Skype offering $9.95 unlimited international call plan
Skype has just introduced an unlimited international calling plan which will allow users to make as many calls as they like to the 34 countries most likely to be vaporized in the first nuclear strike of World War 3. The deal seems pretty good at a paltry $10. But is it really?
As I've mentioned before, I'm an American living abroad. Most of my friends, family and colleagues are overseas. This means I make a lot of phone calls to America, from calling up my buddies to poll them on how I should have reacted when a new German girlfriend forged a Pollock on my chest during coitus, to ringing up Mommy before bed time for my evening lullabye, I spend hundreds of minutes on the phone to America every month. So this deal would, at first blush, seem to be made for me.
But Skype's price per minute between Germany and the US is 2 cents. In fact, it seems to be about 2 cents per minute to all the countries supported by the subscription plan, which means you need to do spend more than 500 minutes a month on the phone with another country to benefit from this deal. Those looking for a more affordable way to call up Diego Garcia ($1.86 a minute!) will be out of luck.
Skype to sell unlimited international calls for $9.95/month [Yahoo]
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I'm sorry, I'm sure the Skype stuff is very interesting... but I'm too busy trying to imagine what position you were in that would allow your girlfriend to defecate on your chest during coitus.
I'd love to enlighten you, but this is a family blog, Jake!
And for the sake of that very same family-friendliness, I have changed the joke to be both more obtuse and more pretentious.
Oh sure John, leave me out here looking like the pervert now! Sheesh! :)
Ah, the Cloppenburg Steamer!
The.. well.. I think it's $12 or $13 for us overseas deal isn't so great, but the $5/mo package direct to the US seems really good especially if you buy the 12/mo package. I regularly eat about $6 a month conservatively even with the 2 cent rate, so $47 a year doesn't really sound so bad.
I am also an American living overseas, and I also call home a lot, although my reasons are usually fairly prosaic. In the UK, I have cheap plan from TalkTalk that allows me to call anywhere in europe and all of the biggest former British colonies, including the US. The first 69 minutes of every call are included free of any additional charge, then you can just hang up and call again if you want to keep talking.
So I don't really bother with skype much. I hope you can find a plan that good. I would think that the market forces and telecommunications infrastructure are similar enough between the UK and Germany that there must be something out there.
Of course, TalkTalk also has customer service that is famously, abysmally, heroically bad. Going through their set-up process is recommended only for very emotionally stable, patient people.
Skype is for lazy people or those living in backward countries (like the U.S.!)where phone and Internet costs are still sky high.
I really don't understand how some people function! With Neuf, Free, Alice, AOL, etc; in France you can call up to 60 countries FREE! All you pay is 29,99 Euros a month for unlimited high speed Internet access with both RJ45 and WiFi connections, over 50 television channels, and UNLIMITED calls to over 50 countries, cell phones included for the U.S. and Canada.
In the U.K. it seems pretty tiresome to sign up, but not here in France. The customer service varies, but with Neuf, they have improved somewhat although they are all pretty dreary. You just have to be patient and try to explain your problem to someone in a call center in N. Africa! (it's one of those unpatriotic things that French companies do to "help" the French economy get stronger!)
I'm an expat too, and I spend a lot of time on the phone with family and friends and at no extra cost.
Try "Google"ing for low cost Internet plans with unlimited calls to your destination....the U.S. is ALWAYS included.
Actually I think that here in France you can now call up to 129 countries with the services that Minnielee mentioned -- unlimited free calling included with the plan that also gives you cable TV and Internet. In the U.S. cable TV alone costs some 60 dollars. In the U.S. the people just lay down and let the corporations screw them senseless.