# Making Phone Calls to Afghanistan - what options are best?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-phone-calls-to-afghanistan-what-options-are-best/634565>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [September 13, 2012, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-phone-calls-to-afghanistan-what-options-are-best/634565 "2012-09-13T02:22:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Mrs.Cake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2acd7d/32.png) [@Mrs.Cake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mrs.Cake)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-phone-calls-to-afghanistan-what-options-are-best/634565/1 "2012-09-13T02:22:21Z")

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So my husband is off to be a contractor in Afghanistan and I’ve been researching options for us to stay in touch. Our current family plan is with AT&T which was fine when he was working domestically but they are incredibly expensive for calls from here to there. There must be some Dopers with this experience. Is it better to use Skype (voice only), prepaid calling plans, [phoneafghanistan.com](http://phoneafghanistan.com), something else?

There seem to ve a variety of options at a variety of prices. I’m not necessarily looking to only go with the cheapest option, I just want to make sure it we don;t pick one that is shady or unreliable.

Any suggestions?

And yes, this all rather sucks. I didn’t really expect to have my husband halfway around the world for months at a time starting in my 50’s. Not used to this at all. But that is a subject for a minirant thread.

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**Author:** ![Nawth\_Chucka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c57346/32.png) [@Nawth\_Chucka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nawth_Chucka)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-phone-calls-to-afghanistan-what-options-are-best/634565/2 "2012-09-13T02:33:17Z")

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We used Google Voice to talk through email; the lag and quality will depend on his internet speed. But it’s free!

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**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-phone-calls-to-afghanistan-what-options-are-best/634565/3 "2012-09-13T04:25:05Z")

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Be sure to throw in occasional references to bombs and jihad to give the good folks at NSA something to do. 🆒

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**Author:** ![JimmyFlair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ce7236/32.png) [@JimmyFlair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JimmyFlair)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2012, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-phone-calls-to-afghanistan-what-options-are-best/634565/4 "2012-09-14T05:16:55Z")

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Mr Flair also worked in Afghanistan this past spring and Skype worked just fine. We also both have Blackberry playbooks and the video chat on that worked great as well. He was staying in Kabul, but I’m not sure about the internet situation outside of the capital.

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**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2012, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-phone-calls-to-afghanistan-what-options-are-best/634565/5 "2012-09-14T16:51:27Z")

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Skype is likely your best bet. I’ve worked in Afghanistan and currently manage projects based in Afghanistan and we use skype almost exclusively.