Cheap phone calls in UK and abroad

If like me you pay BT the cheapest tariff they have, you don't get anything extra, except the free weekend calls. I recently found a service which charges a connection fee of 5p and 0p per minute indefinitely within the UK. The best bit is you can ring a Spanish landline for only 1p per minute at any time of the day . They are what is known as a Carrier Pre Selection company which means you have to remember to dial an access number before the telephone number, but hey, what a small price to pay. The company is www.18185.co.uk and I have no affiliation with them except to be a customer.

Mark

When we were in the UK we used Talk Talk International for Landline and Internet, which included FREE UK calls.to 01 and 02 numbers for up to 69 mins, FREE calls to 30 International countries, which included Spain, again for up to 69 mins and FREE Broadband Internet.

Total cost per month was £21.49 which was £19.99 for the Landline and £1.50 for the International calls.

We could phone Spain for 69 mins and not get charged a penny, then hang up and call again.

Both sound pretty reasonable.

But do you want to make FREE calls to the UK and Spain?

Oh, you do!

I have been using a VOIP company called Freecall (http://www.freecall.com/en/index.html) for a number of years and put many ex-pats onto it.

It is similar to Skype in that you have to have "credit" to make calls. There the similarity ends.

You can make FREE PC to landline calls to the UK, Spain, USA,, Australia and many more provided you have your account in credit.

The "free" period lasts 90 days from your last "top up".

You will still use up your credit on calls to UK mobiles.... 12c a minute,  SMS... 48c .

Spain mobiles.. 10c per minute,   SMS... 65c

Of course, like Skype, you can make free PC to PC using Freecall.

Hope this helps a few of you out.

Crikey, it gets better

Mark

Sounds good to me! Where can we buy headsets and how much do they cost?  Also, what is the minimum amount of credit that you need to buy every 90 days?

Thanks.

Sue

I believe that the minimum credit you need to buy is €15.

Headsets are like anything else.... you get what you pay for.

At the moment I use a Skype phone but I  keep looking out for a decent headset.

The Skype phone can be configured, quite easily, to be used with Freecall.

However a good headset is much better than a Skype phone.

The last head set I bout wqas around €20.  You get what you pay for, like I said.

Thanks for your reply.  At the moment I may stick to "chatting" via facebook!  However I will keep my eyes open for decent headsets - please post if you do find some.

Sue

I've used these for past couple of years, we regularly call Spain and Ireland and each costs 1p per minute to landline, with 4p connection charge. www.1899.com

Cost-wise although most VOIP offerings look attractive, the fact is unless you shell out for additional hardware the call quality or comfort is usually compromised. If my wife rings her mother in Ireland and chats for an half an hour then 34p isn't really going to break the bank. Having said that, if 2 people are both of the type to sit at a PC screen with headsets on then by all means go for it.

With Freecall you can redirect the call to your house phone for a 5c connection fee, no further charge other than Freecall rates for the call you are making.

This is a trickier question.  As we are renting an apartment here until ours is completed and we don't have a landline in it, plus we have already given up the landline on the flat we are trying to sell in London, I will need to use a mobile phone to call the UK next week.  John has to go back to London to sort out finance for our new house, and I would like to speak to him while he is away as cheaply as possible!  We both have Spanish and UK PAYG phones with Vodafone, so has anybody any experience of cost and any recommendations?  Should John use his UK mobile and call me on my Spanish number and vice versa?  Any advice would be appreciated!

Many thanks.

Sue

We use Vonage VOIP. It costs  £10pm and just about all calls are free after that, certainly th eplaces we want to call, Europe & US.  We use a normal phone so no need for headsets. I think there may be an initial charge of around £20 (?)  for the router. Cal quality is fine.

The system I use allows non BT customers to use their network. With a mobile phone, you will ring a geographic number which comes out of contract inclusive minutes. You can then pay 8p per minute to ring a Spanish mobile which is much less than the BT rate. That said, I have seen it is a PAYG mobile. Hmmm. Our Spanish PAYG Vodafone phone is used to ring the UK, but after 7pm in the evening. I don't know what the rate is off the top of my head, but if you ring customer services on 123 in Spain (free), they will be able to tell you (in English) what the rate is o ring the UK. But be aware, it will probably be expensive as you are ringing another mobile.

Mark

PS We can take the router anywhere with with a broadband connection. We have taken it to the US and people can call us on our usual UK number so it's cheap for them, and we can call back to UK free. My husband works in Sweden and he has one there with a local UK number so people calling him from UK  pay only their UK rate. It's magic.

** EDITED - Against forum rules **

Download Viber on your mobile and as long as your family / friends also have this, you can make phone calls and texts for free  :-)