Skype is the rage these days for many technology-savvy folks. Get free international calls when dialing from Skype user to Skype user from your computer. If you need to dial from Skype to a person in Europe who is on a regular landline, you can get rates in the range of 1.7 cents (Euro) per minute.
But have you explored international calling cards lately? I had to explore this because of some telecom issues reaching my wife in France and some of my international clients.
I had to do a triple take on some of the rates. Calling Europe can cost from 1.6 cents to 0.8 cents per minute for some calls using landline to landline calling. On top of that, some of these cards have toll-free 800/8XX numbers that people can call to initiate a call. Now 800 numbers in many cases cost the subscribing company around 25 cents per call to do the number translation from 800 to real telephone number. Now with an $10 international calling card that can do like 1250+ minutes of call time, you do the math to see whether these companies should be able to do this profitably. I mean off-the-cuff, 20 calls costs about $5 of the $10 card just to pay for the setup of the 800 call. Perhaps the prepaid card providers are profitable, but I wonder if there are either back doors or house of cards related to this (presuming that the technology to trunk the call from the United States to points of presence [POPs] internationally is IP-based). I mean someone has to pay for the underlying infrastructure IP is riding over.
Granted when you call the customer support line for some of these cards, it sounds like it is an answering machine from the 70s in someone’s basement, but heck, the call sounds perfect and of digital quality.
Anyway, compare the pre-paid international calling card rates to the $10ish/month fee that some local carriers have for making international calls plus the 8.0 cents/minute fees they are charging. Are any of these fees really outrageous fees? They are almost borderline outrageous on the low side. I feel bad for the traditional telcom customer service reps – people tell me that the reps are simply shocked when they hear about the international calling card rates being brought by pre-paid providers. The only thing the reps can do is try to cross-sell you into other service (e.g., mobile, satellite dish) when people drop their international call service.