cheap phone calls

[paul62tiger]

This may be handy. Seems like the best place to put it as it may help with converstional chinese.

Here's a way to call asian countries cheap from your mobile.

Includes Malaysia, China and HK

http://www.firstnumber.co.uk/countriesrates2.asp?Destination=S

From Voda costs 35p/min so if you have stop the clock that means 1 hours costs £1.05.

The call is available in your free airtime.

Check other network charges.

call 077 44 939 700

wait for voice promp (don't have wait for full message)

dial the overseas number and talk.

Happy chatting

[mr.stinky]

sam's club/walmart sells AT&T calling cards with 3-1/2 cents/minute domestic long-

distance calling. overseas to china, the rate is doubled to 7 cents/minute. no

connection fee from a home phone, 75-cent fee from a pay phone. cards can be

recharged with a credit card over the phone.

cell phone calls are prohibitively expensive, $1.50/minute with t-mobile. but if you use

the AT&T card and their 800-number you still get the 7-cent rate. you will still be charged

the domestic per minute fee for the cell phone service, unless you have a xxx minutes

package, or free nights/weekends.

so until the cell phone company gets wise to this, calls from 7-10pm sunday evening will

reach china monday before lunch.

[skylee]

Any tips on how to cut the roaming costs?

[mr.stinky]

yes, don't pay roaming. t-mobile has a plan with 600 minutes per month with

no roaming anywhere in the usa. unlimited nights and weekends. cost is $40/month,

about $48 with taxes and fees. phone was free, but had to sign a one-year contract

with a $200 early cancel penalty. gotta watch the minutes tho, i learned the hard way.

anything over 600 minutes outside of the free time is 40 cents/min. last months bill

was $150. of course, i was travelling on a job contract, and handling the sale of my

house via phone and fax....but still, that was a shock. i'll be more careful in future.

[trusmis]

I personally use Skype .

It's pretty cheap: 2c/min to call to several countries , including china, USA, and most places in Europe. The sound quality is very good. From time to time the sound fades off but the most of the time is far better than traditional phone (when I call to other PC) or as good as a phone otherwise.

Also, I can use my mobile phone if I'm near my house to make those calls but I haven't tried it though.

[spencer4554]

We use onesuite.com. They are really cheap and we use them for all long distance. $20 seems to last us a couple months, and thats quite a lot of calls to china (2.2c) and domestic long distance. My wife found them, and im pretty satisified

Paul

[phbriggs]

Apart from using a netphone, if you have friends or family in Australia that want to keep in touch, have a look at www.ozprepaidcards.com.au