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Comment by jkincaid | Hacker News Reader

One thing to note: the blog post says that calls in US and Canada are free at least through the end of the year.

I asked about this during the Q&A (seemed like a pretty big asterisk) and they said they have every intention of keeping it free as long as they can, provided that the margins on international calls cover the expenses for the free US/Canada calls. Fingers crossed.

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Wait, what? They use the rest of the world to subsidize their free US/Canada calls? That’s certainly a convincing reason for me (= rest of the world) to never ever use that service.

Why? If the prices are still cheaper than what you would pay otherwise, would you still boycott it? This isn't a novel business concept - airlines do this too with business/first class subsidizing economy - does this mean you don't fly either?

Look at it this way. When I fly business or first class I'd be subsidizing for those who can't afford a normal flight cost.

I don't think it would be right to claim whole of US can't afford paying for GMail calls while the entire world outside it can pay more to keep it free for Americans.

It can also be interpreted to mean that international call from US will be charged. As long as these calls make up for the cost US-US and US-Canada calls would remain free.

It is not that rest of the world that will subsidize. It is the international callers who'll.

Ah, that makes more sense. Like Google Voice, this will probably not even be available for the rest of the world for a long, long time. Still sucks, but less :)

It appears to me, just because I've got my country/language set to US English.

I don't think that's really the case. I can call Germany for $0.02 with gVoice and that's pretty much the cheapest I've ever seen for a international rate. Even my family over there can't call the USA for less than EUR 0.019 (which is MORE than gVoice)

Maybe you intended to say 0.19.

0.019 < 0.02

0.019 Euro > 0.02 US Dollar

Watch the units :)

Sorry, my fault. This really teaches me to read better comments, especially here on Hacker News. Thank you for pointing this.

My preferred carrier has it for about half that, even after markup: http://www.callwithus.com/showrates/G

Holy crap that's cheap. How's the quality?

Satisfactory to most destinations, speaking as a phreaker with sensitive ears. I strongly recommend them.

I use 12voip. It's cheaper. http://www.12voip.com/en/calling-rates.html

That's not cheap at all! I use JustVoip where landlines to most of the countries are free (after you charge your credit) and mobiles are less than half this amount.

http://www.justvoip.com/en/calling-rates.html

Yes, sorry for not being more clear in my original post. It sounded to me like fees from outbound international calls originating in the US will be used to subsidize the domestic US calls.

This is based on the very shaky assumption that international callers won't learn to use Skype or Google's own VOIP chat.

It's hard to get my 93 year-old grandma on Skype.

Easier once she takes a look at the bill and sucks air through her teeth and says "so then, how do you make this computer free phone thing work?"

I doubt they're her teeth.

No it can't be interpreted to mean that, because it's incorrect.

I'm in France, and if i want to call France, i have to pay. But i'm not making any international calls.

What it can be interpreted to mean though, is that Google wants to focus on us audience first, as they do with nearly all their services.

I'm not in the US, but i'm fine with that. If they want to offer good service, they first have to make it viable economically.

It relies on Google Voice which is not available in France anyway.

Hell no! As long as it is still cheaper and the service is as good, I am going to use it. I saw the international prices and I am going to end up paying almost half to what Skype charges. So, I am definitely in!

I checked the rates and they are similar to Skype , basically very expensive. I use LocalPhone and very happy.

To call Nepal, skype was 0.39 while google is 0.19. I just checked localphone and it is 0.149. very cool! How is the service of LocalPhone? Would to love to know your experience and looking forward to give it a try.

I may be slightly biased as I work for Localphone, but we pride ourselves in delivering a quality service for a reasonable price. The cool thing about this that Google have opened up is that you can call any of our (Localphone) US access numbers for free from your Gmail inbox, and then take advantage of our cheap rates to compete the international leg of the call.

The fact that I have to enter the pin and password turned me off. Rebtel is a similar service and they give me a new local phone number for each international number. They are a bit expensive compare to localphone but atleast I don't have to enter any of these pin and passcode stuff.

Also, the free test call does not really work. When I end up creating an account, it says you have no funds. where did test call go?

I think the quality is the same . It's mainly the problems of the destination infrastructure, I usually never blame Skype or LocalPhone. But I found that for LocalPhone on weekends , sometimes the lines are busy (Montreal,Canada) so I have to wait couple of hours to be able to call - but it's very rare.

tuxychandru has it right.

From the article: "Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates."

And: "If you’re not a U.S. based user—or if you’re using Google Apps for your school or business—then you won’t see it quite yet."

Also, you might want to check out the rates (they do seem pretty cheap for international calls, but I'm not an American so I don't know the standard): https://www.google.com/voice/rates,

Are you going to use a service that is worse and/or more expensive then? If their international rates are competitive, there's nothing wrong with that. Not all services are profit centers. Some need to be subsidized. Others should be subsidized for strategic/marketing reasons (which is likely what we see here).

Sure, and the people who buy AdWords subsidize search for the rest of us who don't. So?

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