For many of us staying abroad keeping in touch with our friends and family back home is a necessity to deal with cost constraints. For example, calling Jamaica from US or UK by the thousands of students and employees staying abroad can have serious cost consequences. Especially, international students and employees having their first experience of living away from home will find it irrevocably important to stay in touch with friends and family in their home city. Many students are on a shoestring budget though the demand for keeping contact with people at home is never supposed to be low. By making regular international calls the students and even employees staying abroad can find it very expensive.
Though in every country there is a wide range of carriers offering appropriate international calling plans and there are other cost saving alternatives such as International Calling Cards, still for most making a regular call by just dialling the number from handheld device can be considered expensive. In this respect Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calling and Wi-fi calling through mobile app became the two most viable alternatives stay in touch with friends and family without just running out of money. Making cheap calls to Jamaica or Japan or other Far eastern destinations from Europe or US is a serious need for many students and employees. Before discussing on the cheapest alternative let us have a look at all other calling options a bit.
Making international calls from your mobile
Calling from your existing mobile number of home country can be very expensive unless you have set up a specific international roaming service with the service provider back home. So, first thing to do is to switch to local carrier if you insist on making regular international calls from mobile. Now while choosing among carriers the wisest thing to do is comparing local carriers specialized in overseas calls packages. Besides rate you should also compare their reputation of service, coverage and hidden costs. When you have smartphone availing mobile broadband service is a wise thing to do as this would further open up possibilities for cheap international calls (http://www.ehow.com/how_4764872_cheap-international-calls.html).
International calling from a land phone
As a student making international calls from your campus accommodation can be a good option if there is any package subscribed for calling abroad or certain international destinations. But in most cases this type of calls are losing popularity steadily as landlines have a lot of constraints and is considered cumbersome for handling. So, this is not a good choice if you want to remain in uninterrupted touch with your home and friends back home. Most importantly, landline calls can be pretty expensive without a good international calling package.
International calling cards
Finally, we have international calling cards as an inexpensive option to call abroad frequently and every now and then. People who call their home frequently or want to keep in touch constantly will find this useful and comparatively inexpensive. Most important of all, these cards will let you keep tap on the calling cost as by purchasing cards of a specific denomination you have already set limit against your desired calls. But there are drawbacks as well. The biggest down point of these international calling cards s that the cost of calls is not negligible and when making calls you always have the time limit in mind. Moreover, they do not provide the ease of making calls while seeing the other person on screen as we can do in VoIP or call through mobile app.
Cheap calls through mobile apps
VoIP technology leveraged through countless mobile and web apps offer a cheap and magnificent way to use your tablet or smartphone or desktop to talk with friends and family abroad. Sometimes messaging on social networks just do not offer enough help in keeping touch and you need to be in direct touch. Mobile apps using VoIP technology allow you make free voice or video calls across any destination around the globe. Basically, a computer or smartphone with a webcam and internet access is all that you need. There are too many popular services and apps that can enhance your voice calling with additional ease. Just by setting up the app in your device and having registered with an ID and password you can make unlimited international calls in your home country.
In case the other person abroad is not contactable through the same app, you can make calls from the app directly to their mobile phone by paying a little price. Almost all such VOIP apps offer calling packages to make such direct calling cheaper. So, the bottom line is making free calls to the app users back home and paying little for direct mobile calls through your app, in both ways the calls are guaranteed to be either free or very cheap compared to all other international calling options mentioned above.
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