Skype is free between Skype users worldwide.

Outgoing calls to regular phone numbers are about 2 cents/minute within most of Europe and U.S.A. together, and slightly higher outside. No monthly fees or any other B.S.

Incoming calls from landlines are also available, same concept but with a small fee for your necessary regular phone number. Voice mail, etc., etc.

Works very well.

My brother was in Bombay on business together with two colleagues. International phone calls are still expensive there, especially from hotels, so they bought a local cell phone for about $100 with cards costing about 2 cents/minute for what I think was 140Kbps data access.

My brother connected this to his laptop, and called me on Skype for free.

In the meantime, his colleagues connected wirelessly to his laptop via Wi-Fi and did their own web surfing, as well as chatting (which is also in Skype).

All this via one bought cell phone...

I signed up each member of my family a month or so ago so that I could get easy-to-remember usernames. I think Skype is going to be big. You can now buy an inexpensive wireless phone to carry around the house that is Skype-friendly--you don't need to be sitting at your PC, wearing a headset and boom mic.

Grazie, I was wondering if Skype offers some sort of automatic translator codec that converts "English and Australian" speech variants into regular old "American." Not only the phoenetics, but also things like converting "holiday" into "vacation," or "bonnet" into "hood."

...and, to be on the safe side, also a cross conversion between the British "waist bag" and the American equivalent "fanny pack".

The example above, on the phone especially, is a misunderstanding in both directions, and it is not trivial... (I don't even think it should be explained here).