Communications techno stew

A while back I talked about the challenges I was having communicating internationally with my wife. At the time, even with the help of voip enabled technology like Skype and Vonage, I was still paying almost $800/mo in phone bills.

*Uhg*


I've learned a lot since then and now spend less than $20/month to talk to my wife. And we talk once or more a day! We don't use just one technology either, we use what I call our communications technology stew. It's a collection of different things that have different strengths. All put together they make for an excellent experience. It is comprised of

2 cups JustVoip.com
1 cup Skype
1 whole msn messenger (peeled)
1 pkg Vonage (29oz)

Here's how each of these is important:


JustVoip is one of a family of providers based in europe. They have the same exact software as every other provider in the "family", but they're the only one who offers Brazil on their list of free countries, so I use them. To use their service, I buy $10 euros of "credit" (about $13US). That is good for 4 months of service. My wife can call me at any time for free. I can only call land lines in Brazil for free, to call cell phones is $.13 euros per minute (about $0.15US per minute). So we keep those calls short and sweet.


Skype, while nice, charges for phone calls to a cell phone or landline. It is great however when both skypers on a computer. JustVoip isn't so easy to do when calling computer to computer. So when we're both at our laptops, we use Skype. Skype offers both voice and video. But interestingly enough, we DON'T use it for the video...


MSN Messenger
We use MSN messenger instead. We did a side-by-side comparison of the two and every time, the skype video was fuzzy, while the msn video was crisp and clear. Plus msn has a cool "Always on top" setting (not what it sounds like..) so I can have other windows open and be doing other things and still see my wife.


Vonage is a phone service provider intended for landline use. When you sign up, you get an adapter, and then 1 or more cordless phones. The cool thing about using Vonage, is that when you travel, you can take your phones and adapter with you. Plug it into any broadband connection, and you can make and receive calls to anywhere within the US for free. I have a 503 area code phone number, local to portland. So calling that number will ring me in Brazil, with no additional cost to you or me. It's only $24.99/month.