In order to take advantage of the full capabilties of the Fritz!Box Fon it requires to be connected to the ADSL socket of your ADSL filter as well as to the filter's phone socket. By doing so regular phones, connected directly to the Fritz!Box Fon, become "hybrid" - that means you are able of placing and receiving phone calls through VoIP and also through the regular landline. So you can e.g. place cheap outgoing calls through VoIP while still being reachable on your landline number with the sam (read the entire post)...

ADSL2+ standardized by the ITU as "G.992.5" is the further development of ADSL, the most used broadband technology in the world enabling high speed data transmissions through the copper wires of a telephone network.

ADSL2+ reaches a maximum bandwidth of 25 MBit/s downstream and 1 MBit/s upstream, whereas current ADSL delivers a maximum downstream of 8 MBit/s only and an upstream of 1 MBit/s, too. This triplication of speed was realized by doubling the used frequency spectrum from form (read the entire post)...

New Zealand is the only OECD member with only two nation-wide mobile networks available and the only chance for a third entrant to the mobile market faded with Telstra's recent drawback from their plan to build up a UMTS-network. Even former communist countries like the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia have 3-4 mobile operators in their countries.

So what's the problem in New Zealand?

First of all the NZ regulator failed to issue a third license on time. (read the entire post)...

With increasing density of WiFi networks we're facing more and more WiFi networks popping up in our neighbourhoods, which may impact performance on your WiFi network, if frequencies interfere.

To scan your neighbourhood for active WiFi networks use "Netstumbler", an easy-to-use WiFi scanner for Windows. After starting Netstumbler will show you all discovered networks inlcuding the used channels.

Two WiFi networks operating on the same channel are forced to share bandwidth, (read the entire post)...

NZ seems to have very modest broadband capacity to overseas.

From what I measured on an Xnet ADSL line in Christchurch one can't reach Europe in less than 350 ms round-trip time (London's exchange point linx in 350 ms, and Frankfurt's decix in 400 ms) and even connections to North America take quite a while (New York's NYIIX in 290 ms and Los Angeles' LAIIX in 210 ms) and these values aren't noticeably better with other NZ ISPs.

This lag becomes prob (read the entire post)...

Perhaps on of the cheapest VoIP providers in the world is Betamax. They run more than a dozen brands offering VoIP service, which vary in tariffs, amount of "freedays" and some features:

justvoip.com lowratevoip.com netappel.fr poivy.com sipdiscount.com smsdiscount.com sparvoip.de voipbuster.com voipbusterpro.com voipcheap.co.uk voipcheap.com voipdiscount.com voipstunt.com webcalldirect.com voicetrading.com

Except from justvoip.com they are all run by SIP-protocol and so c (read the entire post)...

In order to run a regular telephone line (also called PSTN) and ADSL simultaneously without interferences allthough using the same pair of copper wires, these two services must operate on different frequencies. Therefore ADSL-filters must be installed on all phone jacks after subscribing to ADSL - these tiny boxes separate the frequencies used by the telephone signal from those used by the ADSL signal.

In the scheme below the spectrum from 0-4 kHz would be used for the telephone servi (read the entire post)...

Fritz!Box Fon is a product family of devices, combining ADSL-modem, broadband router and VoIP-capable PBX (private branch exchange) in a handy box, produced by Germany's leading supplier of ADSL-hardware, Berlin-based AVM. The Fritz!Box Fon is based on the Fritz!Box - without "Fon" - which doesn't provide any VoIP-capability.

The Fritz!Box Fon comes in about a dozen versions (overview of versions), which mainly differ in connectivity and are partly discontinued. Except for the (read the entire post)...