Traveling outside your country? Use Skype

One of the missions of mydowntimeonline is to help users find technology that makes that life fun, interesting, and easier - Skype fits that bill.

Bill is traveling in Switzerland, and it became a daunting process to figure out what do with his cell phone. Does he turn on the international plan? That turned out to be quite costly in our opinions. Does he rent a SIM card in Switzerland? Same issue – works great if you were calling Swiss numbers, but again became costly if you texted or called the U.S.

We decided to look at Skype. I have used Skype before – we have used it as a means of online tutoring last year because it offered instant messaging, audio and video capabilities. I also have used it for when I went on conferences – I got a telephone number, voice mailbox, and was able to chat with client participants online while presenting. You can even record an interview with one or more participants. Think about a forum where everyone involved is all over the world where the quality of the recording sounds like they are in the same room.

Skype (www.skype.com) offers a variety of features both free and paid. You can instant message, audio and video chat with other Skype users for free with a download of their application. Where Skype differs from other chat programs is that you can call landline and cellular phones from your computer with a pay as your go or monthly plan. The rates are unbelievably cheap (for instance, to call London is $ 0.024 per minute). You can also purchase features as receive calls from phones and mobiles, get a voice mailbox, send SMS,  transfer and forward calls. There’s also this cool feature called Skype to Go where if you are traveling somewhere for a long time, you can call this special “local” number from any phone and it bounces to your home contacts. Again, the rates for any of the features that Skype offers is ridiculously cheap.

Since Bill had a laptop and didn’t want to play with the cell phone, we got him the Unlimited World subscription plan which costs $9.95 USD per month with no long term commitment. With this plan, he can make unlimited calls (10,000 minutes per month) to 36 countries (some including mobiles) , get a voice mailbox, and get Skype to Go if available. He could also purchase a number at a reduced rate that let people call from their phone at local rates. This was by far the cheapest option available from anything we looked at. All Bill has to do is turn on his laptop, and he can call anyone in the US or Switzerland without worrying about charges. If other people have Skype, then he can audio or video chat with them as well.

As a result, I have chatted with Bill several times – he calls my cell phone like he’s down the street. And if I am online, we video chat. With wireless being everywhere, it’s a great resource for communication while traveling.

Skype is available as a free download from www.skype.com for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux along with other mobile devices.