If you’re someone who travels a lot be it for business or pleasure then you will naturally want to stay in touch with friends and family whilst you’re on your travels. Thankfully the days are long gone when, in order to do this, you had to wait in line at a telephone exchange before parting with an organ for a few minutes of international conversation. These days technology allows us to speak with those back home with ease and here is how.
Messaging
The simplest form of contact is with instant messaging, you can use something like Facebook for this and whether your phone is Android, Apple or Blackberry, each have ways to send messages over the internet. Personally I like WhatsApp, it just seems like the most simple to use, it supports video and picture messages and even though I have a sim card Israel company SimVisit provided me with, WhatsApp allows me to use my UK number to stay in touch.
Video Calling
The best way to stay in touch is to use video calling, the next best thing to being in the same room with your friends and family. You can use services like Skype for video calls or alternatively Facebook, WhatsApp and Apple’s Facetime allow you to make video calls too. Just ensure that you both have strong internet, video calls use up a lot of data and you will have a poor quality and frustrating call if the internet you have isn’t fast enough.
Audio Calls
Audio calls require less data usage than video calls so this could be a good option if you don’t have the fastest wi-fi. Th equality of audio calls across the internet is great and much like as if you were calling someone in the same town as you. The same services that offer video calling also provide audio call options over the internet.
Straight Calling
Many international telecom companies have teamed up to give great deals on international roaming packages and should you need to, there are some well priced plans that allow you to simply call home using your allowance. Gone are the days of horror stories of people that forgot to switch their roaming off and got hit with heavy bills from cell providers. Use this as a last option if you cannot connect to 3G or wi-fi as the otehr ways of calling won’t cost you a penny.
