The English Speaking Swedish Community - For all expats in Sweden

Not too long ago I discovered Rebtel - an amazingly cheap telephone service where you can make international phone calls over the Internet from a cell phone, for rates that rates that you would never have expected; and it is based in Stockholm! They have since built an iPhone and Android application, so it can be taken on the go and they just gave xpats some free money to give away to use on their service.

I have family in South Africa, England and the US and so I have always had a need for a cheaper alternative to calling home. I remember when I started university back in 1997, I had to send snail mail letters to all my friends back in South Africa, and rack up a huge phone bill with my friends in Europe. Those times soon changed and we started sending mail, and today we have progressed to making Internet phone calls from cell phones. Amazing.

Then came Skype, and although it has seemed to work if you are a home body, it was limited that it could not really be taken anywhere. For those of us who live away from home, and only treat our shoebox downtown Stockholm apartments as a dormitory, I found a service called Rebtel which makes it possible to call for cheap from a cell phone and bypass the local service provider like 3 or Telia. And I mean seriously cheap!

To give an idea of the costs:

0.112 SEK/minute to call from Sweden to any number in the USA

0.149 SEK/minute from Sweden to Australia

0.074 SEK/minute from Sweden to the UK

0.432 SEK/minute from Sweden to South Africa

It works by allowing you to create special "contact" number to put into you cellphone address book. When you all this number, connects you into the Rebtel service and calls the contact you have chosen. It is really simple and all you have to do is sign up for an account and use the below voucher code.

This voucher code that adds $5 bonus on the first $10 deposit. That's a 50% bonus, $5 is equal to approx 6 hours of calling to the UK or Mexico, or about one hour to Asia or Africa. When signing up for you new account input REBTEL5 as the voucher code.

I have had great success with this service, and please share your thoughts about it. Are there any other services like it? Are there other good services specially targeting expats?

by Jeff (jeff@xpats.nu) 2010-08-11

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