How do you make cheap overseas calls?

moneysavingexpert has a utility which allows u to find the cheapest method of calling from the line you are using and the type of call(to landline or mobile)

I use Skype as I rarely make long distance phone calls – so for usual communications I use e-mail as time differences can be ignored.

Thanks for that franjan. My Collins dictionary confirms what you say.So, ironically ” wavechange”
condemns Americanisms but in doing so uses one him/herself instead!
Sorry Patrick, but this is much more interesting than what everyone uses to call abroad.
Don’t mean to be rude but Who Cares?

Skype is great. When my son was in the Far East for a large part of one year having a video call was far better than voice only. You can also show documents for example. The bonus is that it is free. Even the chargeable calls to mobiles or landlines seem reasonable. OK, the quality could be poor at times, generally the image, but that was a minor disadvantage.

I think everyone is missing a trick here! Jenny mentions VoIP but says “…with the only restriction being that the person you are calling must also have access to broadband”. Not so!

I must stress that only a normal customer and have nothing whatever to do with the company concerned, but I am a happy Localphone user. I spend a lot of time in Spain and have both a Spanish number and a UK number from Localphone. I also have a little Linksys box which plugs into my broadband. I can then attach a normal phone and call almost anywhere in the world for 0.5p per minute. And I mean ordinary, landline phones. Calls to mobiles are typically 4 – 5p per minute.

Call quality is normally at least as good as normal BT lines though, ineveitably, on rare occasions there are some artefacts due to the broadband connection. When I move from Spain to UK and vice versa, I simply unpluig the box and plug it in again in the new location. Anyone can call either of my numbers and my phone rings! And if I go out, I can divert calls to my mobile or any other number, and just pay the diverted call cost.

To me this is a no-brainer – and sorry if that’s an Americanism!

Some interesting points have been raised in this conversation. We are lucky in this day and age to have so many forms of communication available. each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Conversations like this allow us to discuss these and make informed decisions. Thanks for some interesting reading.

Hi, on a different perspective does anyone have a view on the best quality phone line connections? I made a call to the USA last night from home using an access number service and although I could hear my contact he couldn’t hear me! I’d rather pay a bit more and know that the line would work well – so would welcome some reliable information on this aspect of calling abroad. I live out in a village and need to call abroad from home occasionally, but we only have access to BT services where I live.

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I need to ring Australia to speak to my family, I have used a network for 1p per minute, which then BT add their charge, it has gone up from 2p per minute to 12p per minute cost, I was not notified but this started last July, can any one help with this, other than Skype. I may have to use Skype.

The trouble with Skype is that, as a free service, it only works if the person at the other end is logged in to Skype. If the party at the other end isn’t logged in, you can use Skype to call their ordinary phone number at that country’s internal rates, which is often a considerable saving. But an override service is simpler. We use the one offered by OneTel (now part of TalkTalk), which is cheap and simple, but sadly that will probably have to be dumped, because the OneTel website is broken (you can’t find out what you are being charged for) and TalkTalk are refusing to do anything about it, or even acknowledge the problem. I’d be interested to hear if anyone knows of another good override service (or any way of getting OneTel to disgorge a bill, come to that).