I'm looking for a reliable and not overly expensive way to make phone calls to EU, mostly mobile numbers. I'm looking for ~20c per minute price tag, not 2 CHF per minute It could be even some pre-paid EU provider if the roaming in Switzerland tariff would fit my preferred price tag.
My requirement is that it has to be a phone connection, good quality, passing through my phone number to the recipient.
In the past I've tried Lebara nad Lyca but both had bad quality calls. Recently I've found out that Salt has HALLO EUROPE option but most of the time it's bad quality, hiding my number - obviously they route through cheap VoIP. However it's not clear to me what's the rule, sometimes after 2 or 3 retries it setup a normal phone call, but the other day I try like 5 times with no success.
I use a lot of WhatsApp, etc, VoIP solutions. The quality is good, nothing to complain about. However I do need to call normal mobile numbers sometimes and this hidden cheap VoIP tricks are really crap, there's added noise, sound gets distorted, abnormal voice delays, etc.
Yallo. They use the Sunrise network. They often have deals offering their contracts at half price. You’d need Yallo Super Fat or Super Fat XXL - neither on offer today. You can check daily for a 50% offer or call/webchat them and see if they can do you a deal (their CS are very nice). I have Superfat XXL (unlimited calls to/from Europe/US/Canada & unlimited europe data) for 45 francs a month, full price 128, so hang on for the deals.
I have Salt flat rate in Europe and I've experienced none of your bad quality calls. I use my phone to call into Europe and back to Switzerland, no complaints at all - for the past 2 years.
OP you do realise that all phone providers use VoIP? Even if you have an analogue phone line it will be VoIP on the main network, and the worst quality bit will be the analogue section.
WhatsApp and similar are not quite the same, they don't prioritise voice quality the same way as "proper" VoIP does.
We use Freecall - cost for calls to mobiles in Europe is way less than 20c per minute, and they have access numbers you can call to avoid using a VoIP app, or do what we do and have a DECT phone base with built in SIP connection.
I had the same CID and international calls quality calls issues on Swisscom for business (still use Swisscom in my office, just wasn't there for 12+ months). Salt mobile is overall a better sound quality and lower latency, when the HD-calling function over 5G/4G+ is activated.
The CID for international calls problem is actually a relatively complicated issue.
A brief explanation: Callers want reasonable, fixed or even flat rates Some local carriers charge differently based on a source of the call. E.g. low rates for calls within network, reasonable rates for regional calls and up to 2.00 EUR/minute for international incoming calls (saw that prices from a couple of smaller EU country providers in a B2B offer ~5 years ago). And they are not motivated to reduce them, because they already nearly saturated their regional market, if not became a de facto monopoly there. Within one country rates for incoming international calls may easily vary 10 times from one carrier to another. So your carrier is offering you what makes sense by routing calls into networks of such regional providers through gateways dropping the true caller ID and avoiding exorbitant fees. To add to the insult, some regional carriers use old and/or poorly configured equipment, which do not support long international CIDs, special symbols ("+"), numbers starting with "0", so CID may be altered or replaced even if sent correctly by your provider.
I used skype for calls between germany and croatia - to both mobile phones and landlines, and my mother did the other way around, calling german landlines (not for each other, we use wapp because skype heats up my mobile phone like crazy for calls longer than 1h).
Compared to german and croatian prices for international (EU) calls, skype was hands down the cheapest option, without any subscription or anything - with subscriptions it's even cheaper.
No clue how much is it from CH, but if you haven't looked at it already, might be worth checking.
Call quality is like regular phone, I didn't notice any issues whatsoever.
Thanks, that really explains it. I get it, the culprit could be at the very end, at the destination country so most or all of the foreign operators may hit the same barrier
Damn, I was thinking about taking the Salt EU package (or was it called EU XL?) but I was mislead by their description. I thought that it would give me only unlimited calls in Switzerland and from abroad to Switzerland and locally abroad, but calls from Switzerland to EU would cost ~2 CHF per minute. I guess I can still upgrade my plan however I am worried that it would be the same quality as the HELLOEUROPE option on my current plan.
I'm going to try Freecall and Skype, if it won't work than perhaps I'll look at Yallo. Freecall looks very attractive, I've never heard about it.
That reminds me that since ~3 years I have 10TB cloud drive, lifetime account, in some Finnish startup but I have no use for it too. OK, at least they are still in business, so does my lifetime account https://degoo.com/
Me and my wife have Lycamobile, which uses Swisscom's network up to 4G. Unlimited data, calls and SMS in Switzerland, free voice calls in roaming in supported countries (beware outside of Switzerland must be connected to a Vodafone network) - I pay about 19.- a month.