<p>My daughter is going to Australia for a semester. I am trying to find the most economic way for her phone service. </p>
<p>Has anyone used Skype to go number internationally? How does it work? Would she be able to keep her current number with AT&T and retain AT&T service? What about SMS (text messaging)? Is it clear?</p>
<p>I have been on their site, but it wasn’t too clear to me.</p>
<p>You might take a look at Yahoo Voice. It is what we use to make outbound calls from a computer and US and international rates are attractive. I’m waiting for Google Voice which is said to be a free service though I’m not 100% clear on what their services will be.</p>
<p>We skype a lot (DD in Turkey), but she found it better just to buy a prepaid cell phone there, rather than bring her US phone. She has her Skype set so that if I call her and she’s not near her computer, it is forwarded to her cell phone. computer to computer is free. computer to phone is cheap. We LOVE skype, but found that, due to bandwidth problem, we are better off doing it without the visuals - so audio only.</p>
<p>They have this product:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think you dial a special number, then it could dial any number around the world for you. I am just not quite sure how it works.</p>
<p>Here is what worked for us when DD and DS were abroad. DD had a prepaid cell phone that she got in Spain when she was studying there, but she really didn’t use it much. DS actually loved the freedom of not having a cell phone when he interned in Belgium.</p>
<p>To communicate with people at home in the US, they both used Skype. We also purchased a SkypeIn number for each of them ($15 for 3 months). This is a local number, i.e. with your area code, that anyone can call to reach them on Skype (of course, DD and DS had to be at their computer). Here is how we used it: If DD wanted to talk to us and we weren’t at our computer, she would call our home number or cell number via Skype, using a few cents of her Skype credit. Then we would hang up and call her right back on the SkypeIn number, we could talk as long as we liked and no more Skype credit was used. That way she could get in touch with us just about anywhere, anytime. She used this to talk with her friends, too.</p>
<p>Only limitation: DD needed to be on Skype even if we weren’t.</p>
<p>Worked great for us for both DD and DS, especially when dealing with time differences. We were often at work or out during the time when they wanted to call.</p>
<p>Use skype in a wifi zone from your iphone and it is free, like computer to computer…anywhere, anytime.</p>