Calling home from overseas

In 2000 I did my first student exchange program in the UK. After getting off the plane in London I took a train to the city and decided that it would be a good idea to call home.

Without any better idea about how to do it more cheaply, I dropped 4 pounds (about $10 at the time) into a payphone and dialled direct.....

.....for my $10 I got about 45 seconds of talk time with my family. Not the greatest result for my first attempt at calling home from far away!

Happily, the days of it being tough and expensive to call home from overseas are long gone. Here's how you can call home for next to nothing.

Skype
Skype is the ultimate tool for phoning home for free. Both you and the person you are calling need to have a Skype account (go to www.skype.com). Accounts take about a minute to set up and once you have them you can contact each other for free, from any computer anywhere in the world.

Yeah!

Many internet cafes around the world are set up for skype users and have headsets you can use for making calls.

You can also use Skype to call people who don't have a Skype account - you have to put some credit on your Skype account and then it costs you about 4c per minute to call landlines in most major western countries anywhere in the world. Cheap as!

AIM Overseas has used Skype all over the world - from Australia to Asia, the USA to Europe. Occasionally you get a bad line (but that happens with regular phones anyway) but for the most part it works like a charm. We use it in our office for making calls overseas for work, so it definitely has our vote as your best phone communication option.

Phone Cards
In every major country you will be able to purchase international calling cards. These cards can usually be purchased from places like convenience stores, newsagents, magazine kiosks etc.

Phone cards allow you to use phone booths in the mentioned country to call internationally at a rate far cheaper than dialling direct.

Different cards have varying call rates to certain countries, but these days they are all much the same. Still, always good to ask the person selling you the card which one will give you the best value.

You usually then have two choices from the payphone - either using a 'toll free' access number, or paying to use a 'local' access number. There is always an expensive surcharge for calling using the toll free number, so it may well be worth your while buying a local phonecard in order to call using the local access number.

As an example, a $10 card might get you 15 minutes of talk time on the 'toll free' number, but 1000 minutes when the local access number is dialled!!!

When you dial in you'll be asked to enter your card number (and perhaps a pin number also) and then you'll be able to call Australia. Australia's international dialling code is 61 and you'll need to dial the area code too (but drop the 0 out of 02,03, 07, 08 etc), and follow the instructions on your cards as to how to make the international call.