Skype

[Jinx999]

My brother recently moved to Germany - which means that phoning him can get very expensive. I've had Skype suggested to me and I believe he's on it. Can anyone give me advice about what they're like, personal experience, suggestions or techical details and limitations?

[Sweno]

I do skype calls at least once a week. One thing that greatly adds to the experience is a headset.

Once you are both setup with usernames and are friends in the system, it becomes very easy to make calls

Just be sure to uncheck all the 'extras' when installing
-Terry
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"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

[Black Aeronaut]

Additionally, all calls between skype members are free of charge. Even with video.

They only charge you when an actual phone is involved - for example, calling from your Skype account to his cell phone or landline in Germany.

However, I can personally attest that skype is very reasonable about these rates. For example, calling from Japan to the USA I got charged a very affordable 2.5 cents per minute. So a forty-five minute call (about average for my weekly phone calls to home) would run about $1.13 dollars. Supposing I made one call every week, my monthly international phone bill ran about $4.50. Not too shabby if I do say so myself.

Just make sure that the both of you have reasonably fast internet connections and that the service is rock-solid. Most FiOS connections work great. DSL is good to if the infrastructure in your are is fairly new (laid or replaced in the last 30 years). If Digital Cable is offered in your area then their internet service is most likely decent, too. Although to my knowledge, cable isn't as widespread in other countries as DSL and FiOS is.

In more remote regions satellite service is the only way to go, but the problem there is the insane ping times that makes it useless for anything requiring low latency like VOIP or online gaming.