January 19, 2007
Curious Skype replacement George
Now that Skype has ended its free PC-to-phone service to anywhere in North America, this cheap monkey is looking for an alternative. Any monkeys out there found a good one? Anyone using FreeCall?
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Skype is still only $15 for all of 2007. If you buy by the end of the month. That's pretty cheap. Plus you get about 2 hours of international calls.
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I love skype. That is all.
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I'm using VoipBuster in Europe and I'm happy with it. Calls to Germany are not free, but the service is cheap and it works.
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ĦεҐ٥آ?
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Pete, this is your mom, why haven't you called me? Okay, here's the scoop so far on FreeCall. It turns out it's a cousin of VoipBuster (thanks rogersm!). Call quality in N.America on a single call from Canada to US seems to match Skype. There's a couple of limits: Free calls are limited to < 1 hour in duration and you are given a max limit of 5 hours of calling time per week (haven't verified this). On the plus side they not only allow free NA calls, you can also call most of Europe, Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as NZ and Australia for free! They appear to make their money by charging for calls to other countries (e.g. India, Caribbean) FreeCall also briefly reviewed here.
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Whoa! last minute update: I went to use FreeCall again for a NA call but it told me my "maximum free call limit has been exceeded". Nothing on the website about limiting calls to just *one* free one. So I've dispatched an e-mail to their support group to see what's up. Clearly if it's just one call, there's no point signing up for this.