Making Calls from India to the US

My regular cell-phone carrier, Cingular, wanted to charge me $2.50 per minute in order to make calls from India to America. Several people told me a better way...use Skype.

I tried it - and whole-heartedly endorse the service. Their internet-to-internet service is FREE, but I took advantage of their SkypeOut service. SkypeOut lets me call any phone in the US from my computer for just 2 cents per minute (and a 35 cent connection charge). Quality is excellent! I highly recommend Skype!

For voice-mails - I used AOL Phoneline. The service is FREE and gives me a local phone number which can accept voice-mails that get recorded and sent to my e-mail address automatically. This service also worked flawlessly -- I highly recommend AOL Phoneline for it's voice-mail to e-mail service.

On an unrelated note -- Cingular recently acquired AT&T Wireless and is dropping the Cingular name. Idiots! I went to Cingular to get away from AT&T Wireless! Words can't describe how much I hated AT&T Wireless. The only service I hated more than AT&T was the long-defunct failure Spring Spectrum -- remember that one with Candice Bergen as their spokesperson?