cheap phone calls?

[cornerofsilence]

Can anyone tell if there is a company in NZ which does cheaper telephone calls.

We have skype but we are having problems with it at present.

[harlowfamily]

Hi Susan
I'm not sure about NZ phone calls as local calls are free anyway on Telecom. For Economy International calls we prefix 0161 then delete the (00) for International and then put in rest of numbers i.e 44 for UK then rest of number. This only works out to about 16 cents a minute so very affordable. Not sure about other phone services although I've heard that there is a way to get international calls cheaper through Broadband Internet services.
Regards
Alison

[cornerofsilence]

Hi

What is the name of the company you use?

How do you sign up?

[harlowfamily]

I don't know if it is a company or just a special Telecom rate - we just have a monthly rental with Telecom and prefix 0161 on International calls. They show up as the discounted rate on our Telecom bill. From time to time Telecom also have specia offers like the one advertsied on TV now which is 'Talk to UK for up to 2 hours for less than $5' - these are for direct dial numbers though so we mix and match the 0161 calls depending on the deals at the time.
Another way is to buy 'Kia Ora' calling cards form newsagents etc - these also give a number to prefix and are cheap but can't remember the rates. I used these to start off with but found it a pain keep having to buy new air time cards so now just use the 0161 mainly.

Bye again
Alison

[cornerofsilence]

Many thanks for that ALison I will check these things out.

regards

[TheFamilyHearld]

It's amazing what you can learn isn't it? I had no idea about the 0161 prefix on Telecom calls. We usually call Europe between 8 - 11pm here for the cheap 2 hr calling rate, as when we have called during our morning, the rate has been phenomenal.

Will definately be giving it a try. Thanks for posting that Alison.

Michelle

[harlowfamily]

I've just received an email from a friend telling me that Telecom are having a 'World price crash' from 19th Aug and if you register the country you are interested in calling before that date - you will qualify for some hugely discounted rates. This might be worth checking out with Telecom?
Alison

[cornerofsilence]

Yes Alison you are right I registered yesterday

Regards

Susan

[pominnz]

I too had issues with Skype, the quality and also having to leave my PC switched on. So shortly after arriving in NZ I investigated an alternative.

VoIP. (Not Skype)

I bought a voip ATA which you can buy from DickSmith, Harvey Norman or online for around $100, plugged it into the ethernet port of my broadband router. Also bought a cordless dect phone which I plugged into the Voip ATA. Reigstered with voiptalk.org in the UK and got a uk telephone number in the area of my choice. £2.99 per month with voicemail, or £1.99 without.

Calls to the UK and most of Europe and US are 1p per min any time. 0800 number are free. Friends and family in the UK can call you as if you are still in the UK by dialing your UK landline number.

If you have the voicemail option, you can configure it to email the voicemail as a wav sound file to a specified email address.

Voice quality is excelent and with almost no delay. Don't have to have your PC switched on.

This is a great option. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them.

[privatebox]

If you havce a good DSL connection try Xnet, we have two lines into our office and it works a charm.

Just make sure you are able to take interleaving off, (error checking) this is something your ISP will need to do. It will stop your calls from being dropped and sounding poor.