What is your preferred VOIP / Instant Messaging solution?

[tgillespie]

If they talk a lot, it might be cheaper for her to buy a vonage box (get brother to send it) in the same area code as your brother. They can then call each other for free for $15 / month. If they talk more than 18 minutes per day it would work out cheaper

Unless you mean VOIP is blocked for her in the UK? That seems very strange if she has ADSL or Cable, I havn't heard of a company that blocks the VOIP port.

They definately talk more than 18 minutes a day, so I will look into Vonage a little more. The university she is at provides free internet to their rooms, but only the most common ports are unblocked. Can you configure Vonage to work off a specified port? All he needs to do is buy a Vonage box and have her plug it into the net in London? There are no international regulations or catches?

[chrispadfield]

I really don't know the ports work on Vonage, and a quick google search didn't reveal much info. I know I didn't have to set up any port forwarding for my router which I don't really understand either. There might be a way for her to test how it would work, not sure to be honest.

But yeah, buy the box and send it to London. You have to add a couple of small taxes on top but apart from that no problem. Vonage don't officially support its use in other countries, but I read somewhere they have up to 10% of their boxes outside the US now.

[mcncyo]

I use vonage all the time. The only problem is if you cable modem, router, or power goes off there goes your phone line. I have a cell phone for backup up and if vonage detect that i am not connected to them the calls are automaticly rerouted to the cell phone no extra charge.

[Jagged Tooth]

Well although I use 9 different messaging systems I would have to say Skype is one of the best. Especially with VoIP. The audio quality is great, not to mention secure and the cost is great. But I don't use it that often as I have two phone lines and around 7 mobiles lying round the house.

[Martz]

I've started using sipgate.co.uk (UK and Germany only) - who provide either a local or 0845 number for free, to receive standard inbound calls on.

Currently using a Cisco ATA 186 analogue adapter, but plan to use Asterisk PBX too for my office/small business in the future.

[dreamer81]

I would guess that it costs money to call landlines though.

no.. it's free to call landlines as well...that's the good thing, else i wouldn't use it.

It's simply download it, call and pay nothing at all!!

i love it...

[chrispadfield]

Voip buster is not free to call landlines:
http://www.voipbuster.com/en/rates.html

No service could offer that for long, they have to pay the local carriers to compete the call, they have to fund that somehow.

[correction] I see they do have a "superdeal" on at the moment for some free calls, including to the US. I can't imagine they can keep that going for long.