...in the hopes you'll buy their blades.
First, it was the mobile phone companies selling phones at steep discounts when you bought a two year contract. Now it is VOIP providers giving away their service within their network in the hopes you will subscribe to additional services. (VOIP is voice over internet protocol.)
We and our adult children all have Skype. We can have a video call with our son, his wife, and their toddler in Tokyo or a video call with our daughter and her family in the Twin Cities. Or we can have a three-way voice-only conversation. All of this is free.
However, if you would like to call a land line, you need a "calling card" or a monthly subscription. I opted for a $10 "card" that will be automatically renewed to my credit card. So far, we've only used it to call our daughter after she shut her computer down. My wife plans to use it to call her sisters. The charge was 2.1 or 2.3 cents a minute. This beats the 6.9 cents that a long distance provider we had been using.
Another advantage is a clearer signal. The signal quality for the more expensive provider seems to have been deteriorating.
We could use my cell phone to make "free" long-distance calls; I have yet to use much more than ten percent of my minutes. However, one sister lives in Ontario and the charge is 65 cents per minute! And she lives closer to us than people in the U.S. on either coast. So, 2.3 cents a minute is a real bargain.
Today CNet News had an article on truphone, which allows iPod Touch* users to use there iPods for VOIP. Again, its free for truphone subscriber to truPhone subscriber. To call land lines the charge is six cents a minute to many places in the world.
Free razors! Extra charges may apply for blades and shaving cream.
* truphone is only for the second generation iPod Touch. You also need a headphone and microphone.
