Cost of International Calls May Be Lower By End of Year, ICE Says
Call the United States, Canada and other countries could soon be a lot cheaper, thanks to a project by the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) to reduce international call rates. The new lower rates could be a reality by the end of this year.

The lower cost is on ICE opening the market for Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOiP), a system whereby international calls are routed over the internet.

ICE said that is planning to purchased the VOiP equipment and make it available to its customers, effectively reducing the cost of each call.

VOiP is already in Costa Rica, many businesses and residents are already using services like Vonage or one of several VoiP providers located in Costa Rica, however, most are under the impression that the service does not work or is not available.

The advantage of VOiP calls are many, lower call costs, just one of them, and there is no need to connect to a computer. A router is connected to an wide band internet connection and using a regular phone plugged into the router, calls are placed over the internet at a fraction of the cost of a regular or cellular telephone line.

Depending on the internet connection and the speed of the connection, callers in most cases cannot tell the difference between a regular telephone line call and one placed over the internet.

Services like Vonage and Skype already have millions of customers worldwide.

Once ICE enters the VOiP market, more and more Costa Ricans will take advantage of the lower international calls cost.