telecom - How to reduce your costs to almost zero

I had this weekend an phone interview with a journalist from Europe, belonging to a smaller publication, who first expected calling me over the phone would be too expensive, after he discovered I was now in China. I had to explain that making calls does not has to costs anything or very little and I will explain how I reduce my telecommunication communication costs. Most of my readers will be enough used to the internet to know how to avoid unnecessary telecommunications costs. Some of you might even be smarter than I am and you cen set me straight in the comments. This market is changing very fast, so also I do not know all the tricks.

First, some unavoidable costs. You have to pay a subscription to broadband internet. Even when you have free internet at the office, you still have to pay at home. That is in my case 120 Renminbi per month or 12 euro. Sitting behind your computer, there is very little reason to pay more, when the other persons are also using the same systems. I typically communicate over a set of IM-services that also allow voice: Skype, MSN, Yahoo and Gtalk. I have quit a few other IM-services like ICQ and not always switch on all my four services. The past few months I frequently moved into the 'invisible' mode for some of the service. Communicating is a nice thing, but now this part of the world is getting flatter and does not cost anymore, sometimes you have to manage your information flow by really unsympathetic measures like switching off. If you want to improve your online Chinese (quite different from standard Chinese), you have to join QQ. Over a hundred million people are eager to talk to you.

Most of the time I would use Gtalk when possible: because relatively few people this service, sound quality is best, although most of the time the other services also work without problems.

A problem occurs when the people you want to call who are not subscribed to any of those services. That is a prerequisite for free calls and they have to download quite some software in some cases. When you want to call landlines from your computer, you might have to pay up to 2 eurocent or 20 yao per minute. I use most of the time Skype, but the other services apart from Gtalk offer you competitive services.

A second option is Jajah.com. Again free between subscribers, you do not have to download any software and you are actually able to get free phone calls between mobile and fixed lines. You still have to set up the connection behind your computer, so the advantage is limited. Also is it very hard to identify other Jajah-users: there are no convenient search options like on Skype.

Main problem - at least for me - are European mobile phone users. That is the last part of the telecom imperium that has not been cracked and Skype charges me for those calls not 2 but 22 eurocents per minute. Jajah is only slightly cheaper with 15 eurocent per minute. The service 123call or 123bell has been able to circumvent and reduces those costs to 3 eurocent per minute, but is only available in the UK, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, so I can only be called. For me that only makes it cheaper.

Skype, who las been leading this trend of destruction of the classic telecom operators, started to lose market share as cheaper options are coming on the market. In some countries, but not yet in China, they offer connections to regular lines for about 5 euro per month. That could offer them an advantage again, but I guess not for long.