I've just given my parents a call in preparation of a call to my grandparents (they get confused by the skype delay) on Christmas day. 20 yuan is gone in less than 8 minutes though. Is this normal? Are there better options to call abroad?

On China Mobile try 1259300 then country code etc, but I thinks its also about 2rmb a min,,,

I use SparVoip (Voipbuster) for years now, good connection, 90 days free to the countries in their list, after that very good rates to mobile and regular phones. Did never find a better one! But check it out for yourself: www.voipbuster.com/en/index.html

bye Cromson

I use Jajah for 6 years.

I have China Unicom. Is there a built-in service for them somewhere?

Using Kunming based SIM card and China Unicom prefix 101707 (then 00, then the country code and phone number) in Kunming to call USA & Hong Kong (land line or mobile) cost .60RMB/minute. Don't know the cost for calling other countries.

You have to be careful here with these cards and things. My wife bought some card for my mom in the US that was supposed to charge only 1 or 2 jiao per minute, for a call coming from there to here using a certain code. This was off some Chinese website service. A month later my mom got hit with a bill for a couple hundred dollars. The place never turned messages to her when she inquired.

I could these great cards in the US to here for something like 5$ for ten hours. But there is no such deal from here to there. Like you said the IP cards just go. We use MSN or some smart phone deal my wife figured out.