The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Belkin Phone, SkypeOut Keep Money In

Text and photo by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

Twenty years ago, my photographer friend Larry Pierce called his wife from his hotel room on a remote island in Tahiti, talked for 15 minutes, and unknowingly racked up a $400 bill. Ouch. Last week in New Zealand, I chatted with my family until even the cat was tired of me and it didn’t cost us a dime. Well, barely a dime.

Like 300 million other people, I used Skype, the voice over internet phone system. But this wasn’t computer to computer—I was calling our home line on Belkin’s Skype handset and talking just as I would on a cell phone.

Skype is obviously hugely popular, but few people seem to know about the service that’s revolutionized my travel communications, SkypeOut. You can pay as you go (about two cents a minute), but I’ve signed up for the annual plan: For $30 a year, you get unlimited calling to land lines and mobile phones in North America. Combined with the Belkin phone and free wi-fi networks, it makes calling from the road ultra-affordable and easy. It also gives the slightly thrilling sense that you’re getting something for nothing.

Of course, you aren’t. The Belkin is $180 (and found on Amazon for $138). With the annual fee, that’s two bones. But still, I’ve inadvertently spent that much checking voice mail and email from Europe on my Nokia N95 cell phone. If you travel a lot or even want a cheap alternative for domestic calling, the Belkin/SkypeOut is a fantastic combination.

The Belkin itself worked flawlessly for me. It charged through my laptop USB connection and easily found local wi-fi networks. It automatically logged into my Skype account and provided a list of all my Skype contacts, complete with their online status. For conversations, it beats the laptop/headset combination hands down (though you can’t do video chat or IM with it). Given the state of electronics technology, $100 seems a more reasonable price, but you can certainly pay less than list.

And what of the call quality? Ah, yes, there’s that. Well, it’s a Skype phone. Anyone familiar with Skype knows that the price of “free” is a degradation of quality. I found the sound to be typical of a mid-level cell phone—good, but not great. There were no echoes, no annoying lag as the words travel around the world, just a sense of low-fi acoustics. Calls got dropped 10 percent of the time, which is about what I’ve averaged making Skype calls on my computer at home. I probably wouldn’t negotiate a contract over a Skype line, but for most business and all personal calls, the Belkin is an ideal cost-saving choice, whether you’re traveling or just trying to avoid using cell minutes.