best phone service for making LD calls to the states

hello everyone, can you please recommend to me the best phone service for long distance calls? is it vonage, skype, magic jack, or do one of the british based phone companies offer a better service/price? also, if i do decide to go with vonage, skype, or magic jack, should i purchase it here in the states prior to my move? would my family have to have the service/device as ell in order for the rates to apply?

I think you're going to find various opinions on which is the "best".  I know a lot of people who rely on Vonage and don't have any issues with it,but I personally didn't like the Vonage service.  I use Skype for all my calls and while I have to sit at my computer to do it, I don't mind. 

I use telediscount - dial the 0844 number, then dial the US number, and the 1p/minute is charged directly to your phone bill.  No connection charge - a 30min call costs 30p.

Skype/Vonage/Magic Jack may well be cheaper, but they're not an option for my family, who live in rural Georgia where broadband/DSL isn't available, and own a PII 266mz desktop.

The different carriers and rates change with alarming frequency these days, but this is the service I've been using for the last few months:

http://www.zerop.co.uk/

At the moment calls to the U.S. are billed at a flat 4p. per call, regardless of duration.  Occasionally the link is less than perfect and the call needs to be re-established, but at another 4p. to call back again for as long as you like, it's not a big deal.

I know a lot of people who rely on Vonage and don't have any issues with it,but I personally didn't like the Vonage service. 

The problem with all the VoIP services is that you're at the mercy of the network, contention and "throttling" issues, etc.  That's why people report so much variation in the quality.

I agree that there are going to be different opinions.  There isn't a "best" overall service, it depends on what your particular needs are.  There have been threads on this periodically over the years, and people prefer a variety of different plans, for a variety of different reasons.

I personally love Vonage.  I've had it for coming up on two years now.  Originally, I got it with the intent of it being temporary (I was living somewhere that I knew wasn't going to be permanent and I didn't want to pay to have a BT line put in) but I ended up being quite happy with it and kept it.  The one issue we used to have is that if DH was playing a video game online while I was on the phone, his game would have a bit of lag.  We've now gone from a 2 Mb line to a 10 Mb one and don't have that problem anymore.

Skype/Vonage/Magic Jack may well be cheaper, but they're not an option for my family, who live in rural Georgia where broadband/DSL isn't available, and own a PII 266mz desktop.

That's actually why I opted to keep Vonage lol.  My best friend lives in a rural area with no broadband, so I pay an extra 3 quid a month for a US number, and he can call me using that number for free.  My other friends use it too (most have domestic LD minutes on cell phone plans, etc) and it's nice that I no longer always have to be the one to make the call, or listen to gripes about how expensive it is for them to call the UK

I pay about £3.50/month so that I can make discount calls to the US from my O2 mobile phone...the calls themselves are something like 2p a minute.  Not the cheapest of the cheap solution out there, but the convenience of not having to faff around with skype and being able to call from my mobile is worth it to me

We've got Sky for TV, internet & phone, and adding international calling is £5/month for unlimited calls to the US and a few other countries.  Their customer service sucks, but the actual service they're providing works fine.

We're on Tiscali for our phone and broadband service. It is a flat rate of £19.99/month which includes all of our calls to the UK (but not to UK mobile phones) as well as our calls to the US. (so long as the calls stay under 1 hour) I think it's quite the deal for our internet and all the calls either within the UK or to the US! The highest bill we've had so far was about £25 because we had made a lot of calls to UK mobile phones that particular month.

We've got Sky for TV, internet & phone, and adding international calling is £5/month for unlimited calls to the US and a few other countries.

I don't know about Sky, but you need to check the terms very careful on some of the "unlimited" calling packages.  BT's International Freedom option at around £5 per month sounds good, until you check the small print and notice that in their case "unlimited" actually means a restriction of 10 hours per month.

I pay about £3.50/month so that I can make discount calls to the US from my O2 mobile phone...the calls themselves are something like 2p a minute.  Not the cheapest of the cheap solution out there, but the convenience of not having to faff around with skype and being able to call from my mobile is worth it to me

It involves a bit of faffing around with Skype, but I have a Skype-to-Go number (2 actually - one in the US and one in the UK), and I just call it from my mobile, enter my pin, and it comes off my Skype credit.  I pre-programmed it with all the numbers Tim and I call frequently (including each other's numbers)

kennie - what kind of usage do you expect? Do you want something for YOU to call the US, or for people in the US to call you?  How frequently do you intend on using it?  Also, if your family is computer literate, Skype-to-Skype is free, but does involve both people needing to be in front of their computers. If you want something that's not tied directly to your computer (as in, requiring you to sit at the computer to talk), then I'd look into something like Vonage.  If you don't mind needing to sit at the computer, or figure you'll be at your computer anyway, then Skype might be a better idea.  Tim calls his computer "the giant Becca phone" since that's practically all he uses his computer for anymore.

I don't know about Sky, but you need to check the terms very careful on some of the "unlimited" calling packages.  BT's International Freedom option at around £5 per month sounds good, until you check the small print and notice that in their case "unlimited" actually means a restriction of 10 hours per month.

Sky's fine print gotcha is that the first 60 minutes of a call is not charged, but if you go over 60 minutes you get charged (something like 4 or 5p/minute).  However, if you hang up and call back the timer is reset, and to Sky's credit they suggest you do exactly that in their literature.  So as long as you don't make an international call longer than an hour, you only pay the £5/month.

thanks everyone. i think i might go with sky or perhaps use telediscount. i still have to discuss it all with my fiance and as we haven't our own place yet, we've a while to decide. my mother isn't very computer savvy (and that's putting it lightly!) and i also don't want to stay tied to the computer, so i don't think skype is the best option for me. if she decided to switch her phone company to vonage, is there anyway that i could have a line in my house with a US number that she could call? i know that here in the states we were unable to have two different phone lines with different companies, but that wouldn't apply to vonage, would it??

My best friend lives in a rural area with no broadband, so I pay an extra 3 quid a month for a US number, and he can call me using that number for free.  My other friends use it too (most have domestic LD minutes on cell phone plans, etc) and it's nice that I no longer always have to be the one to make the call, or listen to gripes about how expensive it is for them to call the UK

This was similar to our reasoning.  I know you can get a US phone number with Skype, as well, but I like having the feel of a landline.  It's been absolutely wonderful to have been able to keep our old US phone number -- it cuts down the psychological barriers to folks staying in touch.  Just call the same old number and there we are.  

We have a BT landline that we never use.  It doesn't even have a phone attached.  UK friends call my cell and US friends call our "home" number which is Vonage.

On the road, I use skype on my iphone!

ETA:  Using Vonage gets you a phone number that can be called from any phone -- the caller doesn't need to have Vonage to call you on your Vonage phone.  You can pick a number pretty much anywhere in the US, so you could get a number that's a "local" number for your mom.  There's no tech-savvy needed on the caller's end.

We have Sky Talk which also allows us to call US mobile numbers.

You can have a virtual line with vonage with a US number your mom could call. However, if she has vonage, she can all your UK landline for free anyways.
My mom set up a virtual vonage number back in the US (one with a UK number), so that I can call her from my mobile as well.

If you don't mind needing to sit at the computer, or figure you'll be at your computer anyway, then Skype might be a better idea.  Tim calls his computer "the giant Becca phone" since that's practically all he uses his computer for anymore.

My mother is traveling to Zambia at the moment, and we tried out Skype again before she left (hadn't used it for a few years).  She was able to use an iPhone app so that she could connect to Skype with her phone and not be tied to the computer.  I could probably have done the same thing if I had an iPhone.   (It will be one of my moving presents to myself, I think.)