Expat Survival Kit

This is not a blatant shill ...nor a shill of anykind! Just a testimonial from somebody (me) who's been here in Buenos Aires Argentina for a long time now.

There are a lot of VoIP services that you can choose from and I'll be sure to entertain all of your comments regarding the myriad choices available, free and otherwise, in the Comments (please, just don't flame each other.)

But for me, there is nothing that compares to Vonage. And it's cheap ...not free, but cheap.

By itself, being cheap would not cut it for me. Personally, I gotta have a US phone number that people all over the world can simply pick up their landlines and dial and get me.

Secondly, the voice quality has got to be at least "very good" and the service has to be completely reliable.

Coming in a distant third, I'd rather not install any phone-specific software on my computer. That's not a really big deal but I have found that I am one of those 4% to 6% of people all over the world that for some unknown reason can't get Skype to work on my rig due to some sort of conflict that even Skype can't explain.

I'm not knockin' Skype and I never will. If it wasn't for Skype, expats in general would be in bad shape. Skype is a big network and is easy to use for, like I said, 94% to 96% of everybody.

I will say, however, that Skype just won't do for the Yanq because I can't get a real xxx-xxx-xxxx type of number for people to call... unless I pay for Skype-Out. Something, apparently, very few people do.

Further, I am always bummed-out about the quality of the voice that comes over to me from Skype and other service users. They don't sound like a real phone. There one big exception in my experience, however: my boss in Canada uses Skype with a fiber-optic hook-up ...and he sounds very good, not as good as vonage or a landline ...but very good. All I have is an ordinary cable-modem and I don't plan on upgrading to fiber-optics in Buenos Aires for any part of the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, my voice quality, in and out, is so good that many people do not believe that I'm call from the other side of the world. Crystal clear and never drops off. I get used to people thinking that I'm calling from the next room as some sort of gag.

Cheap? I pay $23.29 a month, including tax and everything, for 500 minutes of outbound calling to non-vonage customers (my brother uses it in the US in place of a landline and I can talk to him for unlimited numbers of minutes free.) I get toll-free numbers ...for unlimited "free" minutes (great for lingering on hold with some of your vendors.) Inbound callers to my number don't count against my 500 minutes either.

Within my 500 minutes, I can talk to anywhere in the US, Guam, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, etc. and Canada.

International calls are also dirt cheap. I can even call across town in Buenos Aires for 1¢ a minute. If I wanted to sign up for the "unlimited plan" I could even call the UK, Italy, France, Spain and Ireland for free. That costs more but if you wanna pay by the year... they'll even throw that in with your 500 minutes.

It's not for everybody, though.

You need to get a little gizmo/telephone converter device to hook in between your cable modem and computer. You can get that for free in the US.

You also need a United States credit card or a United States bank account for them to directly debit every month.

Otherwise, they won't give you the service.

Every time I use it I realize that I've never owned an electronic device that served me so well. That's why I decided to tell you about it.

So if you're thinking about VoIP and need something "bonafide!", you should at least think about vonage.

They've also got something where if you refer a friend, they'll give you 2 months free. So if you've know some other people that will sign up, you can knock your cost down even further.