Im not really sure what Im looking for with this post, other than perhaps people to confirm what Im thinking is correct. Ive read the VOIP forum back through the last 12 months and have a reasonable idea of what I want to do and I guess the purpost of this thread is to put it into writting for my own piece of mind and for some confirmation that Im on the right track :)


I currently have the Telstra triple pack, phone, digital tv with 40Gb @10Mb. Im more than happy with the cable stability and speed although I wouldnt say no to a higher cap! I am however very dissapointed with picture quality of the digital tv and frustrated at paying so much for a phone line that we rarely use, so here is my plan.


I only have the digital tv to watch the English football and nothing else. The season is almost at an end so I dont need it for a couple of months but to drop the tv from my package doesnt actually save me all that much, so I plan to ditch the phone line aswell.


I already have an HTPC doing everything I want tv-wise and have used Skype (with a DualPhone) for most national and all international calls for a few years now. Whilst the cost factor can outweigh the WAF factor for international calls, the poor national call quality doesnt cut the mustard according to my wife. I never use it so I cant really comment but we all know how important WAF is !


So I have a few questions for anyone who has been in my position or can offer some advice.


I want to go fully VOIP, obviously Im already using Skype and I have read up on the SkypeIn service which seems to do everything I would want it to do. However Ive also read plenty on here about 2Talk and their 2Talk500 package does seem to fit my requirements very well.


So what would peoples thoughts be on SkypeIn vs 2Talk500?


Am I right in thinking that the 2Talk package is more of a phone replacement whereas SkypeIn requires my HTPC to be on 24x7? SkypeIn is cheaper on a monthly basis but were only talking a couple of dollars a month and thats not enough to me to keep a machine running 24x7 (however I do have an ftp server in the garage thats on 24x7).


An added incentive would be to port my number to 2Talk and Ive heard the odd horror story of people who have tried this but ended up losing their number because they didnt do things in the correct order. Of course plenty of people have no trouble at all so Id like to know from experience whats the best way of doing it from my situation. Ditching the tv is easy, so do I then port the phone and in that process will Telstra revert me solely to their Internet plan?


Ive also read about the PAP2T device and just to clarify I could plug this into my cable router and not worry about having a pc on?


Ive just found a great thread from last year that pretty much confirms everything Ive asked about above, apart from the order to do things :)


One more question, will I need to purchase any more hardware, or theortically I could do everything using my current setup? I assume the best thing to do would be to get the 2Talk free package setup (using the dualphone which I assume is possible) and try that for a few weeks before making a commitment. That would give me an 028 number which I assume I would keep when moving to a 2Talk500 package and would become redundant should I port my current number.


Im just reading even further back in this forum and finding more about xnet. Is that something worth considering aswell? It seems that every thread I look at now is a toss up between xnet and 2Talk !


Any advice is greatfully appreciated and would love to hear if there is anything I should perhaps consider as well. Im just looking to save a bit of money and replace a landline with a more '21st century' approach.


Cheers
Martyn