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"Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all. How do we define this lively darting about with words, of hitting them back and forth, this sort of brief smile of ideas which should be conversation?" Guy de Maupassant

Saturday, April 24, 2004

Skype over my Cell Phone

I missed this piece from Om Malik, who, among other experiences while in India, shares his experiences of using Vonage over his cell phone.  I also missed the fact that he was in India!  Next time Om, lets catch up for a coffee and some gupshup !

He says : 

"I had installed XTen Lite on my Powerbook and coupled it with a Vonage service. I had been using that service for a couple of weeks in San Francisco, but when I came to India, I decided to try it out over the ìalmost 3Gî data connection I have been using to check my email and post blog entries. I wasnít too sure about the quality of the service for the connection speeds sometime drop down to about 50 kilobits per second. Anyway I wanted to check my voice mails in San Francisco, and dialed out - and before i knew I was pressing the right buttons, scanning my messages.  Next-up, I called a friend of mine in New York. 20 minute conversation over a data connection. Fat chance the cellphone company got to see any part of the revenues from that call. It was a few pennies for Vonage, and a quarter or so for the data connection for 20 minutes. As an aside, it costs about $0.60 cents to call back to the US from India. Times 20, it is about $12. Savings! Savings! (I cannot wait for the EDGE/UMTS/EVDO/EVDV/Whatever to roll out world wide. I think that would be the end of distance.)"

I  use my Reliance CDMA phone primarily for its really great data services.  And i use Skype over my cellphone.  And most often, i've had pretty good clarity when talking to clients and friends in the UK and the US.

What i like about it too, is that it gives me amazing mobility - have made calls from airports, auto-rickshaws and cabs too. And i can be heard over all the din.

No charge as well - except the data charges which are fairly nominal.

You might want to try it out next time you're here Om ! 



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