Bye Eircom

Well I finally got round to signing up with Blueface a VOIP operator here in Ireland. So now I have:

• Irish VOIP number
• UK VOIP number (which they gave me free for people in the UK to call me)
• A local 01 Dublin number (and they are porting my existing eircom number over). You'd think this takes minutes but eircom can even drag their heels on this too it seems.

The setup has been insanely easy. A little box came with a Linksys PAP2 phone adapter (all preconfigured for me). Just plug your existing phone in one end and the other into your router and bingo, you are up and runnning.

So what's it cost? Well the adapter cost €69 which is pretty good. They also have a number of price plans:

• Pay as you go (in €5 euro multiples).
• 300 minutes National + 18 countries for €10
• 1000 minutes National + 18 countries for €20
• Ireland + UK unlimited for €15
• Worldwide Unlimited for €25

I chose the Ireland + UK one. This gives unlimited anytime calls to UK, Irish landlines for €5 less than the cost of just renting a line from Eircom. I'm in the incredulous phase just wondering how this can be this cheap. I'm sure the anger phase were I think about how much I've been ripped off by Eircom over the last decade will kick in soon.

The quality of the calls are pretty good. Not as clear as a landline, but actually a good bit clearer than my old landline (which has had a persistent fault for the last month or two). Kind of somewhere between a landline and a good mobile call. I know the service is good enough, because my wife doesn't care whether it's VOIP or not, she just wants a phone that works and so far it passes her test.

So all in all VOIP is a definite winner - until the SPIM lords get it together. If Skype ever got it's act together in Ireland AND brought out a WIFI capable standalone Skype phone (which is allegedly in the works). then Blueface might have some competition. This stuff really is a disruptive technology.