In my line of work, I have to make quite a few calls to the UK. As part of our standard business practice, we make use of services like Skype to help reduce the costs of international calling that you would incur if you use traditional telephone providers. It occurred to me recently after a plethora of issues in getting the call quality of Skype to be what I needed it to in order for the person on the other to understand me, that I needed another solution.

So my options were:

• Skype (Skype to Landline or Skype to Mobile)
• Ooma (VOIP to Landline or VOIP to Mobile)
• Google Voice (VOIP to Landline or VOIP to Mobile)

Some of the requirements that I had going into this were:

1. The call quality was essential. I need to be able to use a traditional phone line that will give me more call quality than using an interface off the computer (such as a bluetooth device connected to a laptop connected through Skype to VOIP).
2. Ease of use, the solution has to be easy to use.
3. Maintain list of contacts, I can’t have contacts in Outlook, and in whatever I use, and maintain them separately. I either have to use one exclusively or have a link between Outlook and it.
4. Ability to seamlessly charge, most solutions require the use of payment, so that payment option has to be a one-click solution. I can’t be reaching for my credit card each time I run out of minutes.
5. Ability to receipt. This one seems kind of obvious, but in reality it’s not. But the solution has to be able to generate a receipt that indicates I was the one that purchased it, so that I can then claim that expense on my expense report.
6. Must maintain a call history or call log so I can see when I make calls.
7. Cheap international rates. I’m a cheapskate let’s get over that! Also it makes good business sense that you want a solution that is going to save you money instead of what you are currently paying.

With all of these requirements to go after lets look at each solution. So to start with you have Skype. Some of the benefits here are:

1. There is a seemless link between your contacts in Outlook and the contacts in Skype. This makes maintaining contacts very easy.
2. Call history is there, so I know when the last time I contacted the person, etc.
3. Each time I refill it’s a push of a button and I get an email generated that I can print to PDF and expense.
4. Easy to use, Skype is a no-brainer

The only real downside with Skype has been the call quality. Most of the times I’m at home the calls are pretty good, and I attribute that to the firewall configurations I made and the fact that I have a fairly good speed with Comcast (15Mbps down/8Mbps up).

Now just this week I started to look at Ooma. They do have a function where you can add funds to your Ooma account and then be able to make international calls. The upside to Ooma is:

1. Call quality is amazing.
2. I can use my home telephone equipment
3. Easy to recharge

The immediate downsides were:

1. There isn’t a good way to maintain contact addresses and they are separate from Outlook.
2. While recharging the minutes is easy, getting a receipt is non-existent. I contacted Ooma billing and they sent me a screenshot that was in all ways useless. I have more benefit getting my credit card statement and redacting the other bits and sending that in to expense.

Then I tried Google Voice. This was a surprise to me as I have been using Google Voice since they were GrandCentral and primarily use it for US business calls. The functions of Google Voice are amazing, and I’m surprised it took me this long to use it internationally.

The upsides are:

1. While you do maintain the addresses separately, Google Voice provides a better platform for maintaining your contacts and grouping them together in meaningful ways.
2. Easy to use
3. You can select which phone you want to take the call on and you get all the GV features such as call recording, voice mail transcription, call transferring etc.
4. Recharging is one-click.
5. Great receipt feature to be able to expense off of.

At the present moment, I can’t see any downsides of Google Voice. This has been definitely a diamond in the rough and I’m kicking myself that I didn’t use this earlier!

Now comes the last bit which is cost. Is Google Voice a better option functionally but not so on the cost side of things. Let’s look at a comparison of rates that I have put together. Let’s start with Comcast Digital Voice as I had them before moving to Ooma, just to see what the “other” guy can do for you:

Comcast Digital Voice
United Kingdom $0.08
United Kingdom – Mobile $0.30

Clearly there isn’t a whole lot of savings here, but this is what you would expect from your traditionaly phone company.

Ooma
United Kingdom $0.028
United Kingdom – London $0.019
United Kingdom – London $0.019
United Kingdom – NTS $0.33
United Kingdom – NTS $0.33
United Kingdom – NTS $0.33
United Kingdom – NTS $0.33
United Kingdom – NTS $0.33
United Kingdom – NTS $0.33
United Kingdom – NTS $0.33
United Kingdom – Mobile $0.33

The prices from Ooma are much more competitive than from your Comcast Digital Voice solution for land-lines, but not so much for mobile as their calls are actually more expensive. This was definitely surprising for me as I would have assumed that from a VOIP provider their pricing would be much more competitive. Let’s look at Skype.

Skype
United Kingdom $ 0.024
United Kingdom-London $ 0.024
United Kingdom – Mobile – Hutchison3G $ 0.291
United Kingdom – Mobile – O2 $ 0.291
United Kingdom – Mobile – Orange $ 0.291
United Kingdom – Mobile – Others $ 0.291
United Kingdom – Mobile – Tmobile $ 0.291
United Kingdom – Mobile – Vodafone $ 0.291
United Kingdom – Premium Rate – Band 1 $ 0.559
United Kingdom – Premium Rate – Band 2 $ 1.117
United Kingdom – Premium Rate – Band 3 $ 1.676
United Kingdom – Premium Rate – Band 4 $ 2.792
United Kingdom – Premium Rate – Band 5 $ 3.351
United Kingdom-Shared Cost-0844 $ 0.136
United Kingdom-Shared Cost-0845 $ 0.147
United Kingdom-Shared Cost-0870 $ 0.208
United Kingdom-Shared Cost-0871 $ 0.261
United Kingdom-Toll Free $ 0.000

As we would expect, Skype’s costs are just slightly better than either Comcast or Ooma. Their landline costs are about the same, and their mobile calling is just slightly better. Still any savings is a savings! Now to Google Voice.

Google Voice
United Kingdom $0.02
United Kingdom, Mobile $0.19

Well as you can see, Google Voice comes in right at the bottom of all of the above providers. Their cost for landlines is a flat $0.02 so some savings there, and their mobile is a few pennies less than all the previous providers. The winner appears to be Google in this round! Now I will caveat this by saying that Skype does offer unlimited international packages for a monthly and quarterly fee that allow you unlimited calling to landlines in the UK along with other countries. Now I’m not saying that this is bad, as I was signed up for this service until just recently. But the downside is that the Skype call quality was never what I really needed it to be, so even though the landline calls were covered and ultimately reduced the price, I always had issues with people not being able to hear me well.

In the end I would recommend anyone who in a similar position as I am to look at Google Voice as an inexpensive way of both making international calls, but making it easier to manage your contacts and voice messages and leveraging the services within Google Voice to do your job more effectively! Post comments if you have any questions!