ( 205688 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @05:57AM (#10785817) Homepage Journal
      You also get broadband internet (up to 15 mbits in some areas)

      Not broadband minitel?
    • What I don't get is that you need to be a BT Together customer for this. BT Together customers (such as myself) already get free calls to geographic numbers (ie. those that start 01 or 02).

      So, what would be the benefit of this for me?
      • Actually, all BT customers can benefit from this.

        People on BT together option 1 can save 3p per minute in the daytime and 5.5p per call off peak by making calls through BT communicator.

        People on option 2 get free evening and weekend calls, but can still save 3p per minute by making their daytime calls through BT communicator.

        People on option 3 get all their calls to landlines included, but they can save 15 pounds per month by dropping their line rental and making all their calls to landlines through BT c

  • But it's already free... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stephanruby ( 542433 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @04:08AM (#10785491)
    But it's already free if you have broadband.

    What's next? Free web access if you pay for broadband. Free email if you pay for broadband. Free virus protection if you pay for broadband.

    Might as well go wild and give free access to Slashdot.

    • Yes it's free to call other internet phones, but this is free calls to other regular phones.

      Oh except - the free calls do not include calls to mobiles, non-geographical numbers such as 0870, premium numbers or international numbers.
    • But it's already free if you have broadband.

      Sigh. I guess no one actually read the article. I saw it myself before it was on slashdot. From the article

      BT has launched the promotion to show off the potential of a broadband connection to customers.

      So, basically this is a trial to get people using their service, where after some point, they start to charge for it. And as BT makes money off the old telephone system that will be replaced by VOIP in 10-20 years. They are seeing the way the market is goin

  • MS only... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 11, 2004 @04:11AM (#10785501)
    Just so you don't have to go down a whole thread, the requirements are listed below.

    In short, Windoze only, and needs Internet Exploder and Flash as well. So tough if you're using any kind of alternatives with, say, a better security record.

    Thanks BT, but not very much.

    Minimum requirements
    Multimedia PC with 700MHz processor or faster *
    Microsoft Windows 98/Windows 2000/Windows Millennium/Windows XP operating system (XP recommended)
    Minimum 128MB RAM (256MB recommended)

    256-color VGA or higher resolution graphics card (SVGA recommended)
    Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.01 or later
    Macromedia Flash version 5.0.25 or later (Flash version 6+ recommended).
    • I'm sure they don't have many Linux using customers. Anyone with a clue about OSes will also have a clue about ISPs.

  • This type of thing is here! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ImaLamer ( 260199 ) <john@lamar.gmail@com> on Thursday November 11, 2004 @04:14AM (#10785512) Homepage Journal
    Right here in Cincinnati, Ohio a cable company (no names) has hired and trained installation and support personell for a VoIP roll out. They plan on offering unlimited service to those who are more than delighted with their digital cable and *oad *unner Internet service.

    Considering the amount of low key recruiting they did I'd say they plan on it working. They actually plan on kicking normal home phone service out of their homes completely.

    Not bad for a city that is said to live twenty years behind the rest of the world [twainquotes.com].
  • Skype is already free and works with many OSs and who you want to talk to doesn't have to be with BT. Seems pointless to me.

    • Re:Skype (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DarthBart ( 640519 )
      When I can tie Skype into my home/homeoffice PBX, then I'll look at it.

      Until then, I'm happy getting service from NuFone and letting Asterisk do all the work.

  • Limited = Stupid (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BortQ ( 468164 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @04:21AM (#10785537) Homepage Journal
    They shouldn't limit this to the first X customers. Why the hell not give it to everyone? Include it in the basic broadband service. They already have the data network in place, so it shouldn't really cost them too much.

    Doing it for only the first X makes it just a gimmick. [spits]

  • BT will let me ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 11, 2004 @05:05AM (#10785677)
    ... send UDP or RTP or RTSP packets through the Internet if I sign up ?

    I should bloody well hope so.

    I remember working at one company where we ordered a BT business ADSL line .... I had to phone them 3 times to get the password to access their ADSL router to start it up and endure sniggering adolescent tele-plonkers who seemed to think I was *mad* as a hatter for even trying to do it without using the free windows software (read browser page).

    And then we discovered BT blocked *every* incoming port to the ADSL router. Very useful that was.

    HOW-TO setup a soft-VPN system:
    1) rent ADSL service from ISP that know's the f*ck what it's doing
    2) connect penguin box
    3) install, configure, start service
    4) go for a cup of tea
    5) fire twat who ordered BT ADSL Busy-being-idiots Service.

    BT is an ISP?
    My arse.

  • how to advertise for free..... (Score:4, Funny)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @05:37AM (#10785768) Journal
    How to advertise for free to nearly a million potential customers: submit your company homepage as a story on slashdot.

    To put it another way:
    1. Create silly introductory offer.
    2. Submit it as a breaking story to slashdot.
    3. Get slashdotted.
    4. PROFIT!!!!!!!!!

  • Avoid BT like the plague (Score:4, Informative)

    by cruachan ( 113813 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @05:56AM (#10785813)
    BT, together with their mobile subgroup O2 really are the worst company in the UK. I was ripped off by O2 on a mobile telephone bill to the tune of several hundred pounds and I know many others who have similar tales of woe. We also have an ISDN from BT themselves the service on which is truly dreadful.

    Of all the corporates I've ever dealt with in the UK BT are by far and away the worst, and that includes the various rail companies. No other company comes close for their attitude of not giving a toss about their customers, indeed they are the only corporate I know which actively seems to go out of their way to treat their customers with contempt.

    Avoid.

    • Re:Avoid BT like the plague (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Mwongozi ( 176765 ) <slashthree.davidglover@org> on Thursday November 11, 2004 @06:16AM (#10785851) Homepage
      Just so you know, BT no longer own O2. That doesn't mean O2 don't still suck, they do, but they're not the same company as BT.
    • I have to respectfully disagree - it's been quite a while since I had bad customer service from BT. Yeah, they used to be a ripoff but I think they're better now. That said, I never used O2 or BT Openworld, I suspect they're crap, but BT's basic landline service and customer support (very rarely needed) is fine...

  • Yeh? (Score:2)

    by Kanasta ( 70274 )
    Anyone with BB can do free internet telephone calls anyway. What's the biggie? Plus it's only 1month? Hah. try again.
  • for free!

    (after the monthly bill of course with its submarined things in there)

    Why mess around with the other free guys and use free software for free internet telephony on free free, why be open when you can be closed, why pay when you can be free? No, why be free when you can pay. Why? Because free. And we will go out of business shortly. Thanks for staying on the line.. someone please hang up the phone? It's free!

  • PAY for VOIP? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @06:42AM (#10785904) Journal
    Sorry, but this market is self deprecating.

    Unless they somehow sabotage world networks, all voice traffic can easily squeeze in right next to the bittorrent traffic.

    Pay for VOIP? Are you mad! I hope they don;t try and neuter DSL connection in the future to stop voice calls, one day, everyone will have a compatible voice software, and I think it will be within 4 years.

    4 years telcos. Wise up.

  • The most pointless thing i've ever seen. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dr.Knackerator ( 755466 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @06:45AM (#10785912) Journal
    After the free period, the pricing is the same as your standard BT landline costs.

    To have BT Broadband you must have a BT Landline

    I have a walkabout phone for round the house so i can be in any room, in the garden, garage etc. But my PC is tied to the wall. Even if you had a laptop do you really want to lug that around?

    So I pay the same for a net call and get less 'features' than my landline. Sounds like a bargain!
    • Get yourself an ATA then (Analogue Telephone Adaptor). They're simply little boxes that you plug your existing non-IP phone into to turn it into an IP-phone. Quite snazzy little things and they're what's going to make VoIP boom.
      • did you miss the part saying that the calls were the same price from a standard phone? you can't have bt broadband without a bt landline (paying full standing charge every quarter).

        Why would I want to feck about with IP? It doesn't offer me any useful additional features. It would use the broadband bandwidth I already pay for, my wireless bandwidth, disk space, cpu, cause my machine to start up slower, having to feck about unpluggin my headphones/speakers to put in a headset... or i can spend £30 on
        • did you miss the part saying that the calls were the same price from a standard phone? you can't have bt broadband without a bt landline (paying full standing charge every quarter).

          What about calling other people with IP phones? That's free. If all your friends have broadband why not?

          Why would I want to feck about with IP? It doesn't offer me any useful additional features. It would use the broadband bandwidth I already pay for, my wireless bandwidth, disk space, cpu, cause my machine to start up slower

  • Out of the goodness of their own heart.. NOT! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cluke ( 30394 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @08:25AM (#10786263)
    Yeah, BT are really altruistic giving all this stuff away for free. Or not.

    First I heard of this was when I was prompted to 'upgrade' my version of Yahoo Messenger to the U.K. version (sponsored by BT, there name was all over it). It nagged me everytime at start-up, so off I go and click Yes.
    Turns out the new version is just like the old version, except with all chatrooms and voice chatrooms *removed*. (Apparently Lycos UK have carved these up into a separate enterprise, some sort of godawful web-based "U Come here to flirt! A/S/L! Kisses! Love online" 'service')

    But there is one extra button to make up for this. It is "BT Communicator". Make voice calls over the internet to a normal phone! If you are on BT interent. I am not.
    But it is free!

    FOR THE FIRST MONTH ONLY.

    All it is, is some trial offer trying to hook you in so you can be charged at a later date. So beware!

  • For all the people asking "so what?" (Score:4, Informative)

    by lga ( 172042 ) * on Thursday November 11, 2004 @09:02AM (#10786404) Journal
    There's a large number of posts further up this discussion just not getting it. Here is my summary of what is different about this:

    BT communicator is just Yahoo messenger with VoIP software in it, that's nothing new. BT offers a gateway to the real phone network that they have been charging to the customers household phone bill at standard rates. That's nothing new either.

    What is new here and news worthy is that BT is giving away FREE PHONE CALLS TO THE REAL PHONE NETWORK from the VoIP phone until the 31st January 2006. That is what makes this story interesting.

    Steve.
  • Is it going to take another "MCI vs ATT" type monopoly lawsuit to get these emerging VoIP telcos to open their services to niche players? Otherwise their end-to-end service model closes the market to everyone who isn't providing the bundle. Voipcos might outsource some services, like voicemail and bill processing, on the back end, but their monopoly will control the consumer market, though they benefit from a more competitive supplier market. With "prosumer" roles so abundant in the VoIP architecture, their

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