International Phone Calls to Malaysia

Eid is coming soon, i'm sure many of you are planning to call home to wish everyone 'Selamat Hari Raya'. There are plenty of ways to do this, using mobile, home phone or even the internet( VOIP). I'll just go through some of it here.

Calling from Landline(Home Phone)

Over the years there have been many discount number being pass down through generation(malaysian) but they always expire at some point. Loiol.co.uk and CallChecker provide an easy way to check the most current discount number. What you do then, is call these numbers and dial (006-Malaysian Number) followed by a '#' to call your destination in Malaysia. Please note that there is a charge per call (around 10p) for all the discount number. If you want further information of the real rates(including charge per call), you can check BT or Virgin website for their rates for special numbers. Although the cheapeast number advertise is only 0.5p per minute, that almost never works. The 2p one always works. If you want to try the 0.5p number, don't try it many time because you are charge per call as well as per minute. Be aware of that.

Calling from Mobile

This makes me remember the day when 007744 number was available. Back then, you can call any international number by going through this number just using your free minutes. That's practically free(except you need to pay your mobile monthly fee, haha). I'm sure these special number will pop again in the future. But for now, there's always Rebtel. With Rebtel you can call using your free minutes but still need to pay for the international connection. Practically it will cost you 2.1p per minute for calling mobile in Malaysia and 1p per minute for landline. Even better, you get a special number that you can use to call your malaysian friend directly. There is no operator teling you this and that (while taking some of your precious minutes).

Another method is using Voipstunt Direct provided you have a voipstunt account. However, in my experience, this will cost more that Rebtel. But it's good during emergency.

VOIP Call

Skype. What can i say? There are the most famous voip company around. You can skype using you mobile phone, Iphone, linux, windows and mac. There are reasonably price and provide the best call quality compared to other VOIP Provider. Another option would be Voipstunt which provide free landline call to malaysia provided you subscribe with them. It will cost you 10 Euro but will last for 4 Month if you just use it to call landline in Malaysia. Calls to mobile phone will deduct you balance by 3.6p per minute.