Cheapest international call rates from your iPhone

These days you can make really cheap international calls directly from your iPhone. I’ve used VIP, Jajah, ATT Wireless, Skype and Google Voice. All these services will use your mobile minutes, with the expection of Skype’s iPhone app in WiFi mode. In this post I’ll give my experience with each service from a cost and ease-of-use perspective. I would love to hear about your experiences in the comments.Here goes…

• VIP has many low cost rate plans available. I’ve used VIP for many years and it continues to be my fall back provider. It’s not very user friendly to use, i.e., no integration with the iPhone’s Contacts app. You have to dail a tollfree number and then you can dail your international number.
• Jajah has an iPhone dailer web app that works well. You can add contacts to you Jajah address book via the Jajah.com web site. Unfortunately Jajah’s iPhone app doesn’t integrate with the iPhone’s Contacts app. Jajah on the iPhone only works when you are in 3G or/and WiFi mode.
• ATT Wireless: Adding ATT’s $5.99 p/m World Connect service to your plan allows you can make international calls directly with your iPhone’s Contacts app at much cheaper rates (e.g., 28c p/min to a UK mobile phone vs ATT’s standard $1.69 per min.). This is by far the most friendly solution although not the cheapest. ATT World Connect and Standard Rates lookup.
• Skype recently launched it’s own iPhone app. With the Skype app you can make FREE (only in WiFi mode) calls from your iPhone to any Skype user around the world. The rates below apply when make calls to landlines and mobile phones. Skype’s app works well and a huge plus is that it integrates directly with the iPhone’s Contacts app, so I don’t have to duplicate my contact info in Skype. Skype’s VOIP calling competes with Fring.com.
• Google Voice: In a previous post I wrote about Google’s new Voice service. Google Voice has the lowest rates for international calling! You can access the service in one of two ways: (1) Using Google’s mobile web site — also only works in WiFi and/or 3G mode, or (2) by calling your own Google Voice # and using voice prompts a-la VIP mentioned above. One great thing about Google Voice is that all my contacts are sync-ed with Google automatically using my Mac’s AddressBook. Calling from the mobile web site is fairly easy. Definitely not as easy as Skype or using World Connect.

This table compares call rates from the US to land lines in different countries (click on a title to sort each column):

Provider	UK	Germany	France	South Africa	Australia
Google Voice	0.02	0.02	0.02	0.06	0.03
ATT Wireless (World Connect)	0.08	0.09	0.09	0.36	0.09
ATT Wireless (Standard)	1.49	1.49	1.49	2.69	3.49
VIP (SANZAR Economy Rate Plan)	0.07	0.08	0.07	0.079	0.05
Jajah	0.031	0.033	0.033	0.085	0.037
Skype (incl VAT)	0.024	0.024	0.024	0.078	0.024

The following table compares call rates from the US to mobile phone numbers in other countries:

Provider	UK	Germany	France	South Africa	Australia
Google Voice	0.19	0.18	0.15	0.18	0.17
ATT Wireless (World Connect)	0.28	0.26	0.22	0.53	0.24
ATT Wireless (Standard)	1.69	1.66	1.62	2.86	3.64
VIP (SANZAR Economy Rate Plan)	0.239	0.26	0.23	0.21	0.189
Jajah	0.203	0.288	0.197	0.222	0.201
Skype (incl VAT)	0.291	0.283	0.233	0.268	0.233

To summarize:

• Ease of use winner: ATT World Connect. For ease dailing you cannot beat dailing directly from your iPhone’s Contacts app. Skype is a close second, followed by Google Voice, Jajah and then VIP.
• Low cost winner: Google Voice is the cheapest. Skype is the cheapest (FREE) if you have access to WiFi.
• Overall winner: For me Google Voice is the overall winner — fairly easy to use and the cheapest rates. If cost was less of an issue then I would’ve picked ATT’s World Connect as the winner.