The recent availability of VOIP (voice-over-Internet-protocol) has indeed made a BIG difference with telephone call pricing. Many telephone companies now have plans that match any cellphone service - unlimited calls to anywhere in the US for a fixed monthly charge. The best known, Vonage will give you special equipment to use with a CableTV connection to do the same for an even lower price, still using your regular telephone equipment.

Hey, until recently I've been calling friends and family in India via AT&T for $ 0.35 per minute and England for $ 0.09 a minute. Well, I discovered that Reliance - one of the largest telephone companies in India - has an excellent, low-cost telephone service for calls between the US, Canada, UK and India.

It's easy to use - works like this: you call a toll-free number and identify yourself with a PIN (or, if you're on your home telephone, it reads your caller-ID and knows its you). You then dial the number in India, and voila, you're connected at $ 0.12 a minute (about 1/3 the AT&T cost).

There are a couple of ways to pay - you can be billed monthly, or (as I do) I pay $ 25.00 or $ 50.00 (via the web). When I call, a pleasant voice tells me how many minutes I have available.

Here's another interesting trick - it's easy to fumble a long country-code city-code local-number (011 plus 12 digits for most countries). But, via the Reliance website, you can preset the primary numbers you dial as codes - so, when I call my brother in India now, I push one digit (my quick dial for the Reliance 866 number) and when it responds, I push another digit (the preset number); the voice tells me how many minutes I have with my already-paid balance, and I'm connected.

You can do the same to call the UK (a separate toll-free number). You know what, I talked with my brother Paul for 95 minutes the other day and it cost me about 2 bucks. Wow!