Localphone give cheap international calls from landlines and mobiles worldwide. You are allocated a local number for every person you call which can be stored in your phone making dialling very easy. Rates are very competitive, and popular destinations include India, Pakistan, Australia, UK, US, China and UAE.

Open an account online to use the service and register the phone numbers you will be calling from. Once this has been done, you need to enter the country and phone number you’re calling from and the destination country and phone number. You are then allocated a localphone number for that call which remains valid and which you can save in your phone for future calls. There is no pin number, access number or software required.

0044 is a UK phone service giving cheaper phone calls within the UK and when calling overseas, and operates with mobile calls, landline calls and internet calls. Among other things, they offer SIM cards for various countries, including France, Germany, Spain, UK, New Zealand and the USA as well as a global SIM card.

When you know which country you are going to be travelling to, you simply purchase a SIM card for that country and you will not pay roaming charges, and have a set price for calls within your nominated country. You can buy a pay-as-you-go SIM card or SIM with a monthly fee. If you travel a lot to various countries, the global SIM is the best option.

Axvoice is a VoIP service provider that offers its service in the US and Canada. The service offers call plans for different subscribers with varying purchasing power. Business and residential phone users are offered separate call plans according to their own specific needs.

With Axvoice you can make phone calls around the world. Call rates to 40 international destinations worldwide are 1.5 cents a minute. Calling rates to mobile phones and landline are also competitive, which helps save money on domestic as well as international phone calls. Nationwide call rates offered by Axvoice are also reasonable and would help you reduce your monthly phone bills.

Nimbuzz is a call and messaging app that give free calls and messaging between Nimbuzz users, and the app works on most mobile platforms – iPhone, Android etc, and that includes the Blackberry. You can also make very cheap calls to landlines and non-Nimbuzz mobile users using NimbuzzOut.

The Nimbuzz mobile app uses the internet and works between any internet enabled device – mobile to mobile or between mobile and computer. It’s PC and Mac compatible. It uses Wi-Fi, 3G, 2G and GPRS. Basically, it works on anything that has an internet connection.

Vonage is a sophisticated voip service that routes your phone calls over the internet from your existing landline phone. With the Vonage phone adapter and your high-speed internet you can have several phones connected to the Vonage system to make internet calls throughout your home. You can order the phone adapter online, or buy from a retailer.

Vonage claim to have very good call quality, and with Vonage there is no need to have a computer to make internet calls, you just need a high-speed internet connection, and the Vonage Phone adapter will do the rest.

You can use a fax machine with their system, you can transfer your existing phone number, and you can have more than one Vonage line.

netTALK.com provide free calls to the US and Canada and low cost international calls using a voip device that connects directly to your router and with a mobile phone app – and of course free calls to any other netTALK user worldwide. Only available in the United States.

Free mobile calls to the US and Canada

The mobile app is compatible with the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad as well as Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile.

NetTalk.com route your free calls over their voip network so you don’t incur mobile minute charges. You can connect using wi-fi, 3G and EDGE. The free calls also include conference calling.

Voxofon is a low-cost phone service for making international calls directly from your mobile or landline, as well as from a computer. The mobile voip version works on any handset that has internet access including Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Palm Pre and Windows Phone 7. You get a free test call, there are no monthly fees, and rates start as low as 1 cent per minute.

Dialing from a Smartphone

When you install Voxofon on your handset you need to give it permission to access the internet. When you make an international call, Voxofon is activated and gives you the available options to make your call over the Voxofon network. These options could be to call a local number or to set up a call back, for example.