Free & Cheap VOIP calls to International Destinations

February 20th, 2006 by Keith in Miscellaneous Gadgets, Software, Tech News

I’m sure most of us have heard of Skype, the most popular VOIP calls, offering cheap PC-to-landlines calls to international countries worldwide. No doubt the quality of the service has been very good, and the rates are pretty fair and reasonable. However, have anyone considered that VOIP calls can be free?

Oh yes, there are (perhaps, not to every single destination in the world) some that are offering free VOIP calls to landlines. In addition, those non-free calls, normally have cheaper rates compared to Skype’s, when dialling to similar destinations. Basically, what I have here are three piece of cool softwares - VoipBuster, VoipCheap and VoipStunt!!

I have written about VoipBuster and VoipStunt in SoftSift.
However, I have yet to include VoipStunt into the list of free calls. While testing out these few softwares, I realise that all of them belong to the same company, sharing the same database. For instance, if I were to register a user name in VoipBuster, I could not use the same user name to register in VoipCheap.

Installation of these software is pretty much straightforward. Download the beta release (as there is only one download anyway) and click setup to install. You will need to select a user name, password and an email address to register yourself onto the database.

So, what are countries that are offering Free Calls by VoipStunt? Here’s the list.
Free calls to any regular landline in:

Argentina
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Chile
China
Croatia
Cyprus
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Gibraltar
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Malaysia
Monaco
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Singapore
South Korea
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
United Kingdom
United States

Note, don’t feel despair if you find that your country is not listed. Visit VoipBuster or VoipCheap website to find out if your country is listed for FREE calls. Nonetheless, these 3 Voips have so far been the cheapest I have come across.

Strong Note: You need a good broadband service in order for the Voip software to work decently well. I find that their data compression wasn’t too good, and as such uplink tends to be a little problematic. I do have experience users not being able to hear me when I have a slow uplink connection.

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11 Comments on “Free & Cheap VOIP calls to International Destinations”

Marco Gizmo Says:

February 22nd, 2006 at 5:26 pm

I have always steered clear of voip because the quality - even on a fast conection - is usually not great.

But then again, I guess the price is almost right - free!

Tay Says:

February 22nd, 2006 at 8:48 pm

Dear Sir,

Having read your article on the VoIPStunt , I am really curious , why are they able to offer for free to these countries specified only on land lines.

Hope you can enlighten me on this as well as are their call qualities consistent and good given the fact they are free.

Regards,

Tay

Keith Says:

February 23rd, 2006 at 3:15 am

Hi Tay, to be honest, I do not exactly know how they exactly managed to offer free to some of these contries. One of the possibilty may be as follow:

First of all, we need to recognise the possibility that once you have an internet connection, you can set up a STUN server, i.e. connection into a PSTN network from the Internet. Theretically speaking, the companies must have several STUN servers running all over different countries. And if the servers were to located in one specified country, the rate is likely to be cheaper (not free, still).

However, they could charge some rates to other countries (non-free destinations), and get the profits to subsidise those calls to free destinations. You may think this may be a small number. However, if every million people adhere to this VOIPStunt network, each one pays €10 surcharge for registration. That could be €10 million, even though users may not really use the money (however they will expire in 120 days).

Note also, there are countries in which VoipStunt offers FREE calls to both landlines and mobiles, if you look into the Rate Table carefully, i.e. China and Singapore, so it’s not just landlines.

jess Says:

February 23rd, 2006 at 11:22 am

Notice that the “free” calls only last ONE minute, unless you buy credits…I don’t really call this free! See the FAQ:

Why is my connection constantly broken after 1 minute?

If you want to enjoy FREE and UNLIMITED calls to our free destinations, please buy € 10,- worth of credit via the “buy credit” link. Your credit will remain as long as you call our free destinations.

Dena Says:

July 30th, 2006 at 7:07 am

HI!
I use VOIP Stunt and buster for last 7 months and it is to the countries that I have to pay hah but I have to say that they are excellent.Also I am calling to Sweden and Gremany almost every day - free. Yes, you have to buy 10 Euros but don’t you have to pay tax if you use regular phone anyway?
Pay it and enjoy calling around the world just to find out about weather. There is new one FREECALL - think even faster than other two!

rhina Says:

April 28th, 2007 at 1:27 am

I m using skype since 8mths…though voipstunt is saying it is going to offer free voip calls to landlines..u can believe that only when it is implemented..skype offers u free skype to skype calls,skypein and very very cheap,economical international calls compared to other voip services i have used..u can visit website http://www.skype.com

gbonnet Says:

April 30th, 2007 at 7:40 am

Hi,
I’m a big VoIP fan and I actually don’t use softphone at all. The sound quality with a hard phone is so much better.
There are many VoIP providers to consider other than Skype, Jajah or VoIPStunt, for instance http://www.vonage.com or http://www.blueface.ie … (among many others).
cheers

costadublin Says:

April 30th, 2007 at 9:43 am

Hi,
I’m using Betamax’s voipstunt and voipcheap for about a year on a dayly basis for both free and non-free destinations. The connection quality is better than skype. But there is 1 annoying thing about them:
after about 3-4 months they stop accepting visa payments to my account and I have to register under a different name.The same card on the new login works fine. At first I thought it was an error, but the it turned out to be a deliberate policy. I wrote to them countless times and never got a line back. Did anyone experienced anything like this? Any solutions?

shela Says:

November 13th, 2007 at 9:41 am

Is there anyway to call Pakistan and Saudia arabia for free.
Thanks

Shela

Cheap Voip Says:

February 5th, 2008 at 4:52 pm

You’re right about the data compression problems. In fact, if you use voip a lot (especially for business) then it’s worth just investing in a decent broadband connection. The time you save as well as the cheaper call cost still makes it worth it.