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 Review by fireflier 
Posted: 62 days ago
member for 7.5 years, 1927 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Limbo
 $4 per month
 about 1 days
 "Inexpensive, good call quality, highly portable, supports multiple devices"
 "Standalone Skype devices can be expensive"
 "If you have a PC, PSP, or other supporting device, it's well worth it."
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(ratings match consensus)
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I signed up for a Skype plan to call England. Skype requires no contracts or minimum monthly purchases. You can pay for a plan by the month or you can buy it for a year (or more). In my case, the international plan normally runs $5/month, however by purchasing a year in advance--first I purchased a single month to test the service--it only cost me $49.50. This provides a local number in England and I can make calls to other numbers in England and other callers from England can call my "Local" number to reach me at no cost to me and local rates to them. The plan includes voice mail and call forwarding.
Skype is now standard on the PSP (if you don't see it, update your firmware) and Sony now conveniently sells a "Skype" headset for use with the PSP. Skype also works well on a PC. There are a variety of headset options available for the PC--including bluetooth headsets. My only complaint is that Skype doesn't make it easy to run a "portable" version for PCs such as if you wanted to carry a version on a thumb drive to run without having to install it. It's possible (check Google) but it's not a well documented feature. I've tested the PSP version and it works fine. The PC version now also provides IM and video capabilities to another Skype PC user.
Once I confirmed that Skype would do what I wanted, I purchased a Panasonic Skype network phone (wi-fi). This allows a dedicated "phone" for calls to/from England and doesn't require that a PC be left running for me to receive calls. The downside is that many of the Skype standalone products are still somewhat pricey but the Panasonic device works very well. The inexpensive standalone products tend to be little more than a USB device that simply uses an existing computer to do the processing.
On very rare occasions, I've had some call quality issues like minor echoes or delays, but hanging up and calling back always corrected it.
Based on the monthly cost of my previous land-line long distance plan for calling England--including actual calls to England which were billed per minute (Skype is effectively unlimited), I'm saving over $200/year.
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