Success Tip 1: Use The Cloud To Reduce Your Roaming Mobile Charges

Out of necessity, a friend of mine needs to make a trip to the USA – staying over there for nearly three months. Worried about the potential for a huge mobile phone bill she asked how she might….

• Avoid expensive roaming rates when making calls back home and within the US (£1.40 per minute on her contract)
• Avoid having to pay for incoming calls from her friends (99p per minute)
• Not force friends and colleagues in the UK to pay international rates when calling her

Circumstances mean that she’ll be in regular contact with the UK, and assuming on average that there might be about 15 minutes of calls to/from the UK each day, her blended per minute cost would be approximately £1.10 per minute. The total cost over the trip would be about £1,155 (70 calls and 1,050 minutes).

The Cloud Can Avoid Mobile Roaming Charges

Skype™ is a Cloud-based text, voice and video communication service. It’s possible to use their internet telephony services to avoid expensive roaming charges by your UK mobile phone operator by making use of SkypeIn and SkypeOut technology. Here’s how.

1. Set up a Skype account at www.skype.com (free)
2. Buy a SkypeIn UK landline telephone number associated with your new account (cost: £10 for 3 months)
3. Put a voicemail on your UK mobile phone telling callers to dial the SkypeIn UK landline telephone number (usually free), then switch your UK mobile off.
4. Apply £20 Skype credit to your Skype account, which will allow you to use the SkypeOut service to dial a global telephone number from your Skype account (credit cost: £20)
5. Travel to the USA and buy a cheap pre-paid mobile phone (cost: $20 = £13)
6. Set up a Call Forwarder in Skype to forward all calls to your US pre-paid mobile phone. (free)
7. When a friend calls your SkypeIn UK landline number, they’ll connect to your Skype account which will automatically SkypeOut to your US pre-paid mobile.  (cost: £0.05 connection fee + £0.016 per minute)  You don’t need to be logged in to Skype to do this.

That’s a saving of over £1,100.

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Success Tips from CRM SuperStars

P.S. Of course, if your friends, family or colleagues also use Skype, then Skype-to-Skype calls are free.