Vonage Cheap International Phone Calls

My Uncle lives in Canada but spends a lot of time travelling round the world for business and the last time I saw him he sat me down (over a few beers) and told me the next big thing that would hit the UK – VoIP. My reaction was ‘er what’s that’. Well VoIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol and basically means using your broadband connection to make phone calls.

“Well,” I told my uncle “I’ve been making phone calls over my broadband connection for a year or so using Skype”. Skype for the uninitiated is a software programme that enables FREE calls (including video if you have a camera) to other Skype users by plugging a headset into your computer. You can also call landlines including internationally at pretty cheap rates. Skype actually works quite well, but the call quality is very hit and miss depending on how many Skype users are online.  It can be very annoying when you’re shouting “what, I can’t hear you, I’ll turn you up! I can’t turn you up. I’ll call you later!!!!” or listening to your fellow caller sounding like Cher singing “Do you believe in life after love” (I must stop using that joke when talking about Skype but it’s true!).

Anyway, my uncle says to me “that’s not true VoIP, you should try Vonage” before whispering mystically “it’s the future! You don’t need to even have your computer turned on to make calls. All you need to do is plug a regular phone into the Vonage adapter and plug that into your router and you’re good to go. It’s not VoIP in a Skype sense, it’s broadband telephony”

So I went away and did a bit of searching and took a quick look at the Vonage website, £5.99 a month for unlimited UK calls, er no thanks! Why would I want to pay a monthly fee for a service I already get for free? Cheap International landline calls - that’s why.

Cheap International Calls with Vonage

Well my uncle went back to Canada but he gave me a local phone number scribbled down on a piece of paper “what’s this?” I said. “It’s my Vonage phone number” was the reply. Now this started to raise my interest. With Vonage you can set up “virtual phone numbers” whereby people can call you at local rate even if they are the other side of the world – a useful feature if you have relatives abroad or indeed business contacts. To explain further I live in Northampton and my uncle set up a virtual phone number for Northampton so I can now call him in Canada and only pay a local rate, and the best thing is I don’t even need to be a Vonage user!

Unlimited Cheap International Calls with Vonage VoIP

OK so it currently costs me a local call rate to call my uncle, great, but I also have a lot of friends that have moved to Australia where they don’t have Vonage (currently only available in the UK and North America) and anyway I can’t ask them to purchase Vonage just so I can call them cheaply can I? Well what I can do is sign up for Vonage World Plan Two for £7.99which includes unlimited anytime calls to Australia (as well as New Zealand, UK, USA, Canada, Ireland and Germany). This means I can call Australia at anytime for any duration as part of one monthly fee. I can of course set up a Virtual Number for my mates in Australia so they can call me when they want at a cheaper rate than expensive international calls – everyones a winner!

Vonage Summary

Vonage offer excellent packages of cheap international calls for just £7.99 a month (and a local calls only package for £5.99 a month). The call quality is as good as a landline but you will obviously need a reasonably quick broadband connection and a reasonable amount of download allowance if you are to be a regular caller. A full review of Vonage will be on the blog shortly but in the meantime you can read more about Vonage cheap international calls here.