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I often take a laptop
computer to Turkey with me, and I call
home for free using
Skype.
When it's evening in Istanbul,
it's morning in Concord,
Massachusetts,
and my wife Jane is
usually sitting at her desk working
on her computer.
I click on Skype,
click on her name, and bingo! In seconds we're
talking with digital-quality sound.
The cost? $0. YTL0. €0. £0. ¥0.
Zero! Yok! Sifir! Bedava!
And I'm the guy who used to have to
spend US$6 per minute to
call home from Turkey! (10-minute call:
US$60!)
These days, if my Turkish hotel has
wireless Internet (as
many do—even
small, cheap hotels and pensions),
I can lie
in bed and call home for
free.
Or I can sit in the lobby and mystify
the
other
guests by chatting
with my wife on the other side of the
world through my computer...for
free.
If my wife is on a business trip,
no problem. She's a hot-shot
management consultant, and is probably staying
in a posh hotel somewhere with high-speed
Internet. If she's using her computer,
I click and we're talking, no matter
where she is. I don't even have to
know where she is. I just click on
her Skype name and we're talking.
For me, this is simply magical,
and the price—$0 YTL0 €0 £0 ¥0
Zero—certainly can't be beat.
But what about my dear 95-year-old
mother? She's never used a computer,
and she's not about to start now. How
can I call her?
No problem! I use
a Skype service
called SkypeOut which
allows me to call any regular landline
or mobile
telephone in the world. The cost? Whatever
the cost is for a local call at the
destination (usually a few
US cents per minute). (In
95 years, my mother has seen a lot
of new things, but she still thinks
Skype is nothing short of amazing,
especially because of the low cost—she's
a real penny-pincher!)
I use Skype from my office at home
to make
calls to Turkey, because then
I'll pay only the Turkish local call
rate
(pennies per minute) instead of those
often-fearsome international telephone
rates. And if I'm calling a Turkish
friend who's at a computer, I pay nothing
(and neither does my Turkish friend.)
What if you don't plan to
take a computer with
you when you travel? Use SkypeIn,
whereby you use a regular telephone
to call a local number to connect with
your loved one(s) or business associates
via their computers anywhere in the
world. The cost? Just that of a local
call.
It costs absolutely nothing
to give Skype a try. The software
is free (Windows, Mac, Linux,
PocketPC, etc.).
Computer-to-computer calls
are free, anywhere, all
the time.
I haven't noticed any obtrusive ads,
pop-ups or junk email because of my
Skype membership, either.
So how do they make money? On their
premium services, such as SkypeIn and
SkypeOut, which I use very happily,
and I save gobs of money using them.
Click on a link in the right-hand
column of this page to try Skype. I
don't think you'll be sorry.
—Tom
Brosnahan
Internet Access in Turkey
Telephones in Turkey
Telecommunications
in Turkey
The Janes in my Life
Travel Details
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