Not yet anyway, but it’s inevitable. Back in the bad old days before VoIP, calling overseas was always a major event, reserved only for special occasions and emergencies. Today, an overseas call can be had for a few cents a minute–the same as what a domestic long distance call used to cost. VoIP has of course, changed the nature of how ILD is billed, and at least for major cities around the world, it’s dirt cheap.
If you have the right set-up, it may even be free. My home office is here in South Bend, Indiana (home of the Fightin’ Irish!). Just recently I had a talk with one of my clients in Perth, Australia over Skype–and it was truly an amazing experience. I haven’t used Skype that frequently, but since my client already had it in place, he suggested we have our meetings using this piece of technology. I went to Big Lot and bought a headset for five dollars, plugged it in, logged onto Skype, and it was clear as a bell and didn’t cost a cent. For us fifty-somethings who remember black rotary phones and operator-assisted “trunk calls” to the old country that took an hour to connect, it’s quite a revolution.
Those who still use the PSTN are at a disadvantage, but the conventional telcos are feeling the competitive pressure. They’ve been losing out to VoIP providers in the ILD arena, and it won’t be long before their market share disappears completely unless they get on the VoIP bandwagon themselves.
“All you can eat” domestic long distance packages are now commonplace–you pay a flat fee and you get all the domestic long distance you want. Of course, this would have been unheard of in the days of my childhood, back when if you wanted to talk to somebody in California, you had to write a letter. The flat-fee model arose out of competitive necessity, not because the telcos were nice guys–and the same thing is inevitable for international long distance as well.
