This past week friends returned from their trip to France and Italy with great pictures of the Alps and nearby towns, small boxes of rich chocolates and over $600 in AT&T calling charges. 

They inquired about our unique international phone services only after they received their bill.   I showed them how an equivalent amount of calls in the future would be clearly less than $100 on proven fiber optic lines and under $50 if they wanted the more experimental  (but improving each year) VoIP options (Wi-Fi).

Here is the story ...

Racking up excessive mobile charges is easy to do if you do NOT know about alternative international mobile phone plans and allow the carriers to charge standard and exhorbitant rates. AT&T charges 99 cents a minute to use your phone in each of France and Italy. And that is if you pay for the carrier’s international calling plan. If you do not, the charge goes up to $1.29 a minute.

What my friends did not know and what you need realize is that they could have lessened those charges dramatically if they had set up their iPhone (which they had) or BlackBerry (or other) to take advantage of mobile Internet or even discount fiber optic calling services: That $1.29-a-minute charge would have gone down to a much more reasonable 2.4 cents a minute (or nothing at all if they were on a Wi-Fi network).

The Internet has been used to make calls for some time. One of the largest providers of the service, Skype, was founded in 2003 and has more than half a billion user accounts. And while many people gather around the PC to talk to far-flung friends and family, new apps and services can replicate that experience (and that savings) on cellphones.

To allow your mobile phone to be capable capable of making "cheap" international calls, you need a few things. Ideally, you need a smartphone that can access Wi-Fi - know as VoIP. VoIP (Voice over internet protocol) ensures the best call quality, since it’s carried over a high-speed Internet connection.

But if you don’t have a Wi-Fi-enabled smartphone, you still have other options. There are unique calling services that use local phone numbers or international toll free numbers rather than wireless data connections to place calls. These services dial an access number and then allow you to bypass local providers and place your call. Your call is routed over the Internet or select deep discounted carrier lines at similarly discounted rates.

Here are 4 top services -

SKYPE FOR MOBILE -- The best known as it was once owned, but later sold by EBay, is Skype. Like the program for Mac and PCs, Skype Mobile lets you make free calls and send instant messages to fellow Skype users. You can also call non-Skype landlines and cellphones using Skype Credit, a fee-based service that charges pennies per minute for international calls.

For those without iPhones or Windows Mobile devices, Skype provides its Skype Lite application. Skype Lite cannot make calls over Wi-Fi or 3G networks, but instead routes calls through a local cellphone number.

One thing to remember is that while calls made with Skype Lite are local and your carrier won’t exact a long-distance fee, you are technically making a call. So those calls will count against the minutes in your calling plan.

TRUPHONE -- Truphone, a British based comapny which works a bit differently from Skype and Fring, is available for a number of devices including the iPhone, the iPod Touch and Android, Nokia
and BlackBerry handsets. Truphone offers calling using Wi-Fi for multiple handsets. They offer Truphone Anywhere, a service similar to Skype’s Lite application that routes long-distance calls first over a local number and then via the Internet for lower rates. Like the others Truphone permits you to make free calls to other Truphone users.

Truphone actually offers a combination in that when you are outside of Wi-Fi areas you are still able to call other Truphone users and international numbers by using your phone’s own dialing capabilities. You need to buy Truphone credit.

FRING -- Fring provides an even richer experience on more phones. It supports calling over Wi-Fi and 3G on Android and Nokia devices; by the time of your reading this chances are that iPhone 3G will be available. The service allows free calling to Fring members anywhere in the world. Since you don't need a Wi-Fi connection (from a hotspot), you can make calls from virtually anywhere. Unfortunately, because 3G data networks weren’t built for packets of data as fast-moving as a cellphone call, the connections are generally weaker and might fade in and out.

Regarding desktop video-calling service - Fring has been first to apply this Skype with PC feature to mobile phones. The company recently updated its iPhone application with one-way video calling.  It is one way because the iPhone doesn’t have a camera facing the caller. You can see your caller but your caller can’t see you.

UNITED WORLD TELECOM SERVICES -- Global Call Connect,  Virtual Calling Card , Global VoIP Connect , and even UWT Mobile SIM - all possible with a single account.  This service
combines the best of all worlds and for either frequent traveler or just someone seeking to save calling from home, office or mobile, they offer substantial discounts to the major carriers worldwide.

Clearly, making a choice about which service to use to reduce the cost of international calling will depend heavily on what cellphone you have and whether you have easy access to a Wi-Fi network.  It will also depend on whether or not you wish to include calling from non-mobile phones as part of your service.  But no matter which option you select, you will definitely save serious money.

AT&T may have heavily charged my friends parents one time for their globetrotting calling habits, but with their new found knowledge about the services of the new millenium, it will not happen in the future.

Joseph Horton
jh@namada.com
http://namada.com
Unique US and International Calling Plans