If you are travelling overseas any time soon, whether it be to Ireland, Australia or Asia, then it is always good to be able to get in contact with those people back home. This is particularly relevant if you are either away for a long time, or are on business.

Before, getting in contact with the UK from abroad used to be quite a costly and time consuming process. If phoning from a hotel, the charges would be horrendous, and if calling from a phone booth, it could be quite laborious.

There is, however another solution. Voip Phone Providers offer a cheap, and sometimes free, alternative to communicating over long distances. VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol, and yes, if you hadn't guessed it, is reliant on the internet.

With an internet connection, you simply log in to a program and are then able to phone all over the world for greatly reduced rates. Quite often, if you are calling someone running the same program, it is free.

This means that of course, you will need access to the internet. In today's world that is not a huge problem and there is normally access somewhere. It might be a hotel WiFi network, or an internet café, but they are quite easy to find all over the globe.

The savings made for calling home from abroad using VOIP are quite simply enormous. Where a normal call may cost you ten pounds, using a VOIP service might only cost ten pence. Seriously, the difference is that profound.