How Do You Make International Calls?

Futurepower(R) asks: "How do Slashdot readers make international calls? I know about OneSuite, Vonage, Skype, and iConnectHere. I know that BigZoo is quitting business. What other telephone, VOIP, or other kinds of services are available? Is there any open source VOIP software that can connect directly through port 80, bypassing firewalls?"

Comments

Re:I use www.mywdt.com

[guyfromindia]

mywdt is expensive to call countries like India. I use Reliance --> http://www.relianceindiacall.com/

cheap international

[jonsmirl]

I find it hard to beat phone cards. www.uniontelecard.com has good selection. Pay a little more and get the ones from IDT. Their connections are much better than Entel. IDT phone cards are 1/10th the price of Verizon for calling South Africa and 1/3 Vonage direct dial. You can use phone cards from your cell phone and VOIP phones too.

A pain

[MasTRE]

I have a lot of friends and family scattered around Europe that I keep in touch with. I know the calling abroad game as I've been doing it for decades. It is still a royal pain in the arse.

Before VoIP, your only choice other than paying your regular LD provider a ton of money per minute was a calling card. These things are very problematic and inconvenient to use. First, you have to choose one that appears to have good rates to where you are calling. Then you have to read the fine print to see if they charge a connection fee, a maintenance fee, and so on. Usually, what appears to be a good deal isn't, unless you use up the whole amount in one call, or very few long calls. Then, after you find one that appears to be good overall, there's the difficulty of actually placing the call. Sometimes it's hard to very hard to get through, and it's a pain in the ass to keep calling their number, enter your pin, then dial the number. Some/most of these only allow a set number of attempts per call, so you have to keep calling back every X failed attempts. During peak usage of their network, like during the holidays, this becomes a huge problem. Then, if you get through, during peak usage call quality is fair at best, as they lower the bitrate to accommodate a larger volume of calls.

Some providers allow you to sign up. It works the same as a calling card with but you are billed monthly. Sometimes they can read your home phone # so you don't have to enter a PIN every time you call. More convenient, but still inconvenient to use and annoying when you can't get through.

Then there's pure VoIP, like Skype. Very convenient. No more wasting time finger-dialing 30-digit sequences of numbers. Add them to your address book then simply select & click call. Problems: very expensive (compared to the rates offered by calling cards) and sometimes you still can't get through.

The adage of "what appears to be a good usually isn't upon closer inspection" applies here too. Skype, for example, boasts ~0.02/min to Western Europe. Yeah, if you call a land line. But it's pretty much a rule - when you call Europe, you'll be calling a mobile phone. I have friends who don't even have land lines. And the price for calling mobile numbers is much higher. And _not_ competitive with what the calling cards offer.

So, it's pretty much a mess. I refrain from calling, as most of my friends have email and we keep in touch on a weekly basis. Add IM into the mix and you've got even less of a need for calling. Then some of them have broadband and headsets, so we can place calls for free over the net. The problem with this is that we must both be in a certain place at a certain time. When the planets align just right, it happens :)

For emergency use, I purchased 10 of SkypeOut credit which I use when I need to call someone and express my love toward them I can't deal with the calling cards any longer, and I'm willing to pay a premium price for this advantage for my limited use. If I'd be a heavy user, I'd probably use the cheapest service that worked, tho.