Talk4Free Europa - telephone service from Alice

All Alice custmers may be interested to know, that for an extra flat rate of €19.90 a month , you can call any landline in Europe (incl Germany) for as long as you like, unlimited ...read more here:

ALICE Talk4Free Europa

I've just signed up...sounds great

if u are really like telephone chatting or doing some business relying on often calls, it is really attractive!

That's a lot of calls. At an average of 1.5cents/minute normal price to most places in Europe, you'd need to spend at least 1,326 minutes (22 hours) every month on the phone before it got cheaper. Of course, if you go on 2 weeks vacation then you need to make 44 hours in the remaining two weeks ot make it worthwhile. Go on vacation for a month and you just lost €19.95! It's no use for calls to mobiles either.

Actaully when you break down like that into 22 hours, it doesn't sound as attractive, but still I would easily use up 22 hours, even in 2 weeks. It's about 43 mins on avg per day. Plus you won't get any surprisingly high bills or have to use call by call services (which u can't if you are an Alice customer). Will test it for a couple of months and then decide if it pays off. Will post an update of experience.

Warning: If you get Alice, you CAN'T use the 01026, 01081, 010031 etc found on Billiger - Telefonieren, period.

A guy just came to my door and told me about their latest packages including the Talk for Free Europa. Sure, that is a great deal if you never call the States, but I never call anywhere in Europe and I only call the States. I asked this salesman specifically about it and he suggested phone cards for calls to the US.

So even if I got Alice DSL and didn't include their Talk4Free Europa package, I still couldn't use the 01026 numbers.

Think I will stay with T-Online.
-p

Now that is the most blatant dishonesty that I have ever heard!

Oh, and they have this thing called Ping_Express for 1,90 more a month that online gamers would be interested in. The delay between your mouse clicks/keyboard input is reduced to 10 milliseconds - which is great for those who want to improve their online play.

Hi! I've just contracted the Alice service for DSL and Talk4free. My question is: Do I have to dial special prefix before calling? I'm afraid of calling thinking it will be free and being charged at the end!

Many thanks.

Did you ask Alice?

There's no special dialing instructions for using it. Just dial.

Also of note, the program now costs only €14.90 and INCLUDES Europa, USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, China and a number of other countries.

Great deal now.

I have to say Im very sceptical about these broadband offers and claims at the moment. I prefer to "wait and see" before signing up for these alternative Anbieter. Give them time for their product to mature and iron out all the bugs.

Otherwise you find yourself acting as the Test guinea pig for their new not yet fully ripened service, ending up plagued with problems, "issues" and the like. Spending ages calling "Technical Dienst" and "Kunden Dienst" etc etc. In the UK, NTL is notorious for this. See the unofficial NTL users forum at http://www.ntlhell.co.uk (especially the "Rants and Raves" section for a good laugh) and a good example of the horror in store in a lot of cases!

I'm starting to sound like an Alice salesman, but fact is they have been around for quite awhile. They relatively recently adopted the Alice name, being previously known as Hansenet. They are at least as reliable as any alternative.

If you want friendly, helpful customer service, even in English and via a totally free 0800 number, then go with Alice.

I don't know about the Ping service. Sounds a little strange and I don't understand how they can pick and choose who gets superfast response times and why they don't do the same for everyone. But, if it works it seems pretty cheap.

Its a pretty shit deal compared to www.voipcheap.com. I can call all these countries and more for free using my normal telephone through a fritz box which you can get for about 50 euros. If you dont' have one of these you can just use the call back service on the website.


I don't understand your point. If you're worried about signing up with an ISP because you'll be under a 24 month contract, then you have no worries with Alice because there is no contract and you can cancel at a months notice. I've had Alice for 5 months now and they are freaking excellent. Like Freiheit says, they even have a free call support line. No one has these these days, people like freenet charge you a fortune for support. I sometimes sound like a Alice salesperson too, but its just because they are so damn good.

VOIP will always be cheaper than "normal" calling service. For me, it's important to have a phone number that works independently of my internet service. One, I don't like having to worry about call quality being affected by internet activity (does fritz prioritize the voip traffic?). Two, if the internet service has an outage or I have technical issues, I don't want to lose phone service or miss phone calls.

Also, it's hard to be too much cheaper than €15/mo for unlimited calling. Either way, you still have the internet cost.

A VoIP number is an additional number and therefore independant of phone internet and location
Id does, so this is not an issue
Phone services have outages too, and then you DO loose calls, Most VoIP services branch off to a mailbox if there is no adapter online, and if you do loose service you simply move the adapter to another internet-available location such as your neighbo(u)r while it is restored.
That's about three times as much as I effectively pay. The Internet cost is there anyway (I'd have it without phone) and is fixed.

Sounds too good to be true. You seriously pay about €5/mo for unlimited calling and that includes all taxes & costs, even the phone number itself? How much was the necessary equipment? I guess this runs independent of your computer? And call quality is just as good?

Check out www.voipcheap.com like I said. You can call fixed lines in almost any first world country for free, so its not even 5 euros a month. There is a limit of 5 hours per week I think, after that it is 1c per minute. Mobile rates do cost but they are very cheap. I call the UK for 6c per minute.

My friend got a wireless Fritz box router on eBay the other day for 80 euros. This is one of the top models though, you can get the Fritzbox Fon (I think that is what its called) for less. This makes it independent from the computer.

The call quality is just as good as a normal phone. You can be sure that Alice is routing your call over the internet in any case with this 15 euro deal.

I discovered this a few months ago after YL6 suggested I set it up. It really is amazing.

Thanks! I will try it right today... For me it's a good deal since my company is paying the DSL connection with this talk4free option included. And it's more convenient than other system

Hutcho answered most of your questions. Fritz integrates the VoIP services into the normal phone system so from the user point of view there is no special equipment. I also have incoming numbers around the world (US, UK, France, Italy, etc.,) so friends in those countries can call me at cheaper local or national rates

Thanks, I'll definitely take another look at their website.