Should I use Skype and it's dedicated phone to call abroad?

Hello you all.

I live in Israel and the calling rates to abroad are not very high but I still have to pay something like 60$* per month (I talk a lot as you can see).

I think about using Skype and it's dedicated phone "General Electric GE21878" to call abroad.

This phone is a wireless phone which uses my Skype account to make the calls.

My first question is if this method worth buying the phone (In Israel costs 70$*) and getting the Skype credit for 14$* per month?

My second question is if it is safe? from the aspect of eavesdropping, and people connecting to my network through this phone system.

Thank you!

* According to the currency rates of May 30th 2009

It might be worth a try, depending on if your ISP does any throttling (which likely depends on if they offer their own VOIP service). Here in the Washington DC area, I have Comcast and they have their own dedicated VOIP servers, connected at a higher cable band than the standard ISP service, and according to some of the freebie VOIP quality tests that I have tried, Comcast does throttle or delay packets so that the resulting speech might be too choppy to be acceptable. I'm probably going to try it for a month anyway and see how it is, since my wife calls to Vietnam about $70 a month regularly .

(Starting 21-sep-2009) It's possible to pay local rates to international destinations from Israel.

You may call the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France and many more and save up to 70% on international calls made from your cellular.

Cheers,
Israel Communication News Team.

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