At 21 Feb 2008 15:36:46 -0800 Joel Koltner wrote:
> The main downside of this approach is that I wouldn't trust Voicestick --
or
> any of the other "consumer" grade VoIP providers -- to not occasionally
garble
> and drop calls. Granted, the same thing can happen with regular cell
calls,
> although there it's due to getting in a bad area that the cell tower
can't
> hear well, whereas with VoIP you're at the mercy of what the Internet in
> general is up to and may lose calls with no warning whatsoever.
>
> So... fine for calling home or friends or whatever, not acceptable for
> business users, in my opinion.

Perhaps, but many businesses use VoIP themselves these days (but under
ideal balanced network conditions vs. those at home) and, using the
Voicestick "bridge" as Steven described is only "semi-VoIP," like using a
cheap calling card these days. It's a cell call from you to their system,
VoIP from their system to the terminating phone company (hopefully, again,
under better conditions than a home broadband connection!)

It's worked well for me when I've used it for international calls.