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“Mom, I miss you!”

I am someone who has been living in US for last 10 years. I came from India these many years ago, leaving my family, relatives and friends behind. I have always kept in touch with them, more with some than with others, over phone, by emails and even sometimes by writing letters.

I still remember how I used to stop by gas stations to buy the calling cards every friday while returning from work so I could call my mom in India over the weekend. While buying the card was easy, using it was quite a hassle. For one, I never did know how long I was about to speak with my mom then with dad then with sister. Sometimes the conversation would last 20 minutes and sometimes it would stretch to 2 hours. There were connection fees to be paid and then there were the 1 minute rounding or 6 second rounding. This was still cheaper than paying Sprint or local phone company for International calls. Same applied to long distance calls in US.

Then came a time when I could buy the phone cards on the internet sites. This did save me trips to gas stations and gave me flexibility to buy a card from my office or my couch, some characteristics remained the same. Though these cards offered better per minute rates, they still charged connection fees and offered different rounding levels.

So, I was very happy with the advent of Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) technology which allowed me to make cheap international or long-distance calls over the internet. I could use just my PC at the minimum to make these calls by using free software. I use Yahoo Voice Calls or Skype to make the calls to India. Sometimes I make PC-to-PC calls which are free and sometimes I make Skype calls to phones which cost me a fraction of the cost (2.1 cents per min) of what phone companies would charge me. There are no connection fees and no more 1 minute or 6 sec rounding.

If that does not work for you, then you can get a modem from Vonage and connect it to your cable/DSL modem so that you can use a phone to make calls over VOIP.

I think Skype or any other VOIP service is a much better and cheaper alternative to phone cards or traditional phone companies.

Gotta go, this time my Father is trying to call me. God knows what has happened.

“Hello, Dad, what? Your browser is stuck?”

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