I often take a laptop computer to Turkey with me, and I call home for free using Skype.
When it’s evening in Istanbul, it’s morning in Concord, Massachusetts, and my wife Jane is usually sitting at her desk working on her computer. I click on Skype, and her name, and bingo! In seconds we’re talking with digital-quality sound.
The cost? $0. YTL0. €0. £0. ¥0. Zero.
And I’m the guy who used to have to spend US$6 per minute to call home!
If my Turkish hotel has wireless Internet (as many do—even small hotels and pensions), I can lie in bed and call home for free. Or I can sit in the lobby and mystify the other guests by chatting with my wife on the other side of the world…for free.
If my wife is on a business trip, no problem. She’s a hot-shot management consultant, and is probably staying in a posh hotel somewhere with high-speed Internet. If she’s using her computer, I click and we’re talking, no matter where she is. I don’t even have to know where she is. I just click on her Skype name and we’re talking.
For me, this is simply magical, and the price—$0 YTL0 €0 £0 ¥0 Zero—certainly can’t be beat.
But what about my dear 95-year-old mother? She’s never used a computer, and she’s not about to start now. How can I call her?
No problem! I use a Skype service called SkypeOut which allows me to call any regular landline or mobile telephone in the world. The cost? Whatever the cost is for a local call at the destination (usually a few US cents per minute). (In 95 years, my mother has seen a lot of new things, but she still thinks Skype is nothing short of amazing, especially because of the low cost.)
I use Skype from my office at home to make calls to Turkey, because then I’ll pay only the Turkish local call rate (pennies per minute) instead of those often-fearsome international telephone rates.
What if you don’t plan to take a computerwith you when you travel? Use SkypeIn, whereby you use a regular telephone to call a local number to connect with your loved one(s) or business associates via their computers anywhere in the world. The cost? Just that of a local call.
It costs absolutely nothing to give Skype a try. The software is free. Computer-to-computer calls are free, anywhere, all the time. I haven’t noticed any obtrusive ads, pop-ups or junk email because of my Skype membership.
So how do they make money? On their premium services, such as SkypeIn and SkypeOut, which I use very happily, and I save gobs of money using them.
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Skype � the whole world can talk for free. Download Skype for free and take a look at some of our neat premium services. www.skype.com
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