Skype Ain't Cuttin It....

[tesstafarian]

Dear Fellow Expats,

After nearly 2 months of living in this phenomenal city, my biggest issue is not having a reliable phone (or method of making calls) to the U.S. I run a professional services/consultant business and work with clients in the U.S. I have a Skype Pro account and local U.S. phone number, but my clients continuously complain of the quality of connection. Not all of them know that I work remotely from South America and I don't want the connection to give it away.

Anyone have similar issues? Do you Skype? A local phone line setup for international calls, and if so, how much is it? Any suggestions are welcome.

Ciao!

 

[Rich One]

I use the Skype Worldwide plan for $13.95 to call cel and land lines in USA and Canada and landlines elsewher. The quality varies and sometimes is not good

 

[thomasb]

My guess is that your internet line just isn't good enough. I use Skype everyday and have no problems. What internet connection do you have?

You might want to look at the "Fibertel evolution" or maybe some of the new faster lines that telefonica are starting to offer. I know they have a 50mb down/5mb up line in the works.

 

[jeff1234]

I use Google Mail's phone feature. Calls to the US are free, easy and clear.

 

[Iznogud]

iPlan or similar? If your business depends on it do not fail on the cheap side.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

My wife's been skyping me from Spain to the US, and the connection invariably drops after a few minutes.

 

[Sleuth]

Huge fan of Vonage. Never any issues here.

 

[nativexpat]

Hi! I started a thread months ago regarding problems with skype. I un-installed the program and reinstalled it and I am having a great connection again. I have Arnet.

I also use Vonage - not so good when calling cell phones abroad.

 

[PhilipDT]

Vonage works better than me for Skype (free calls to the us) but since my plan includes US numbers as local rates I normally just dial directly from my phone. Better than Skype even on the best day.

 

[scotttswan]

tried some other voip companies?

i've got a free line from http://www.callcentric.com/ that i've never used so i can't say the quality of it.