I’ve used a lot of international calling services, particularly from my mobile phone. For a long time I made use of an array of services that enabled me to call locally and then use an existing balance to call internationally. When I was having to phone venture capitalists and board members in the States regularly, the costs used to mount up at 24p a minute from British Telecom. Calling internationally from a mobile was simply ridiculous. It still is, even with the ‘international’ option on the account, you’re still billed silly rates. I can call America from my mobile at 5p per minute, because I pay Vodafone a few quid a month extra.

I remember thinking ‘ahh, that’s better’. Because instead of £1.50 (or something crazy), 5p sounds good.

Until you realise that it’s costing Vodafone almost nothing. Yes they need to maintain the mobile cell, but if I can call any landline in the UK for ‘free’ (unlimited, fair use), why can’t I call America for a few pence a minute? You know? 2p, something like that?

Well, the answer is that it’s still a good way to garner cash from us all — and we can’t believe it’s not costing £1.50 a minute, so we pay.

And besides that, it’s convenient, right? Pick up your mobile and dial…

No.

It’s almost a fifth cheaper if you use FooCall. It’s even cheaper if you pay a few pounds a month.

Quite apart from the fact that anyone who’s named their company in that manner deserves my business, I’m delighted that they’ve made an iPhone application to make the experience super simple. I’d like to see them deploy on other platforms too.

Let’s have a look at the application:

This is the main screen. It’s really easy to use. Once you’ve created a free account — that process takes 20 seconds — you can start calling. Literally dial the number you want.

FooCall then calculates a local access point — i.e. an 020 number that counts toward your inclusive minutes. It places the call to the local access number and automatically dials your destination for you.

This all happens in about a second. Within moments you’re connected. Done.

Now let’s talk about rates. By default, it’s 1.2p/minute to the United States from the UK. That’s a pretty good rate in itself. But if you’re calling regularly, you might like to take note of the FooCall FooPlan. It’s £2.75/month and reduces that rate down to 0.8p/minute.

Of course, that’s a popular route. Let’s pick out some random ones from their list:

UK to New Zealand? 1.4p/min

UK to Bahamas? 3p/min

If you’d like to confirm your reservation at The Sanctuary at Parrot Cay on the Turks & Caicos Islands? 13.7p/min.

You can even call Antarctica. That’s 100.7p per minute — but drops to 67.2p if you’re on the FooPlan.

FooCall isn’t just about the iPhone though — you can use their web-based service very easily. Just login, click ‘call’, select or type in your desired number and boom… this screen appears:

Pretty nifty, eh? That’s a unique number for you that puts you straight through to your destination without any messing around.

I particularly like that if I add a contact on the iPhone app, it’s synchronised straight through to the web version of FooCall too.

This is one of those services that, even if you don’t call abroad regularly, you should definitely have sitting on your iPhone — so that when you *do*, it’s easily accessible. Download the FooCall iPhone app from this link — and when you setup your account, you’ll be credited with 50p’s worth of credit to get you started (enough for a 41 minute call to the States!)

Nice work, FooCall!

Dear Ewan,

I am going away to Dubai over Xmas and after getting stung for an enormous mobile bill whilst in the states, I want to get a sim that will not cost the earth for calls to and from the UK.

When away in the summer I got hit for a bill of around £250 which was daft considering everything and I don’t want the same to happen again whilst away over Xmas.

Any ideas or solutions would be welcome, even if it means testing something for you to try and curb the costs!

Regards

David

Now then David. First off, you’ve got Truphone. Super if you’re going to have WiFi access. And they’ve got a Blackberry client that you might like to try out. But it’s not going to be much use to you when you’re roaming in Dubai as it’s more useful when you’re in the UK, calling internationally.

SIM4Travel, also owned by Truphone, will offer you free incoming calls whilst you’re in Dubai (er, or the United Arab Emirates, Dubai isn’t listed in their rate checker) and charge you £0.45 per minute to call the UK.

Does anyone have some suggestions for David?

There are lots of neat mobile VoIP services out in the market – two of my favourites are Truphone and DeFi mobile because of the way they embed themselves into a Nokia S60 handset, provide an additional phone number and just work where there’s WiFi. However one provider that I’ve been taking another look at is Rebtel. Rebtel is aimed at people who call abroad using their mobiles (Rebtel does work just as well from landlines) and (not surprisingly!) don’t want to pay the extortionate rates charged by the mobile operators. Whilst Rebtel uses VoIP to carry the international leg of the call, the call to the local Rebtel number is made using your regular mobile minutes. Rebtel’s killer feature is that it works on any mobile phone; no software to install, no SIM cards to swap over. This can be a five quid or a five hundred quid handset – Rebtel just works.

There are several different ways to use Rebtel. First you need to set up an account online and add some credit. At a simple level, for ad hoc international calls, you call the local Rebtel operator number and follow the IVR. This is Rebtel ‘double dial’. However the easiest way to use Rebtel is via ‘direct call’. Login to your account and enter the phone number of a friend or colleague who lives abroad. Rebtel then provides you with a permanent virtual number for your friend. So if I want to call Annie in Australia, I’m given a local UK number to use instead of her Australian number. I save the local number in my phone and use this to call Annie in the future. Cost is zero to my mobile operator (for me) because the call comes out of inclusive minutes, plus £0.013 per minute to Rebtel. I could also make this call for free (assuming inclusive mobile minutes), using ‘smart call’, by asking Annie to call me back on the local Australian number displayed on her handset while I stay on the line. Not quite as seamless but a way to save even more money.

Rebtel has just launched ‘collect call’. If I, as a Rebtel user, call someone who isn’t on Rebtel, they will see a local number displayed on their phone. They can then use that local number to call me back on in the future and I pick up a small call charge from Rebtel. The online account management system lets you manage the settings for ‘collect call’ so you can choose whether to accept or decline calls.

Rebtel accounts and numbers can also be managed via SMS and mobile.rebtel.com.

Rebtel has just launched a great promotion – up to 50 percent off call rates to 23 countries around the world for the next 30 days. A nice gesture in these financially challenging times.

Never one to stand still, Rebtel has been taking a look at the iPhone and will have a Rebtel application in the iPhone AppStore in the next couple of months. They aren’t saying too much about it yet but sounds like one to watch out for. Knowing Apple’s somewhat ambiguous view of VoIP this’ll be interesting!

You can also follow Rebtel on Twitter http://twitter.com/_rebtel

In case you’re wondering, I’m told that Rebtel is a corruption of Rebel Telecom, a fitting name for a market disrupting service provider!

—

Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero.

We had a whole schedule planned — but the chaps got stuck with the Poloroid PoGo bluetooth printer so I kept the camera on as Dan Lane and James Whatley bickered with each other for about 35 minutes, trying to get the device to work.

I haven’t done the edit, but I think I might keep quite a lot of their shenanigans in. It really is a super example of not-reading-the-manual.

Ben Smith couldn’t be with us for filming — Ed Hodges of Howler Tech gallantly agreed to step in. Thank you for that Ed.

The following week, however, most of us — bar Dan (he’s staying in London) — are out of the country. James is in Helsinki with Nokia (“the mothership”). I’m in San Francisco at CTIA Wireless and Ben Smith is in Beijing. We’ll still be able to bring you a packed show. Oh yes. We’ve done a lot of work on that.

So this Monday, expect a brand new episode of the MIR Show. Then, across the week, expect a varied amount of updates — textual and video — from the team.

I’ve got interviews with companies every hour from 7am ’til 9pm daily next week. I’m going to try and film them all — and try and get some stuff up on the site as well.

For $150 a month? All-in. On one adapter.

That’s about 70-odd quid — about the same as the top level data package from some of the UK operators.

Well you can buy it from iPass. Right now. It’s part of their Mobile Office service.

I was transfixed by it.

I sat down with their UK top chap, Azadar Shah — a tall, smartly dressed, competent chap — at the Churchill Hotel last week. I wanted to learn more about iPass. I was particularly pleased to hear that they’ve got a ton of hotspots all over the place — an iPass account is always something I’ve been meaning to get but it’s only when I get to the hotspot sign-in page in some far flung airport that I start kicking myself for not having sorted out an account earlier.

As Azadar took me through the range of iPass services (a lot of which are hugely relevant to enterprise users wanting to give their employees secure, ubiquitous hotspot access), he mentioned mobile broadband.

“Er, stop there!” I said, leaning forward.

“You mean a mobile broadband card? Like a dongle, yes?” I wanted to check my delight just in case it was misplaced.

“Yes,” replied Azadar.

“So, I can plug in my laptop and get internet access here in the UK… then take it to America and still get ‘unlimited’ broadband internet?”

Azadar smiled at my surprise, “Yes, it’s called Mobile Broadband — we’ve been offering it for a little while now.”

“You what?”

I need to get one of these, I thought.

Very smart. They’ve done deals with operators in the States, UK, Netherlands and the Far East to ensure that their devices get mobile data roaming — unlimited — wherever the device is within the country.

Other European countries (and beyond) are being added at the moment — there’s just a delicate negotiation to be done with the incumbent operators.

The benefits here are clear. If you are continually working transatlantically — in the UK one week, in the States the next, you need an iPass Mobile Broadband solution.

You could, theoretically, get yourself a modem from Verizon. If you can get them to give you one without paying for 24 months up front. And a UK broadband modem. That would work. But now you’re getting bitty and having to carry two devices. Add the Netherlands, as an example, and you’ve now got to carry three devices.

The iPass Mobile Broadband service makes a lot of sense to me. I’d like to see more European countries — I’m sure, for example, Hutchison would play ball with mobile data roaming across their territories in Europe at least.

The added bonus of being able to access any iPass compatible WiFi hotspot too… yeah, that makes it work for me. This definitely isn’t competing with your tenner-a-month 3UK service. It’s intended for executives who want a consolidated monthly bill and a consistent experience across territories.

I’m going to see if I can get one from iPass and have a play.

Round figure costings for this service: $150 a month. I’ll get more details from Azadar and put them up shortly.

If you regularly travel to the UK and the States … and you think you’d like to try one of these out and write a summary for us, drop me a line.

However that’s a good few quid a minute at least on my standard network choices — Vodafone, o2 and T-Mobile.

My first look-up was Jajah… but they don’t seem to have support for the Maldives.

I’m going to take a look at RebTel. Trouble is, since I’m roaming, there is going to be a cost for using the phone whether I’m calling or receiving. And I don’t have a localised sim for the Maldives. Yet.

The other option I’m considering: Truphone. Ah hah. Yes. There’s free wifi here… Oh… and Skype, too.

Do you have any suggestions on a service I could use from the hotel’s landline to make calls back to the UK?