You might want to try Vonage, a VoIP service (and read all the way to the bottom to see my “word of caution”)
Vonage is available in the U.S., I haven’t seen it in Europe (I’m in Ireland), and it is portable. So if it isn’t here in Europe you may need to enlist the help of a U.S. friend to get you the service in America. The Vonage package (http://www.vonage.com) can be purchased directly from the company (and maybe they’ll ship overseas?) or at Wal*Mart.
In a nutshell you get a Vonage modem and a U.S. phone number. You plug the modem into the internet and your phone into the modem (using a U.S. style jack—Ireland uses the U.S. type phone jack but I had to get an adapter for my BT phone). then for the flat rate of $25/month (19 Euro) you can call 60 countries (some additional charges apply when calling to cell phones so consult the Vonage list which they update regularly). You can also get a local number in many countries for which you’d pay an additional $10/month for (7.50 Euro)(again check the Vonage website for availability). But with that you can call most anyone and your local friends call your local number and they don’t have to pay long distance fees. Since the modem can handle two lines if you need more lines you pay another $25, choose another U.S. number and you’re off and running. If you use the second line just for faxing I think there is a discount.
When calling you will have to use the country codes as if you are in the U.S. so 011 + country code + phone number.
With Vonage you get a nice dashboard so you can look at all of your incoming and outgoing calls and you get voice mail two ways. The first way is that you just call your VM like you’ve got a remote answering machine and listen to your calls or Vonage will forward you a voice file via email that you can listen to on your computer AND they will transcribe the message for you as well so you can read it on the email.
So you get all that and a flat rate so you’re not worrying about all those per minute charges.
I have a US bank account and Vonage simply debits my account every month for the charge. I’m not sure if they will debit a credit card and am not sure about debiting foreign bank accounts either.
One word of caution. Since this a a VoIP (voice over internet protocol) phone you need engough bandwidth to make the phone work otherwise the calls break up. You can use http://www.speedtest.net and www.pingtest.net to check the speed of your connections. I also think there is a similar speedtest somewhere on the Vonage website that will evaluate your bandwidth for you. Currently in Ireland I have about a 2MB connection and sound quality is great, even while I’m browsing the web. I called a business contact in Alaska the other day and he said the sound quality was as if I was sitting in the next room! I’ve used the system hooked into a modem being fed by a “land line” and by a wireless connection as well. Both worked great.
