Originally Posted by
airborne_artist
You'll be glad to hear that I solved the problem by hard-wiring the PC to the router, thanks to a £4.99 RJ45 cable from fleabay, a tent pole, some string, and my drill!
It works fine, so the issue was the wi-fi link, I reckon. I'm not going to look further, anyway.
FWIW the Tesco VoIP handset (rebadged USR 9600) is OK, for £9.99. Use it fine with sipgate, Tesco (Freshtel in drag) and Freecall. The skype drivers are on the USR site I understand. The Tesco system (like Sipgate) allocates a UK 01xxx xxxxxx number for free, which costs £20 odd on Skype I believe. I'm sending one back with my brother in law to Oz, so his mum can call him for free (as she has BT Option2), as she'll be calling a standard UK number.
Cool.
You may also be interested in internetcalls.com or freecall.com (same company - different call plans).
They both offer free calls to many countries incl US + mobile and UK landlines only. Costs only 10 euros for 120 days of free calls, credit never expires, free calls are topped up every time you renew credit and you get a free VOIP IN number. Easy to install client on your PC, but will work with any SIP compatible phone. You can also divert VOIP IN calls to any other number at the VOIP rates (or free).
I've also just bought a Sipura SPA-3000 VOIP router / switcher, which converts all my phones and extensions in the house to VOIP phones, and can connect incoming calls from the PSTN to VOIP and vice-versa. (So you can call your home number on your mobile phone, and connect to the US).
Haven't connected it up yet though, so I'll let you know how it goes.