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Comment by nneonneo | Hacker News Reader

I put $10 on an account over ten years ago to make sporadic calls (e.g. customer service in other countries). That account still has $5 left, and I’ve made a ton of calls to many different countries.

What’s a good alternative here? I just want to make outgoing international calls cheaply.

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Nearly same situation here. I recently used it to for travel logistics for a trip to Japan for some local things that didn't have online booking.

From a bit of Googling, Viber may be a reasonable alternative. They're owned by a reasonably non-shady/non-fly-by-night operation (Rakuten), have a desktop app, and let you buy credit without a subscription: https://account.viber.com/en/rates-index

Happy to hear about experiences with alternatives.

Seems reasonable. Rates are more expensive than Skype (almost 2x for some of the destinations I probably want to use), but not catastrophically so. I’ll chuck a tenner in and see how it goes :). Fingers crossed that can last me another decade.

I'm in the same boat, I wonder if you can use the web interface from a 4g modem to make calls/send&recieve SMS messages. Could install a cloudflare tunnel on it and access it while abroad.

I know you can do sms messages, but I'm not sure about calls.

Perhaps an old Android phone could be used for this?

I use MobileVOIP, but voice quality and the probability of a call to connect is inferior to Skype.

30-50 cents per minute is very expensive.

Checked prices, Skype is more expensive.

Especially an alternative that doesn't mean giving money to Google or using any Meta service.

SIP providers. I used Ippi before 2015, but then EU regulations made it illegal to bill more for EU calls than for domestic calls, so I had almost no more use for it.

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