I’m looking for a privacy respecting service that will let me call a landline in EU. Please recommend something and thanks in advance.
Stupid question, but why not just use your phone’s telephone functionality? Landlines are just regular phone numbers, no?
There are no stupid questions. I’m away on holiday outside EU and I may need to call our insurance company to get medical support for a child. I guess I could just use Skype, but I’m taking this as an opportunity to figure out if someone better exists.
If it was something as critical as that, if it was me, I’ll pay for roaming and use my phone like regular. I don’t know how easy it is for you but I’m from the US and the cost is a no brainer.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m fully prepared to just pay the roaming fees. It’s just that I think it’s overpriced and I know for a fact that cheaper options exist.
Get a local SIM or eSIM when you arrive. If you’re dealing with insurance, you might want to be able to receive calls too. Regarding privacy: good luck.
Not sure what you are looking for, do you want to call landline European numbers from another continent? Or do you live in the EU and want to make calls to landlines in other EU country? If the latter, please define “privacy respecting” because if what you want is for the service to not log your calls, I’m afraid they are obligated by legislation.
I’m looking for a company that will not sell my data to a third party. I understand there are legal requirements.
I use Mobile VoIP. It’s a wrapper for which you need a separate subscription from one of the many voip sites. Go to MobileVOIP.com you should see a list of such providers. You can set your own caller id or no caller id.
Any recommendations on which provider? That’s quite a list.
I’m currently using budgetvoip, but look through the list when my balance runs out, and find one that has good rates for where I want to call. Some of them have desktop app support, if that’s something you want. I have used voipyo and telbo in the past, but I’ll switch if I find a different provider with better rates.
There are tons of VoIP number services that you can use through the internet. The quality will probably suck and you’ll have to figure out how to set up a SIP client, but they’re cheap and widely available.
If your carrier and phone support WiFi calling, there’s a good chance any local WiFi network will be basically free of cost. Make sure WiFi calling is enabled and reported as ready if you want to be sure it won’t cost you, but it should just work if you have it enabled.
I’ve put my phone into airplane mode, turned WiFi back on (not the mobile radio) and called my voice mail number. It connected without issue and even showed me a little WiFi icon in the call screen to indicate I was using WiFi calling.
Uh… Your normal phone app…
I’d look for getting a SIP number and use that with some softphone app.
Your ISP could be selling those and there are some companies that sell them, ususally for businesses, but there’s smaller offerings for individuals. Usually paired with stuff like mail2fax, fax2mail, etc.
Jami positions itself as a potential free Skype replacement
free and open-source
