Ideas needed for cutting International Cell Phone costs

[smithe]

Just curious if anyone has any ideas for cutting International cell phone costs. We currently use AT&T for our cell phone provider for our company and 90% of our business is International. We're on a discounted rate with AT&T for charges, but the charges can still be extremely high. I've encouraged our frequent travelers to get unlocked phones to buy SIM cards while they are there and get the local rates, but this is hard to get them to do as they want to keep their number. Any ideas or anything you might be doing at your company to help keep these costs down? I've read some articles on using callback services, but have not had any experience with this.

Thanks!

 

[donb01]

Vonage has been advertising a mobile app that runs on BlackBerrys - that's an idea.

I don't know if Google Voice does international, but I use it for domestic and it works pretty neat - you might look into that.

If you have an overseas branch office you could try getting a couple of local numbers to you from Lingo or Vonage and sending the adapters to that office to tap into your PBX or use for incoming calling, etc after you get them. Then all you do is call a local number and the call goes to wherever you have plugged in the adapter.

Skype may be another option but I've never used that before so I don't know the scoop.

Starting the brainstorm for you...

 

[fireeater]

skype might be the way to go
depending on who calls who
they do have skype enabled cell phones out there
and skype to skype calls are free

also if they are using laptops from hotels rooms it would be free

but again it depends on how is calling who


HALLOWED ARE THE ORI

mike

http://www.ics-on.ca

 

[Westi]

if you are calling Land lines then you can look for a SIP client for your type of cell phones and sign up for a SIP line in the land you have most calls in. If you are trying to call cell phones in Europe then you will have problems because cell calls are much more expensive there and you might not find better savings. Make sure that you have enough data transfer included in your plan to be able to use SIP otherwise they will ding you with data charges rather then LD charges

Joe W.

FHandw., ACS

I don't suffer from insanity
I enjoy every moment of it