Hotspots and VOIP
I'm feeling relatively pleased with myself. I'm still in New Zealand and over my jetlag (I have a tried and tested formula, part of which involves getting sunlight onto the back of my knees, and gets me onto the correct timezone within a day of arrival). I've visited the hotspots of the North Island (no, not what you're thinking Glenn), have found a few wireless hotspots to catch up with email, and here on the 18th floor of the hotel, Vista is besieged by unsecured wireless routers asking me to connect. Well, it would be foolish not to accept their offer wouldn't it? I've got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about hotels. I can't understand why really pricey hotels think that they need to earn more revenue by charging exorbitant fees for broadband on top of the room rate. Scandalous. So I'm riding on someone's Dlink wave instead...
Now I've been running with VOIP for a few weeks now, and I'm traveling with my little headset instead of bringing over my Catalina or anything bulky. And here's where VOIP comes into it's own. I connect to Mr Dlink (for free thank you), fire up OCS 2007 client (SIP over HTTP, no VPN), call my husband. The call is routed over the Internet to the PBX in the UK (It knows to go through to the UK as I put the country code +44 into the number). So the final part of the call was dialed from the PBX in the UK saving shedloads of cash each time I make a call from overseas. My manager will be pleased when the monthly bill for mobile phones come in (he normally gasps in horror when he gets to my line item as I'm so chatty...)
The person who was most impressed though with this setup was my mate Brett who was most impressed when I called him from Hong Kong's free Wifi and VOIP the other day. As Brett tends to talk to others in the UK (as I do) he was most pleased that I'd bothered to call him and kept asking me to plug my webcam into my laptop so we could video chat. I politely refused. Well after a 12 hour overnight flight with my hairbrush in my checked baggage and my sleeping tracksuit on, I thought it was best that no one I knew could see me. I might have ended up as one of the VOIP captures on Ewan's blog.
Perish the thought...
