If you´re unfamiliar with it, Skype is a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) application, of which a few exist. Download it to your computer, buy some credit, and you´re good to go with phone calls from pretty much anywhere to pretty much anywhere. Since I lug my laptop, not to mention a headphone-mike (I can be such a geek), everywhere, actually talking on my computer is no problem, silly though it may seem... hey, I´ll do a lot to save a buck. And major bucks are what international cell phone calls can cost me.
(Major disclaimer: this may be completely incorrect, but it's my understanding and I'm sticking to it.) The problems with using a US cell phone abroad are these: to make phone calls on your US cellphone outside the US, especially overseas, you must generally have a GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) phone, which will work on international bands. If you've got a GSM phone, making phone calls overseas on your GSM cell phone contracted with a US company can be done but may be horrendously expensive because you're roaming, basically. To avoid that, you must have an unlocked GSM phone so you can buy SIM cards (subscriber information module chips) for it, and SIM cards enabling you to make phone calls in the country you're in are available on practically every corner in some of those countries... but you can't always put those SIM cards in your locked US phone, GSM or not. Why? I dunno, but I´m assuming it´s because most US cell companies lock their phones so that you must sign over your first born and swear allegiance to the company before they'll hand over a not-so-free phone, which means you can't switch your love to any other company mid-contract without then sometimes having to buy the phone. An unlocked GSM quad-band phone, or one that works abroad with SIM cards from the local convenience store (how convenient), is not simple to come by (read expensive or unavailable -- though, as once disclaimed already, my understanding of these technicalities is admittedly very limited).
I'm lucky enough to have gotten an unlocked GSM phone for free with my account through my beloved, albeit tiny, Union Cellular phone company, and I bought a Mexico SIM card for it yesterday in Guadalajara for $13 with 15 minutes worth of calls. I can buy more using my credit card. (I have a little collection of SIM cards from other countries alongside all the pocket change I always forget to spend before I leave a country. In the bad old days before I had an unlocked GSM phone, I even bought a phone in the UK and in Australia. Those are now objets de curiosity in my souvenir collection.)
Depending on where I am, though, making phone calls using Skype on my laptop, which I'm always lugging, flashpacker that I am, can be cheaper than using my cell phone and a SIM card. The drawback, of course, is that I must be near my laptop and prepared to don the aforementioned headset to talk on Skype, thus drawing the aforementioned looks. Or there´s always the old bag over the head.
If you don't have Skype yet, check it out:
Related: Backpackers, Bucks and Techno Travel - Flashpacking: Backpacking WIth Coin and Toys
