Cheap phone calls to South Africa from Germany

Hi everyone

I currently have a brilliant internet supplier in the UK that will allow me to ring landlines in South Africa for FREE! My family live there, so it is vital I find the best possible deal...

We are moving to Regensburg by the end of May 2008 and I am wondering if anyone could put me in touch with a supplier that will offer me a internet service with either free international calls or very cheap calls...

Thank you very much!

Try typing cheap calls into the search box.

where is the search box?

I'm not telling you, you have to find it yourself!

Thanks. I have been on the net looking into this for days! Any clues? Do I need to wear special glasses?

You certainly need new glasses if you can't find it in the top right hand corner of the screen underneath the adverts.

thanks, will have another go at finding it

We just switched to Arcor (we had them already for internet access) and now we have a flat rate for calls to the U.S. - I think it's 5€ per month for up to 30 hours of calling (don't quote me on the details, I just know it was enough time for me to chat with my family and all my friends for as long as I want). They offer packages for other international locations (we also wanted one for Turkey) so I'm sure you will find something with them.

Thanks KITKAT64. This helps a lot!! It looks like I will definately not be able to get my great deal of free international calls in Germany, but I am sure in the end I will find a deal that wil suit us.
In the UK I still pay line rental with internet connection on top of that taking it to near £35 in any way...

Checkout http://www.voipraider.com/en/index.html

Thanks Minga!
It looks like this could work. I will give it a go. I cannot use skype as South Africa is not yet ready for it... The Internet is still dial-up mostly and very expensive.

Looks like a similar deal I have at the moment...

Janda

Skype does work in South Africa.

Agree about the internet tho, they are being ripped off there, probably also apart hate to blame!

I do know that there are some people who have skype in South Africa, but none of my people can afford high speed internet or feel the need for it. So skype will only work for certain people.

You can add "CountryFlat II" to most standard Telekom connections. This costs €14.95 per month and allows unlimited free calls to 25 non-European countries, including South Africa. I'm not really sure this is worth it unless you make a lot of calls to SA - on a standard line, using call-by-call a call to SA costs 2.45 cents per minute, so you would meed to make, on average, over 10 hours of calls a month to make it worthwhile.

Thanks YorkshireLad6.
I will look into this. I am sure we will make a lot of calls to South Africa... at least twice a week for about an hour so the mum's can have a chat to the little one!

go on to www.teletip.de and search through there.

Hi Janda

I'm from South Africa. I haven't been using Skype but am connected. If i'm correct, one can call from Skype to a landline (should have a microphone though). I tried calling my bank there on a landline and the cost showed €0.05cents per minutes. I live in Hamburg by the way

Hey, I have CountryFlat with Telekom. Though for me it costs a little more than above suggested - €19.95 + €3.95 (for country flat). Works great for me calling home to Australia. Think SDCalls are a little more expensive, but I don't make any of these anyway!!

You could try www.dialnow.com, the calls to South Africa are 2 cents per minute. We use this for calling NZ, and it works fine.

Before I got the t-com country flat - which only works for EU countries, America, Canada and Australia, I used to click onto this before phoning Ireland, England or wherever. This will give you a list of phone companies you can use at a certain time. You just ring the code under "Anbieter" (provider)

I then bookmarked the countries I needed most. This is the link for South Africa

This is for people who do not have any contracts with a telephone company. The rates change so you have to check every so often.

I hope it is what you were looking for.

Not quite true. There are two "CountryFlat"options - CountryFlat I (€3.94/month) covers most of Europe and North America. CountryFlat II (€14.95/month) covers many eastern block countries, south America, Israel, South Africa, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and New Zealand

Hi All,
We have now been using Skype for the last 3 months. We found after looking at all the options, that this would work best for us. It costs 5cent p/m to phone South African landlines... not too bad! We have considered the T-Punkt options, but all looks like it could cost more.

We had to get a headset with microphone to do this, even though we have one built into our laptop. Sound quility was just too poor... Sound cleaver people would probably be able to give a reason to this.

So, thank you all for the help!

You didn't look very far, not too bad, but very bad. Skype calls to SA cost 6.3 cents/minute (inc VAT) plus 4.5cents connection charge. So if you call someone and only get their answering machine then the call cost you 10.8cents. If you use your normal phone (no headphones, no need to switch on the PC, no quality issues) and dial 01042 before you make the call it will cost you 2.6cents per minute. Almost a third of what you pay and no connection charge, so more than a small saving. Of course, if you make LOTS of calls to SA, then pay Telekom €14.95/month for their Flatrate-world service and all call costs to South Africa and many other countries are included.

Ok! I never said that I would not and cannot change my mind. After all, skype has no contracts...
I still think we have not done too bad. There are a lot of things involved in moving country and the phone deal is not the most important.
I have a toddler running around, who requires finding parks etc! Oh, the life of mum!

So, this number you dial first, can you just dial it from your normal T-Punkt phone? Do you have to set up an account? Is this a fixed pice or is it changing all the time like a lot of other ones I looked at?

Thanks again for your help!

I'm not sure what a "T-punkt phone" is, as I never used a phone in a T-Punkt, but you can certainly use these pre-dial numbers from any Deutsche Telekom line. The numbers do change, but sites like www.billiger-telefonieren.de/ keep you up to date. Currently 01037 is the best number to use for SA, costing even less than before at 2.3cents/minute. No registration needed, the charges come back through your standard Deutsche Telekom invoice.

T-Punkt is the Deutche Telecom...
I will try this, thanks!

Ah, that'll be Deutsche Telekom then...

Hi Janda

As a South African myself I have looked into this option numerous times and must agree with what Yorkshire Lad has said, I always just look quickly on billigertelefonieren.de before phoning SA. Simply go to the "Schnellrechner" select one of the Sudafrika options. You can select landline or cellphone or sometimes Cape Town or Joburg, but in the last 6 months the prices have really got cheap at around 2,6c per minute on average.

You simply dial the prefix like 01037 or 01042 or 01042, depends on which one is cheaper at a specific hour, followed by your full number to SA, so e.g. To Cape Town would be 01037002721xxxxxxx.

Most of these numbers will then have a voice telling you how many cents per minute. Some do not have a voice telling you that, so just check on the above-mentioned site beforehand what the current price is depending on the time of day you call.

BUT this will only work if you have a Deutsche Telekom contract, if your provider is Arcor or one of the others these numbers will not work, I have not tested this as I have a Telekom contract, but that is what Arcor and some of the others told me when I asked them.

Telekom flat rate for SA is only worth it if you plan to call for more than around 10 hours per month, if I remember properly. Hope this helps.

Why not use Skype? I call people in the UK on Skype all of the time and Skype - Skype calls are free. It's also cheaper calling Skye - telephone that telephone - telephone so even if the people you are calling don't use Skype you will save money.

I agree with Warnsteiner: Skype. I cannot even believe people are willing to discuss other options.

Yes, Skype is great when you can phone countries where Internet comes cheap and easy, but in a country like South Africa, Internet is still VERY EXPENSIVE and if anyone have anything other than dial up, it is usually provided by employers... I would say about 10% of people would have something better than just dial up and possibly something like 30% of homes have some kind of internet. (This is a calculated guess on my side, just in case any of you clever people out there want to take me on on that one)

I can and do Skype my one brother who have a "good" internet provider, but I have a lot of trouble with call quality as connections are not as good as we would like them.

There is a reason for the fact that some countries are called "first world" and others "third world".

But Skype to telephone is still cheaper than telephone to telephone i.e. you have Skype installed on your PC and you call someone in S Africa on their telephone number and it only costs 6c per minutes incl VAT - http://www.skype.com/intl/de/prices/callrates/#listing-S

This is exactly what we have been talking about. Yes, Skype is there, but we are still looking for easier and CHEEPER call rates. There is a very clear difference between 6c and 3c (round about) when you make calls of an hour twice a week or more.

So I will look into these CHEEPER options.

No it's not. In fact, it's almost 3 times more expensive - more for short calls. Did you read Cheap phone calls to South Africa from Germany?

I used one of the CHEAP options last night. Call charges was 2.13c per MINUTE... Compare that to skype, plus it is using one account, that is paid by direct debit, so I don't have to reload skype and pay a phone bill.
Thanks everyone for the advice.