mickfly

No, no charge to the person at the other end, we skyped to landlines in Spain, UK, Portugal, and the USA regularly, with no problems when we had a good internet connection at our end.

Skype by itself is fine (and free) but not everyone has a PC so the skypeout adittion was great at about £6 a month (i'd set it up already in sterling) and I never used up all the credit..still haven't even though it's been cancelled for a while.

You could also buy calling cards from any gas station.

Be VERY careful about buying a cell phone in Canada, especially a contract one.

dinger24

Explain the mobile drama please?

mickfly

In most cases it costs you money to send...and recieve calls, and most credit is based on 'airtime' and call time, so if you put $30 on a paygo phone and don't use it for a month it runs out.
Lots more catches, ie $400 to get out of a contract.
We used net 10 in USA and seldom bothered in canada, except for payphones and calling cards.

It's a minefield, but maybe someone else can advise.

peterlee_flyer

I got a bell mobile in the Maritimes. $15 expires after 1 month, $25 or $50 after 2 months. I only use it for calls within Canada. Pre paid long distance calling cards are best for phoning home to the UK. A $20 card will get you a lot of air time - the recorded message on mine claims 400 minutes, but I think that's a bit ambitious. You pay for recieving calls because the person calling you doesn't pay a premium for calling a mobile as they do in the UK.

dinger24

Last time I was in Alberta I was using a card that claimed 400 miutes. I have to admit it was pretty good value and I dont think I used 400mins (I havent spoken to the wife for 400 mins in 18 years so not much chance of using all that in 6 weeks!) However a couple of friends also had the cards and at that time there was some scam thing (Nigerea area based!) that conned you out of minutes by using a number cracker that basically got your code and used all your minutes! Never happened to me but had heard a few blokes going on about having 400 mins on Monday morning and then by midday there was nothing left!