Jeff Ballweg

Living in New Zealand has it’s challenges; you’re pretty far from your family, visitors are few, trips home are expensive – I guess that’s the price you have to pay to live in the most naturally beautiful places in the world. One thing I noticed is that you don’t get too many phone calls from your home. Sure, Julie and I can keep tabs on our friends and siblings via Facebook, email, Twitter, Skype, Flickr and any multitude of mashed-up combinations thereof. The less technically savvy can dial direct by adding 011, then the country code, (64) to my number (be sure to drop the leading zero on my area code) – which works great, but it’s expensive and still fairly complicated, leaving you out of touch with one important demographic – the Grandmas.

Thankfully, the internet can help you and Grandma chat anytime, even if she thinks that a Twitter is something to do with The Facebook or maybe The Google. A thoughtful grandkid can hook Grandma up so that she can call New Zealand without any more effort than it takes to arrange a game of euchre.

Here’s how it works:
Grandma calls a local number, which actually goes to a server somewhere, which puts the call out onto the internet directed at my computer. If I’m on my computer, and it’s online, it will ring like a big fancy speakerphone, and I can talk right througth the microphone. If I’m out wandering around New Zealand, or anywhere else really, I can set it to forward her call to my mobile phone, and I’ll pay whatever the local rate is on my end. When I answer, there’s Grandma.
Of course, all this happens in a few seconds, so Grandma doesn’t notice all the switching, and she doesn’t have to listen to any automated menus, or do anything once she’s dialed. All she knows is that she can call a local number and somehow she ends talking to me in a New Zealand grocery store where Julie and I are looking for salsa on the bottom shelf of the International aisle.

Sound awesome? Here’s how you hook it up.
1. Install Skype on your computer.

2. Get an account, and a subscription.
There are usually three to chose from, depending on your spot in the world. Unlimited US/Canada, Unlimited to a specific country, and Unlimited World. Pick whichever works for you, and remember you’ll be calling your own mobile phone from here too.

3. Get Skype To Go, and pick a phone number.
Here you’ll be able to choose a number for the people that will be calling you. I picked one that would be local to my home town. This might not work for everyone everywhere, because this is only available wherever Skype has it set up, but more and more numbers are being added. Chose one that’s going to be cheap for Grandma.

4. Setup Skype Out
If you’ve gotten this far, Grandma can now call you on that local number – but it will only ring on your computer, which is not ideal unless you’re always on the computer. If that’s enough, you’re done.
I set up Skype Out, which rings my mobile number if I don’t pick up on the computer. If you’ve figured out how this works, here is the part you’ll have to pay for, the call to your own mobile. It’s far cheaper than calling direct from overseas tho, and Grandma needn’t know that it costs you a few cents to take her call, otherwise she probably wouldn’t call at all.

The great thing about this setup is that you can log into the Skype web site from anywhere and change which mobile number you’ll forward to. This is particularly useful if you go to another country. So let’s say my phone will roam just fine in Australia, but it costs more than an Aussie phone. I can simply pickup a new SIM card at the airport, plug it in to my GSM phone, and change the number Skype is forwarding to. Grandma still dials the same number, I have a handy local phone to call out on, and my New Zealand voice mails will be there when I get back. If you don’t have a phone that works on the local network, you can just buy or rent a cheap one. The New York Times had a little thing on this in March, which is the same idea. Not only is Grandma happy, but if you’ve got some business contacts overseas, they can reliably dial one number and not worry about where you are this week.

One last trick: if you have a smartphone capable of WiFi there is probably a Skype client for it, which means that you can skip the part where you use your computer as a speakerphone, which is pretty handy as the audio quality is often better on a handset and you can wander the house while you talk like I do. It also means that if you’re near an open WiFi network, and you take the call through the phone’s Skype client, your call will be free. Free calls from your Grandma in Wisconsin to a hostel in Wollongong.