Many rate plans for international calls

[Hortoristic]

I spent some time researching making UK calls from USA and although saw some that might have been cheaper - ended up going with Voip.ms.  Voxbeam looked possibly better but they wanted minimum $50 investment in minutes.

Others suggested there are better companies out there for USA-->UK mobile phone plans - anyone got some great companies to point me to that they have had succes with?

I'm still not clear how voip.ms can call a UK landline for .0079 - but same company want .01 to make inside USA calls.

[infin8loop]

I'm still not clear how voip.ms can call a UK landline for .0079 - but same company want .01 to make inside USA calls.

I don't know for sure but it probably has to do with the varying termination costs incurred in different countries. Money changes hands behind the scenes between the originating carrier of a phone call and the terminating carrier of that call.  Here in the states phone service seems to be taxed and fee'd to death. My traditional PSTN line is $23 for basic unmetered local service but ends up north of $40 with the myriad taxes and fees.  As you may have discovered voip.ms is based in Canada.  I don't recall the Canadian's dumping any tea into the harbor like our forefathers did.  So perhaps they get a better deal on phone termination rates in the UK. That was our fractured fairy tale history lesson for today kids.       

[RonR]

That was our fractured fairy tale history lesson for today kids.

I really miss Rocky and Bullwinkle.   

[Stewart]

"Cheap" and "good" usually don't go together.  The bottom is generally the Betamax companies -- see list here http://backsla.sh/betamax (note that prices in chart are Euro cents/min.)

Next step up, look at CallWithUs and Future-Nine.  Both allow control over the route; if you have trouble on a particular call, you can try a more expensive path.

[Hortoristic]

So when free GV doesn't have tax and fees it sounds like.

[DaveTap]

So when free GV doesn't have tax and fees it sounds like.

Actually it sounds amazingly good, but that's not too surprising considering the massive infrastructure Google has in place.

[MB..]

I'm still not clear how voip.ms can call a UK landline for .0079 - but same company want .01 to make inside USA calls.

Note that (currently) the premium routing for calling UK landlines is actually less expensive than the value routing.... but it is significantly more expensive if you use it to call mobiles or special numbers. With a dial plan rewriting rule similar to "<01144:04444>[1-2]xxxxxxxxx" you can automatically force UK landline calls to use premium routing.

Even before I switched to VoIP, calling UK landlines from Canada using Rogers/Sprint was still cheaper for me than calling US/Canadian long distance. The low cost may be a legacy from the way the UK phone service was privatized.

I assume that somewhere there is a sound economic reason - but then I've never been able to figure out why supermarkets sometimes sell larger cans of baked beans for a lower price than smaller ones.