I have used "Skype’ since 2003 (when it first came out) because i was working in the Orient and Southeast Asia and it was costing me a huge fortune in phone calls back to the UK and so wherever i could get ‘online’ Skype always saved me money (the reception was terrible then though 
).
Skype has evolved massively from a small ‘online’ VOIP phone service and if used correctly can save you ‘huge’ amounts of money in international direct dial phone calls.
I have ‘worked out’ how to make phone calls from your own mobile phone to any landline and most mobile phones from ‘anywhere to anywhere’ in the world without actually having to be ‘online’…
To save you reading time, it’s not free!
I make one annual payment of 93.70p pounds per year (you can also pay monthly) with Skype Unlimited World.
I will try to explain how it works… you don’t need the internet to use it, (you do use the internet to ‘set it up though’.)
SKYPE TO GO.
It let’s you call an international number from your Canadian or USA ‘registered’ mobile phones (i have about 6 different phones registered with Skype) using a local phone number… It basically ‘links’ a local phone number to a long distance Canadian, American, British, European or wherever you want number.
Register your number and the country the phone service is from/being used in (Canadian phone used in Canada, US phone used in USA), add the numbers you are going to call from anywhere in the world, then select the country you are calling from… Skype will then convert these numbers into local phone numbers… I can talk ‘handsfree’ 
to my mate in the UK for 3 hours non stop 
while he is driving in the UK and after that i can phone my mate on his ‘Thai’ mobile phone in Thailand and talk to him for another 3 hours… my mobile phone talk time is unlimited for Canada and USA so all these call cost me the ‘annual subscription’…
this is soooooo difficult to explain.
here is the Skype link which sort of explains it a bit better than me…
support.skype.com/en/category/SKYPE_TO_GO/
Good to know for future reference Colin. My cell phone has a 9c per minute rate for UK land lines and 29c a minute to UK mobiles, but … as my Son, Daughter and a few others are on my family list they just get included in my monthy limit.
Thanks Colin, I will have a look at that 
I think you can probably get it cheaper just for that service but I do lots of other stuff with Skype and have paid the full amount every year.
I worked this bit below out myself (Skype don’t tell you about this)
The greatest thing about it is that your whole family or even friends overseas can use the same account to call you from overseas, just add their number to the ‘approved’ numbers bit, add your own number to the ‘numbers to call section’ then change your country to their country… it gives you a local number for them to call… write it down then send it to them, they can then call you FREE! or for the price of a local call… my Skype is like a telephone exchange, it has zillions of different numbers spread all over the place so my mates can also call me free on their mobiles from their countries.
If you are calling from Canada with a Canadian phone and your mate is in… let’s say Thailand, write your Canadian number in the ‘approved callers’ bit and your mates number in the ‘to call section’ then change the country to Canada… it will 'convert your mates number to a local Canadian number.
If you want your mate to call you, add his number to the ‘approved callers’ list and also add your own Canadian number to the 'to call section, then change the country calling from Canada to Thailand… it will give your mate a local ‘Thai’ number to call you, he keeps the same number and he can call you anytime he or she likes for the whole time you have your Skype subscription.
So my wife is over here now, i have added her new phone number in the ‘approved numbers’ converted all her mates numbers who are scattered all over the world so she can talk all day long to them without me going bankrupt! 
I also have a cheap Walmart ‘smart-talk’ phone in the States which costs $45 per month for unlimited calls (including Tax) pay as you go phone on which I could call the Moon or Mars (if they had phone lines) for 24 hours non stop every day for a year and it would still only cost me 93 quid per year.
Col 
I’ve always used the 10-4 push to talk phones since I’ve been in Canada but Bell are making the service worse and worse as they’re wanting to discontinue the service, which is a shame as its about $50 per month and is totally unlimited anywhere in North America.
Do any of you guys have normal cell phones that have totally unlimited minutes, not just within the US but also to and from Canada as well so that I could be in Canada for example and call or receive a call from a mate in the US, or Canada as well for that matter and it not cost a fortune? Or is it a case of only being able to talk to each other while being in the same country? A US phone in the US, a Canadian phone when both in Canada and no talking between the countries?