phone callsUp until the last few years, international calling was a very expensive proposition. You could be paying several dollars per minute even when you had the best deal on international service there was to get. In order to skirt around the system and get free calling, a number of intrepid technologist invented a device called the Blue Box, including a young Steve Wozniak. The device would generate special tones that interfaced with AT&T’s management system and allowed them to make free calls. Wozniak reportedly once used the device to call Pope John II. Fortunately you no longer have to hack the phone system to get inexpensive international calling anymore. There are now many options to get international calls for free.

We have been able to get free long distance service with our cell phones and through VoIP for some time now, but international calling has remained relatively expensive. A new company called Talkser.com is hoping to change that service. It’s a completely free ad-supported phone service which will allow you to make international calls. There’s absolutely no registration necessary, so they won’t be harvesting your personal information and selling it to advertisers.
The Talkster service is also very useful to setup conference calls. It’s completely free to do this, but the parties involved will have to listen to advertisements before the conference call begins. If the people you’re talking to don’t mind it, go ahead and take the free service if you don’t have one available through your phone system.

If the parties you are interested in talking to overseas have an internet connection, you have a lot more options to communicate with them. A new service called Oovoo is offering a tool which will allow you to have a video-phone conversation with anyone in the world. Other services like this have come out before, but Ooovoo is very intuitive to use and lets you conference with several different people at once.

About a decade ago we moved to a system a domestic where long distance calling is practically free. Instead of paying for expensive long distance plans, we just got it with our cell phones or bundled services for free. In the next decade or two, we will likely see this extend to international calling as well with the proliferation of new technologies and increased market competition.