I don’t have a land line here and occasionally can’t use my cell phone. Infrequently I might want to place a VOIP to telephone call, but I don’t want to get a monthly service plan or anything like that for infrequent calls. Are there any services that are easy to sign up for, no commitment, and allow you to pay on a per-call basis?
To be clear, I don’t mean having some broadband-enabled phone, I just mean using a computer microphone/speakers to connect to a telephone. I know they had services like this a while back, but I have no idea if they still do.
This would work for a while, like so much free minutes time. But then you will have to pay in increments of 5 (or 10) but no monthly fees or anything. I only used them twice they have low prices and okay sound quality. Not the best but usually good enough. http://www.jajah.com/ *
- No affiliation with the website, not an endorsement of the service, buyer beware, on and on.
Skype does exactly this http://www.skype.com/intl/en/prices/
I came in here to mention skype too. Computer to computer is free, and there is a nominal fee to make a computer to land line phone call.
With Skype, you load your account with money and make calls to phones until the money runs out, instead of explicitly paying on a call-by-call basis. I’m not sure whether this is precisely what the OP is looking for, but it’s probably close. I use it to call long distnace in Canada all the time.
You can also get a phone number so that people on phones can call you on Skype. These phone numbers are available in different parts of the world, even; I could get a New Zealand phone number even though I live in Canada.
Skype also has specials every now and then. Last three months of 2007 were free calling within Canada and the USA, for example.