[Rebel1]

You are correct sambo, until the NBN becomes a reality then goodbye Telstra. OK, maybe not goodbye Telstra if they exchange some of their current fibre for equity in the NBN.

But clearly, their service is lousy and way too expensive.

OK...so now I have the very basic of service from Telstra just to retain the copper for my ADSL. All my outgoing voice telecommunications now go VOIP.

My VOIP plan costs me $9.95 a month for which I get 100 free untimed phone calls anywhere in Oz. Ten cents per untimed call after the 100 free ones. Mobiles cost me 18cents a minute timed. I get call waiting and voice mail and mail notification to my email. I can take my laptop with me anywhere in the world and ring home for a local call fee, or free if I have remaining free calls.

Ignoring my ADSL cost which I've had for years and was on top of the Telstra account anyways, this last month of VOIP usage has cost a little less than $42.00. Every month previous the Telstra account has been around $150.00 to $170.00.

I had heard all sorts of reports of garbled speech, echoing etc., but I have experienced none of that. Certainly I had some early problems but a change of codec changed that real quick.

I still have a Telstra service and the router defaults to PSTN if there are any problems.

I love saving money on a service I don't use. I'm seriously thinking of doing the same with the business side of things.