A long time ago, when I was in high school, I did a summer language program in Valencia, Spain. Back in those days, when you wanted to make a phone call to the United States it was a big ordeal. You had to go down to the Central Telephone Office, slap your ten Pesetas on the counter, and then sit on a bench until a line was opened to the United States.
Now, you can be connected all the time anywhere – if you can afford it. You can text, Facebook, tweet, and look up travel information to your heart’s content. Unlimited texting now pretty much comes with an international monthly plan, and data has gotten affordable enough so you can use it frequently on a trip. Talk time, however, is still at a premium. I just took a trip to Spain and even with my hefty data plan, calls to the U.S. were still $2 a minute.
Of course, once you’re on wifi the rules completely change. And free wifi is now pretty ubiquitous in hotels. With good wifi you can do anything that demands data for free, including of course, video chat like Facetime or Skype.
So, can you use that accessible wifi to make voice calls as well? Yes you can, and pretty easily. I recently found myself in Spain again, and thanks to the usual crisis that comes along with flying United Airlines (almost every time), I was in need of inexpensive telephone calls to the United States to straighten out my air travel.
I use Skype for video chat in the states and it’s just terrific for voice calls abroad when you want to avoid paying for expensive international minutes. Skype has evolved some very interesting and flexible telephone calling features. If you buy Skype credit it’s easy to make high-quality outbound calls. For example, my 65 minute call to United Airlines was 65*$0.02 = $1.30 and would have been 65*$2.00= $130 on AT&T (and unreimbursed by the nincompoops at United Airlines). Skype will also give you your own dedicated phone number for $18 for every three months, which is useful for inbound calls.
I became a big fan of Talkatone on this trip. Talkatone’s rates are very slightly lower than Skype’s, and they give you a free dedicated number, so it can be a complete phone replacement. This means anytime that you’re on wifi you have almost no barriers to making or receiving phone calls. In fact, it makes you wonder if you really need such a big calling plan in the US – you could substitute Talkatone instead. Now that I’m back, I’ve used Talkatone to turn an Android tablet into an ersatz phone by just using my home wifi.
Of course, Skype, Viber, and Facetime are all free and convenient if your friends are using the same app. However, Skype and Talkatone do an amazing job of bridging the gap to phones. Next time I travel, I wonder if I’ll need much of a data plan at all.
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