Intertional Calling

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Everybody knows using computers to talk with MSN, QQ etc. We’ll nottalk about those methods here. Instead we talk about calls with regularphones on one side or both sides.

1. Of course, traditional way calling internationally is using calling card.
I went to Chinatown to buy calling cards when I first came here. I bought it online. We can get calling card with rates about or less than 1 cent per minute calling China.

2. Make international calls with local calling rates (or free): Talkster.com

http://www.talkster.com/

No registration, no credit cards, no catches, no limits!

With talkster, you get a local access for yourself, and an access number for your friend.
Say you want to call your friend, you call your access number which rings your friend’s phone. He/She answers the phone, then hangs up. You stays online. Your friend calls his/her access number. Then you  two will be connected, basically having a conference call.

The good thing about this method is that your friends, families in China call also you by calling their access numbers first. You answer the phone, hang up, ask them to stay online, and then calls your access number.

3. Skype Unlimited World $9.95/month

http://www.skype.com/allfeatures/subscr … nadaworld/

In particular, unlimited calls areas include:
China landlines and mobiles
USA landlines and mobiles

Make Unlimited Skype™ Calls without a Computer with Belkin’s New Desktop Internet Phone for Skype: $99

Of course you don’t need pay anything if both sides use skype.
Get a skypein phone number, you basically have a lanline phone. It costs €50 one year.

4. There’s another way which is a little bit complicated. But it’s free calling between two sides. You need pay to get sip devices like this: Linksys PAP2T-NA for both sides and connect regular phones to the devices.

Then get sip accounts for both sides, like voipuser.com, voxilla.com or freedigits.com etc. Set it on the Sip device.
Reference:

http://blog.nyworldphone.com/2008/02/06 … cked-pap2/

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In particular, Freedigits’ account is a US phone number. Basically, you and your friend in China get a free US phone number. Calling between you is free! Of course, other people in US can call you.

If you want to get local numbers, go to grandcentral.com, get numbers and forward it to your freedigits number(or GizmoProject sip account).

If you want to call other numbers in US or China, register accounts and buy credit from your favorite VOIP companies like voipdiscount.com etc, and register it on the sip device.

Basically, you get a home phone with a free US phone number, free calls between you and other people with the same setup and low rate calling to other people.

5. Another convenient way to call China is use Packet8 Mobile Talk with cell phones for 1 cent per minute to China.

6. I guess a lot of poople know iTalkBB. They offer unlimited calls to north America and China with a monthly fee $25.

7. The complicated way is to set up a free PBX asterisk which will provide the most features that you want. You can get a WRT54GS, load OpenWRT firmware and install asterisk. Then you can set up free US phone numbers (or even China number which you usually need pay) to receive calls. And you can set up calling services to call China and US.

Domestic Calling

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Usually, people get phone service from Verizon. They offer individual service and packages like including internet, TV and phone services. Time Warner Cable also offers similar services.

1. Skype Unlimited US & Canada $2.95/month

Usually, you need a computer to make skype calls. Get a phone above, you’ll make calls like regular.
Make Unlimited Skype™ Calls without a Computer with Belkin’s New Desktop Internet Phone for Skype: $99

2. People who have tmobile service, even the lowest package, want to have a cheap home phone, Tmobile-at-Home is good choice.
$10 a month for unlimited calls in north America:

http://www.t-mobileathome.com/

3. Same as international calling #4 which may be the cheapest way. You can get Linksys PAP2-NA for about $30 on ebay.
4. Same as international calling #7.

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Free areas: http://www.talkster.com/Countries.aspx 

Call with regular phone: Just get your free Talkster numbers on the homepage: http://www.talkster.com/Default.aspx.

Call with skype: http://www.talkster.com/Skype/default.htm.

Call with googletalk: http://www.gtalk2voip.com/talkster.shtml.

Free Calls and Conference Calls with all your facebook friends: http://apps.facebook.com/talkster/

It works like a conference call. You call your local number, the other person calls his/her local number. Both are charged local fees if the phone company charges.

To make a call, call the talkster number, and tell your friend to handup and call in his local talkster number. In the meantime, you wait online until your friend calls in.

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It seems magicjack is a rising star in the hot voip market.

What did they get?

1. Calling is convenient. Connect a regular phone to the magicjack, plug the magicjack into a USB port, and make calls. That’s it.

2. Cost is low: Each magicJack costs $39.95 plus shipping and handling. This gives you one year of calling to the USA and Canada. You can purchase an additional year’s service for $19.95

 

What’s the differece from USB phone?

USB phone + installed softphone = Regular phone + magicjack.

Basically, they put everything pre-installed in the magicjack. So this is no-brainer totally. Even grandma can do it.

MagicJack’s success tells us that in the voip market, if you could do a little bit more than others, you could succeed. If you check the various voip solutions partially listed in this post: http://blog.nyworldphone.com/2008/03/06/various-voip-solutions/, you would see how to make voip calls, what’s our voip future are really up to our imagination. There’s still a lot of space that we can imagine.

To me magic jack is not so much better than others.

MagicJack is simple. But if you have buy others like vonage, what you need do to make a call is just connect your regular phone to the adapter, connect the adapter to the router, and make calls. Oh right, you need a router to have both of your computer and adapter “internet accessible”, and you need plug in the power supply etc. Big deal, we like las vegas but we don’t want travel?

MagicJack is cheap. Skype is 3 bucks a month for NA unlimited and has unlimited world plan. Speaking of cheap, icall.com and some others offer free calls to US and Canada.

MagicJack is portable. So what? If you have a laptop for MagicJack calling on travel, isn’t skype more simple? Just login and make calls. You don’t even need carry a regular phone. Grandma doesn’t know how to use skpe? Does she carry a laptop to use MagicJack? Does she know how to get the internet access on travel? Actually, I would recommend her to carry a pre-configured sip phone on travel. Connect it to internet and make calls. That’s even smaller than a laptop.

MagicJack can be sent to another country. You can send a adapter too. For simpler, just send a link for skype without shipping fee.

MagicJack is small. What’s the size of skype?

MagicJack has all these features, portable, simple, cheap, small etc. Actually there’re already some dedicated skype phones, such as Linksys CIT400 Wireless IP Phone. The price is not cheap. We have to turn on our computer to use MagicJack which obvious is not a good solution for permanent household using. I would expect some sip service with similar pricing to MagicJack. I bet the pre-configured adapter would make Grandma even happier.

Even all this, MagicJack offers another solution, a new option and it’s kind of cute(see the picture above). People love to try new things.

– Alen

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Unlimited World

Unlimited calls to landlines* in 34 countries.
No long-term contract. No connection fees.

 

Unlimited calls to landlines* in

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Canada (incl. cell phones)
• China (incl. cell phones)
• Chile
• Czech Republic
• Denmark
• Estonia
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Guam
• Hong Kong (incl. cell phones)
• Hungary
• Ireland
• Italy
• Japan
• Korea, Republic of
• Luxembourg
• Malaysia
• Mexico (Mexico City)
• Mexico (Guadalajara)
• Mexico (Monterrey)
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Norway
• Poland
• Portugal
• Puerto Rico
• Singapore (incl. cell phones)
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Taiwan
• United Kingdom
• United States (incl. cell phones)

 

And there’s a special offer now - buy 3 months and only pay for 2. Ends June 1st 2008.

Skype also offers Unlimited US & Canada for $2.95.

United States (incl. cell phones)

Canada (incl. cell phones)

Unlimited Mexico for $5.95 which covers

Since betamax’s service is so bad and rates vary so much, so fast without updating website information. You might want to go for skype for international calling. But the only thing I don’t like about skype is that people have to use it with computers. People have tried to use it with asterisk. But I’m not sure how well it works.

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Fring now support windows mobile.

Here is the description from fring’s website:

fring™ is a free mobile VoIP software that lets you talk and live chat (IM) using your handset’s Internet connection instead of costly mobile airtime (GSM) minutes. fring enables free mobile calls over Wi-Fi Internet access or your GPRS, EDGE or 3G Internet data plan.

fring lets you easily communicate with all your fring, Skype®, MSN® Messenger, Google Talk™ , Twitter and regular phone contacts from one, integrated contact list. fring also supports SkypeOut and hundreds of SIP-based services such as GizmoProject, VoipCheap, VoipStunt, Free World, even from non-SIP enabled handsets, enabling cheap local and international VoIP calls to contacts’ PCs, mobile phones and landline numbers. fring is also enhanced with real-time contact availability (presence) so you can see who’s available before dialing.

Here is a post about fring.

It looks like fring’s service is unstable. But at least, fring could be used as a free sip-client for mobile. I’ll see how it goes.

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