I love these other companies trying to beat us and our suppliers, their marketing blurb is absolutely fascinating.

I know some of you out there get emails from Amanda at Fortec Communications, I know I do because the make me laugh.

Well their latest missive, if you haven't already got yours, tells how you can receive payment from them for introducing new customers which is great. Perhaps I ought to take a leaf out of their book.

There is a catch though - read this offer: "A payment of 30€ per client if you introduce up to 10 new clients to us in one month and can invoice us."

See the catch - you have to be able to invoice them - how many of you are in a position to do that - anybody? Not unless you're in business anyway.

Now here's another item that made me laugh so loud, my wife wondered what was happening. One of the Fortec websites, Satbroadbandspain, makes this claim: "The only satellite broadband supplier in Spain offering packages with  unlimited download and upload at all speeds."

This, of course, is a total untruth. The only other word I can use to describe this claim is a lie. We have been doing exactly the same for over two years so I know it's untrue.

• We have been installing Tooway Satellite Internet for over two years.
• We have been installing our voip service to Tooway customers for the same period.
• We do not make claims that cannot be substantiated and that's why we're still here after more than six years in business.

In fact, pricewise, we have seen very little that Fortec Communications can beat us on.

All the marketing emails I've had from Fortec Communications contain - how can we say this - contain exaggerated claims, such as "Fast broadband internet" running at 512K - half a Meg!?! - fast!?! - not when I last checked.

So my lesson for today is:- Don't get carried away on the euphoria of claims made in marketing emails. Check what they're saying is actually true.

Just when we thought Tooway satellite internet was going well, they throw away their feather ...... and replace it with an even bigger one to go with their bigger hat.

What the heck am I talking about?????

OK, just when we thought Tooway had some good deals out there, what do they do, throw them away and bring us some even better deals.         Yahayyyyyy

Get a load of this - 26M internet (20M down, 6M up) for ONLY .............. €29.90 a month including taxes!!!!!!!!   AND, there's no 2 year contract to contend with.

If that wasn't enough, you can even disconnect at ANY time you want then reconnect it later making this the ideal system for people with holiday homes or the globetrotters out there who have two or more homes*.

This is pay as you go satellite internet for just €29.90 a month. How good is that!?!?!  I don't know anyone else who can give you an offer that comes close.

Additionally, you can currently have your 26M satellite internet and VoIP phone service installed for a paltry €169.

Why are you still reading this, stop wasting time, click here, and get yourself connected to one of the best deals around.

* You don't have to have a holiday home for this, it's just an example - YOU can have it.

We know our VoIP service works with Tooway because 40% of our VoIP clients are using it but we cannot guarantee that other VoIP providers services will. We know Vonage refuse to sign you up if you have satellite internet so we can only assume their service doesn't work. How do we know, we've just signed up a client who was refused a Vonage account for this very reason.

All brand names and registered trade marks acknowledged.

Hello everybody.

Please be advised that we are starting to get booked up for April, so if you think your PC has a problem, or you're considering taking up one of our other services then please contact us now or we may not be able to get you sorted before we go.

You might even miss out on our FREE telephone install offer available for this month only if you don't get in now! Check our Special Offer page for more details.

Please don't leave it until the last minute and miss out.

Hello all you facebookers and Android phone lovers, this is something for you!

Facebook are about to launch their own phone based around the HTC brand.

More info here from PC Advisor!

Tooway internet keeps on getting better.

Not only has the speed barrier been broken, so has the price barrier! Tooway internet now runs at speeds of 20Meg download and 6Meg upload ANYWHERE with prices starting as low as €29.90 including taxes.

Not only that, when you get your Tooway 20M internet for just €29.90, you're not even tied in to a contract and giving you the freedom to turn it on or off at any time.

Thought Satellite internet was expensive, think again!

Click here for more information and price list.

Just a quick post to let everyone know we will not be taking calls from 5th May 2013 until 21st May 2013 inclusive as we will be on holiday. We will be open for calls again on the 22nd May.

We are having a well earned break, not having done so for over 2 years. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

We will, of course, still be monitoring our telephone networks and will be in a position to remedy any problems should there be any.

Are our friends at Microsoft trying to alienate everyone? It seems like it sometimes.

Their latest escapade involves pulling support for Asterisk. Never heard of it? Don't worry, you're not on your own.

Asterisk is the platform that the majority of voip servers run on. What does this mean for Skype users?

Well, you will still be able to Skype people, you will still be able to call telephones at over-inflated pay-as-you-go rates (substantially dearer than mine), you will still be able to send instant messages to each other. In fact, most of you will still be able to do all the stuff you've always done with Skye - even though you've never actually needed it because you've always had software on your PC that can do all that anyway. Skype simply jumped the lead by telling lies, by convincing people they were making free telephone calls that weren't actually telephone calls - they never actually used a telephone!. It is simply a messenger program just like Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger (and a multitude of others).

So how does the lack of Asterisk support affect you?

Well, there are many thousands of people out there who have been using VoIP for many years alongside their Skype setup then all of a sudden, Skype is VoIP compatible. Wahayyy, lets run everything through Skype says many of these. Lets keep everything under one umbrella and make things easy. And why not indeed. Making things easy saves money - of course it does.

Wrong! What these people forgot to remember is that we're dealing with Microsoft here. A little history lesson for newcomers to computing. Once upon a time, there was a little person called Xerox. Now Xerox designed an ingenious little gadget that we now call a mouse. Around the same time as Xerox designed this wonderful little gadget, there was another little man we now call Apple that "borrowed" Xeroxs' mouse for their equally ingenious device called a computer that had a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Then there was another little man called Microsoft who saw this GUI and "borrowed" it, called it Windows. He then paid computer manufacturers to put it on their computers. The rest is history.

So back to our little story. The nice man called Mr Microsoft decided, one day, to buy an idea called Skype, probably with the intention of creating something else because he didn't really need Skype. He only bought it because they got the jump on Mr Microsoft making his "wonderful" messenger program next to redundant and that really peed him off.

Mr Microsoft, now having taken away one source of competition, decides to go for the next; VoIP. How better to do this than make his offering compatible, entice all the VoIP/Skype users to buy in to his idea, get them to make all the investment in going Skype, then pull the plug on VoIP. Voila, a whole new captive audience.

I hadn't intended this to be a Microsoft bashing item but try as I might, I find it difficult for it not to be. If we look at the Microsoft track record in their wonderful operating system, we find a string of rubbish. Bring back DOS, nothing fancy, and it works for computers. Come to think of it, so does Unix. Which leads me into Linux (but that's a subject for another article).


All comments in this article are those of the writer and may contain unintentional errors. Some areas may be over-simplified for ease of reading. All registered names and trademarks acknowledged.

In case you've not been reading the newspapers or you've missed this wonderful piece of news I'll reiterate it here for you.

On 1st September 2012, the Spanish government will be raising the level of IVA (VAT) from its' current level of 18% up to 21%. This means that ALL electrical products and services will be subject to the new higher level of tax. OUCH!!

Unlike the UK, ALL businesses have to charge and pay IVA regardless of level of income - there are no exceptions.

Most businesses will pass on all of the increase regardless but we are looking at ways to see if we can absorb any of the rise in other areas of our operation.

We won't be able to absorb it all but we'll be keeping it to a minimum as we bit the bullet and took the full rise last time around in 2010. We found this to be a good move because we increased our business which meant we didn't notice the extra taxes we were paying which in turn meant our clients got a better deal which is what we're all about.

OK, bottom line. We cannot absorb the tax on your phone calls but as they cost so little to start with the rise will be negligible anyway, you will still have call rates starting at less than half a cent a minute. On everything else, we should be able to absorb all or some of the rise so you will find very little difference overall.

So, if you've been thinking about taking up any of our services, now is the time to take the plunge and beat the increases!

Dear ToowayDirect Customer,

Sorry for the very long email, but this is all important news so please read on! You may have read on our website that we’ve increased the speed and data allowances of our new Tooway products for new customers from July 1st. We’re delighted to inform you that from today, we are starting move our existing customers* onto the new products, seamlessly, free of charge. The monthly tariff you pay won’t change but you’ll get much more performance from your Tooway. No catch!

Essentially your Tooway connection will give you higher top ‘speeds’ and for the same monthly/annual fee you’ll be able to upload and download more data per month.

To check which tariff you’re on now, login to our Customer Portal, click ‘My products and services’ and it will show which product you’re on now and you’ll see whether your migration to the new products has taken place yet.

*N.B. Customers who signed up to the Tooway 10 and 10+ ‘Double Data’ Winter and Spring promotions won’t be automatically upgraded to the new tariffs. If you’re a customer who’s on these promotional tariffs, although the new products offer you twice your existing data allowance, and faster speeds, in theory if you go beyond your new monthly data allowance, your speed maybe slowed to a lower level than the old tariffs and therefore it’s a personal decision on whether you want to be upgraded. Up to the 1st August 2012, you can email us and discuss what you want to do, after 1st August we will be able to discuss this on the telephone with you. Customers on Tooway 10 and Tooway 10+ data promotional tariffs will not be migrated onto the new tariffs unless they confirm their desire to be migrated to the new tariffs by email.

Another positive change that’s taking place with the arrival of the new tariffs is that the old multi-level FAP (Fair Access Policy) has been has been superseded by a simpler ‘Flat Rate’ network management scheme intended to give all our users better performance through the duration of their monthly data allowance. Some satellite broadband networks will throttle you even if the network isn't that busy and the bandwidth to maintain services at full speed isn't being used by other customers. Our Tooway network won't do that. Our emphasis is on delivering you the best performance that the network can deliver within your chosen data allowance. Each customer will be allocated their chosen monthly data allowance on the day they’re first connected to the network, and then on that same date every month they remain connected to the service.

If you go over your monthly data allowance you will still be able to upgrade to the next tariff or buy a Volume Booster as before.
Of course we have to take steps to manage usage. If we don't customers can suffer from degraded or denied service when one user (or a small group of users) consumes a disproportionate amount of the network's resources. For instance during peak times, customers who are persistently very heavy users may find that non urgent traffic (like peer-to-peer networking) may be assigned a different priority level by the network to ensure other users receive a good quality service.
These changes have been made as result of customer feedback, and to ensure that Tooway remains at the technological front of alternative broadband technologies and we hope you’ll agree that these are all very positive steps forward for the Tooway service. Thank you for your on-going business.

Kind regards

The ToowayDirect Team



So there you have it, better speeds, more allowances, same money!!


What are you waiting for?


Call us now and get connected! We can have you up and running in three days with internet and phone service.

In a recent survey of businesses in the UK, it seems that something like 63% have been using voip for 3 years or more. Here is a quote from the Tan Aksoy, CEO at Telappliant.

VoIP telephony is an attractive proposition, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses as they can dramatically cut operating costs, improve workforce productivity, and enhance customer service without investing in expensive IT equipment.

“VoIP offers a genuine long term solution that is scalable and practical without taking risks – which in turn allows businesses to be more agile and responsive to customer needs,”

According to findings, the primary business drivers for switching to VoIP include the need to reduce communications costs, powering working out of the office, improving operational efficiencies, and driving customer care and call center support.

Further, almost a quarter of businesses (nearly 23 percent) are saving more than 60 percent of their annual telephony costs after beginning to leverage VoIP. .Telappliant owns one of the largest VoIP networks in the UK and has over 80,000 subscribers benefiting from its telephony services.

You heard it here first so why not give true voip a try and see how much you can save. With rates starting at less than half a cent a minute you can't go wrong.

Please remember, for voip to work you must have broadband speed internet, check if your broadband can support voip by clicking here. When the page opens just click on begin test. You need to score A, B or C otherwise you will experience problems with voip. If you get a pop up message saying java is blocked please click on the unblock button then try the test again.