Free Global Calls

You can knock the cost of long-distance dialing completely out of your budget.

By Ronaleen Roha

From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, April 2005

A few years ago, making phone calls from one computer to another over the Internet was mainly for the hearty few. Quality was spotty, with choppy speech and long lags in conversations. Sure it was free, but you were getting what you paid for. No wonder so few of us donned headsets to call Mom in Omaha or Natasha in Moscow.

Well, it's time to plug in the headset again. Making calls -- absolutely free calls -- from computer to computer is not just for geeks anymore, thanks to improved technology, the spread of broadband connections and free Internet telephony services, such as Skype, Free World Dialup and Babble.

Of these, the most friendly by far is Skype. Anyone with a PC (with Windows 2000 or XP, or Linux), a Mac (using OS X v.10.3 or higher) or a Pocket PC 2003 can make free calls to any Skype user anywhere in the world. According to the company, that includes 25 million people, and the number is growing by about 140,000 every day.

The savings can be substantial, especially on international calls. Kristin Oland of Washington, D.C., estimates that she saves several hundred dollars each month on personal calls to friends in Belgium and Russia and on business calls to Russia and Houston, where her employer, the translation company TechTrans International, has offices. "Using Skype has become second nature," she says. "The fidelity is excellent. It's far better to use Skype to call Russia than to use a land line." She used the service to stay in touch with her boyfriend when he was in Africa. "You can use Skype anywhere there is an Internet connection," she says.

To use the service, simply download free software from the company's Web site and choose a name and password. To make a call, highlight a name from your contact list and click on a phone-receiver icon on your computer screen. You'll hear a ringing sound, and when the other person clicks on the receiver icon on his or her screen, you're connected. Calls go through quickly and easily, though on rare occasions it takes a couple of tries.

Skype offers conference calls for up to five participants anywhere around the globe and, if you'd rather communicate onscreen, there's an instant-messenger service and online chat mode.

Skype is similar to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) carriers, such as Vonage and Packet 8 (see "Cheaper Chats," March), but Skype calls stick to the Internet and never use regular phone lines. (Skype does offer a pay service, called SkypeOut, which lets you call any regular phone number in the world from your computer.)

Oland has broadband Internet service at work and at home, which is recommended by Skype (it's required for Free World Dialup). In our experience with broadband, Skype calls often sounded better than phone-to-phone calls. Even with dial-up Internet, Skype call quality was generally very good; occasionally, voices broke up a bit, but it was easy to start the call over.

For best call quality, don't skimp by using the microphone that came with (or is built into) your computer. For $20 or less, you can get a headset, such as the Radio Shack stereo multimedia headset or the Plantronics.Audio 20 monaural headset. Want to roam while you talk? Cardo's scala-500 headset ($80 list, as low as $40 online) works with most Bluetooth-enabled computers and lets you move 30 or so feet away. If you prefer the security of an old-fashioned handset, the CyberPhone-K, designed for Skype by VoIPVoice, plugs into a USB port on your computer ($60, including mail-order shipping, through the Skype Web-site store).

--Research: Elizabeth Kountze

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