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Globe Duo alternatives?

Discussion in 'Money Matters' started by Bod Voc, Jun 11, 2018.

  1. Bod Voc
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    Bod Voc New Member

    Hi All,

    Up until about a month ago, my wife and I used a Globe Duo call card costing £7.50 a month for unlimited calls /texts to one Philippians phone number from the UK. But Globe has now killed off that option :(

    We cannot use Viber, Whatsapp or similar apps, due to the lack of, or poor speed of WiFi where my wife's family lives, and I was wondering IF anyone had any ideas of a cheap way (like the old Globe Duo call cards) of phoning the Philippians from a UK Mobile or landline?

    Thanks in advance

    Bodders
  2. Maley
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    Maley Well-Known Member

    Have her family connect to wifi- thats the cheapest and most reliable option. She can then call them using a celfone via facebook messenger.

    My dad stays in the farm (altough near the main road) and he still manage to get a wifi connection (not sure if its globe or smart).
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  3. Bod Voc
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    Bod Voc New Member

    Thanks Maley,

    But at the mo, the WiFi in my wife's parent area is close to useless, due to the mountains there. We've tried both Smart and Globe with the same problems, and whether we use Facetime, FB Messenger, Viber or Whatsapp, the result is the same, especially on video call.

    Sometime in 2020 there will be fibre broadband installed in the area, but that's still a long way off. Even the mobile phone signal is iffy at times.

    The Globe Duo Call Card was great, £7.50 a month, you phone a UK number first and that is linked to one PH number, mobile or landline.

    Cheers Bodders
  4. DavidAlma
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    DavidAlma Well-Known Member

    When you talk of WiFi I think you mean cellular data. If the cellular signal is poor then the data will also be affected.
    • Agree Agree x 1
  5. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Yes he seems to be confusing mobile data (long range) with WiFi which is a short range service designed to share a fixed broadband line in the home, the only other possibility is that he means a WiMax service Globe apparently has a service, but plans to migrate it to LTE i.e. cellular data.
  6. Bod Voc
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    Bod Voc New Member

    Thanks for you input guys..

    OK, so I am not a telecommunications expert.. LoL .... Wi-Fi / Mobile Data is all double Dutch to me .. :p

    But what I am still looking for is some other version of what was the old Globe Duo Call Card.. There must be other versions of it out there, where you can buy unlimited minutes to one phone number for a fixed price. It doesn't have to be video calls, as we cannot use that at the moment, due to, as I have already said, low connection speeds on whatever connection it uses where my wife's parents live.

    Viber, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger etc., are no use to us ... It just a pre-paid unlimited/limited minutes call card we need.

    Thank you all again for your thoughts in advance.

    Cheers Bodders
  7. Dave_E
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    Dave_E Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    I thought that all low cost telephone calls, Globe Duo etc, are routed the same way as Skype calls, using VoIP protocol?
  8. Bod Voc
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    Bod Voc New Member

    Evidently not, Dave_E... Though I suspect, Globe Duo did use VoIP (or similar protocol) to redirect your phone call from the UK number you have to dial, to the number you have assigned to it(?) I can think of no other way you could get unlimited minutes for just £7.50 a month ??

    Lycra do a similar Call Card, for £15.00 per month, but that to is being phased out in the next few months... :(
  9. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Local calls from the UK to far flung countries go through a SIP gateway and thus they are all VoIP, whether it originates from a landline or mobile in the UK it is still going through a gateway, at the remote end it exits the IP network via another gateway to get back on to the local digital or analogue network.

    Skype had its own private protocol originally but I think during Microsoft's prolonged and detailed project to destroy the 8 billion dollar odd worth of investment it made in Skype that they eventually made it SIP compliant.

    Skype is a travesty of what it once was, in the beginning it was a fully distributed peer to peer network of nodes with a smattering of super-nodes until Microsoft decided that it was better to make all the traffic go through their own dedicated infrastructure thus removing all the resilience of the distributed network and creating new single points of failure namely Microsoft's servers. And the UI is a joke these days compared to the quite elegant UI of the past.

    It is tragic as they (Microsoft) get so much right and at the same time then go ahead and screw up so many things.
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  10. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Cellular voice requirements are much lower than data, voice only needs a couple of kilohertz at the bottom end, but yes if you are at the bottom end of voice you will damn lucky to get even GPRS data and I have not yet seen a modern website that will deliver its content properly over a GPRS connection, even slowly, they all time out these days.

    What I am getting at is that voice could still work in some areas where data would not stand a hope in hell.
  11. Anon04576
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    Anon04576 Well-Known Member

    Skype in its peer to peer state did actually have a massive failure as I recollect due to there not being enough super nodes.
  12. Jim
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    Jim Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Just got Fiber installed, very pleased indeed, opted for 20MBPS getting 20 mbps. Cost 1899 pesos.

    The 50 MBPS cost, think it's 35oo with 6 months half price for both plans.
    Now I can stream BBC Iplayer without buffering.
  13. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Yeah it did, a couple of times it was due to what is called emergent behaviour, in large connected networks they can take on a life of their own sometimes and throw a hissy fit :D

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