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Callserve
enables telephone calls from your PC over the Internet
to anywhere in the World at the most competitive rates
available. Home users can save up to 85% on long distance
calls. Just download Callserve's free Internet Telephone
and follow the simple on-screen instructions.
With Callserve, you dial
numbers exactly as you would from a UK-based cellphone,
including the international dialling code from the UK
when needed. Most UK users will find it convenient to
use the dialling codes they're familiar with, especially
since the US services tend to assume you will use the
US codes.
When the Callserve software
loads, it puts a replica of a mobile phone on-screen,
and you dial by clicking on the numbers -- inconveniently,
it doesn't seem to accept keyboard input. Callserve doesn't
offer you the option of storing your PIN on disk, unlike
Net2Phone. There are a couple of extra 'keys' you won't
find on an ordinary mobile phone. One, bearing a '$' sign,
takes you to the Web pages where you can add funds to
your account. The other, adorned with a small 'i', accesses
the online help pages. The latter are pretty good as these
things go, but would be improved by better indexing and
internal linking.
Our testing with Callserve
went reasonably smoothly, although the sound quality suffered
because the service won't work over BT's NAT-based ADSL
service. This isn't peculiar to Callserve: the communications
standard supported by Callserve and the other services
reviewed here, H.323, requires a number of ports to be
open on the user's computer. BT's NAT (Network Address
Translation) protection closes these off, and there is
no way for an individual user to open them.
This may be good security,
but it means that if people want to use popular services
like Internet phones or video conferencing, they'll need
to get the non-NAT service and install their own firewall.
Although this might seem shortsighted on BT's part, there's
no compelling reason for it to support a technology that,
after all, enables competition with its core telephone
call business.
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