Dozzpot

When in the UK and calling Canada, we used a prefix number from Planet-numbers or Telediscount to call Canada for a penny or two a minute. Do such things exist for calling the other way around i.e. to make calls to the UK cheap from Canada?
I bought a netTALK device for cheap calls; reasonable reviews even if it did look too good to be true. I am taking it back to Best Buy later...

magnumpi

They have calling cards available here, approx 2c minute. Go into any small mall, in a multicultural area, like Scarborough Mall or Cedarbrae Mall at Lawrence and Markham Road and you can buy them for $5 upwards. Then you just use a normal land line via a prefix number. Easy.

Not seen one in Eaton Center or Yorkdale Mall?

Simon Legree

I have a plan with Primus. I pay 2 cents a minute to the UK without the hassle of using cards. I just dial 011441....... bingo.

Dashie

We use the shoppers drug mart cards. We used to use the ones from the mall but found the rates and connection charged fluctuated a lot. The shoppers cards are a little over 3c a minute but we don't punch it in to find that we only had a few days to use the card once activated and it's expired wasting most of what we paid for it. The shoppers cards are regularly an extra 20% free too though so we stock up then.

DandNHill

I use Skype. It's a one off monthly payment. Can't quite remember how much it is but it's cheap. You can choose unlimited use or 400 mins per month which is what I pay for.
Again you can also pay, I think, $2.99 for unlimited calls to landlines and cellphones throughout Canada... once you're here

Dozzpot

Funny you should say that as I have just been sussing it out. I have created an online UK number, which (if I have understood it correctly) people in the UK can dial at local rate and the call is picked up on the Skype phone attached to the PC over here. £10 a quarter.

Now I am looking at the calling subscription from here that you describe. With their 15% discount and paying for a year it works out at £1 a week for unlimited calls to UK landlines. I was trying to get hold of their online chat to confirm that but nobody home but it sounds like you are doing this and it is all okay?

Last thing is to figure out a cheap and easy way to tie up a laptop or tablet with a USB phone so it is on all the time for this. Then I need to upgrade the cellphone deal to around $40 a month for enough local calling in Canada and after much faffing around I will hopefully have overcome the need to get a landline from Bell, which is $50 a month just to have it set up for international calling and with actual calling costs yet to be put on top...

thistlehollyberry

I'm with Bell - I just dial 10-10-100 and then the number - costs about 2 or 3 cents a minute. The charge is itemized on your regular Bell bill - but is included in the total bill.

macadian

We use 10 - 10 - 620, followed by the usual 01144 etc for calls to the UK Saves us quite a bit too.....We are also with Bell

GC44

We use Caztel. Just dial 10 10 710 011 then country code 044 for uk followed by the uk number. This costs 99c for up to 45 minutes. The OH's parents get free calls from UK with Sky so not worth us getting a plan

JB0591

We use Skype, you are correct about the Online number, people in UK call that number for the normal cost and it routes to where ever your Skype account is active.

The subscription for UK landline is more like £3 per month for unlimited, have a look at the Premium account which includes unlimited calling to a country of your choice. It is cheaper than the normal subscription at the moment.

You can buy a PC free Skype phone. There is two flavours, one via Wifi and one via wired Ethernet. Both offer PC free Skype phone and can be left on 24-7. We have one and so does a lot of the family, it enables Skype-to-Skype, Skype-to-UK Landline (via subscription) and Online Nos-to-Skype.....all without a laptop or computer on all the time.

Dozzpot

I am just looking at Premium vs Subscriptions for the best way to do this. Their site didn't seem to be giving the correct options but that was because I didn't have the right language/location selection (top middle of screen - needs to be English International). Sorted that through their chat help.

I seems to be possible to add further online numbers to the account and I am just wondering if it is possible to get a Canadian one for local calls. Not sure if it works that way (2 numbers on one account...?) but will look...

Please tell me more about these PC-free phones (makes/shops etc). I am a little bit nervous at this stage as plugging it straight into the router or using it over wifi is starting to sound a bit like the NetTalk device, which turned out to be hopeless. Cheers.

britsnake

I use skype as well. It is possible to have more than one online number on a single account, but at the moment skype does not do canadian numbers so you would not be able to use it generally for incoming local calls.

Previously I had two subscriptions one for the UK and another for the US and Canada. I then forwarded any skype calls from the UK to my landline and cell phone.

Another interesting free service is skype-to-go. It has been useful when I travel in the US and UK as well as day to day for calling my main UK contacts using a normal phone.

I have registered US, UK and Canadian phones to this service and have gained local numbers for all my contacts in the area code of each handset.

flashman

I'm with Bell and Just prefex my call with 10-18-450 (450Tel Communications) got charged .65c for my last call which lasted 12 minutes

Novocastrian

I use Rogers and have a package which allows you to specify 2 countries (UK & France in my instance) to which calls are 2.5C/min., unlimited.

Dozzpot

I have thrown a bit more money at Skype and gone for their Unlimited World subscription, which cost around £30 for the next 3 months and includes unlimited calls to landlines and mobiles in Canada and the US, and landlines throughout UK, Europe etc (although they still charge for premium numbers e.g. the bank as I discovered afterwards so need to check saynoto0870.com in future...).
So that, together with the £10 spent for a virtual UK number to make it cheap for people to call us from there is not looking bad for £40 a quarter.
As soon as I am convinced about it I will get a non-PC Skype phone that JB0591 referred to (I see there are links from the Skype site to them).
I will also up the cell phone plan a bit for more minutes here for local incoming calls.