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[tickmike]

After attempting to 'Skype' last night our daughter who is working away from home for a year, she is in rented house sharing with three others on the same course, The broadband is poor TT LLU ADSL 2 at  about 5/6Km from the exchange (the landlord is going to get them on FTTC when he is out of hospital  !).
We had to terminate the call.
Our daughter has an iPhone4 so does my wife.

If facetime was enabled on both phones over WiFi would that work any better that Skype ?, does it use less overheads ?.

[sevenlayermuddle]

Someone may know better, but I've no reason to think FaceTime would cope any better than Skype.   But if you try it and find that it does, I shall add it to the long list of things I like about Apple. 

I personally have it disabled on all my devices as I really don't like the idea of unsolicited 'callers' getting through, using just my Apple ID. 

[Dray]

I've never had an unsolicited call on my Facetime and neither has anyone else I know.

I've heard that Snapchat video calling is really bandwidth-efficient.

[sevenlayermuddle]

I've never had an unsolicited call on my Facetime and neither has anyone else I know.

A quick google for ' Facetime spam' suggests it might be a problem.

In any event I wasn't just referring to anonymous spam, but also to people who legitimately know my email.   I share email with quite a large circle of friends, family and acquaintances and I have no problem receiving email from them.  But only a chosen very few are entrusted with the closely guarded number that makes my mobile phone ring.

[Weaver]

I've never had any FaceTime spam, luckily. Don't use your real email address as your Apple ID. Use something else which is kept secret. Simple as that.

[Dray]

http://www.knowyourmobile.com/mobile-phones/23034/how-block-number-iphone-6

[sevenlayermuddle]

I've never had any FaceTime spam, luckily. Don't use your real email address as your Apple ID. Use something else which is kept secret. Simple as that.

Apple used to allow you to use anything you like as an Apple ID, eg I might have used '7LM' (but didn't, mine was much more obscure, and not an email).

Nowadays I believe, it has to be the primary email associated with the account.  ISTR that as you enable certain new iTunes / iCloud features, you may get forced to transition to email as Apple ID.   Yes, it could be a spare email,  kept relatively secret.  But  that's just hassle, and no email address remains secret for ever.   Easier for me to just disable FaceTime.

But to each his own.

[tickmike]

Just a note to say we Skype   FaceTime my daughter ok, it was not the best of connections as like Skype it looses words or video and makes a conversation difficult .

I did have to open ports on my firewall before it would work.
see
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202078

[sevenlayermuddle]

I did have to open ports on my firewall before it would work.
see
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202078

Hmm, interesting... and IMHO another reason to not use it.   But I am surprised, I thought FaceTime used similar 'defeat' endeavours as did Skype, thus bypassing firewalls.

You also have me a little bit worried.   Prior to disabling it on all our devices, and the main catalyst for disabling it,  a visitor had spontaneously demonstrated how she could call from her iPhone, and one of our iPad's started 'ringing'.  That scared me and now, heck, do I have ports forwarding that I do not know about.   

[tickmike]

 But I am surprised, I thought FaceTime used similar 'defeat' endeavours as did Skype, thus bypassing firewalls.

I use 'Smoothwall' which I have set to open only which ports I need all the others are locked down.

My wife did a test with her sister who has an iphone, I had to open out going and incoming ports before it would work, but our daughter and sister in law did not have to do anything to there routers firewalls. .