Home phone Guides

Cheap calls to Spain

Updated: Friday 20 January, 2012

By Anthony Hill - anthony.hill@consumerchoices.co.uk

Do you regularly make calls to relatives or friends in Spain? Overseas calls can be expensive, but switching to a home phone provider that offers cheap rates may save you money. Take a look at the table below…

Provider	Package name		Spain call rate (per minute)		Monthly package cost		Line rental cost
	Vonage V-Plan 2		FREE		£8.99		£9.99	Go
	Talk UK Anytime		25.1p		£6.21		£13.80	Go
	Anytime Saver Offer		3.2p		£2.95		£11.22	Go
	Primus Home Phone Max		3.9p		£2.79		£10	Go

Calling Spain can be costly without the right call plan. For example, if you have the Weekend Calls tariff from BT, calling Spain will cost you 25p per minute for calls made during weekdays (7am - 7pm) and 12p per minute at all other times. So a 10-minute call during the day will set you back £2.62, including the 13.1p one-off call connection fee.

If you want to save on your calls, consider switching to a different provider who offers cheaper call rates. Before switching though, you should ask yourself these questions:

• Apart from Spain, do I call any other countries?
• Do I call Spanish landlines and/or Spanish mobiles?
• How long do I talk on the phone for?
• What are calls to Spain currently costing me?

Look at your most recent phone bills and work out how much you’re spending on overseas calls, then compare home phone deals online to see if you could save money by switching to a better tariff.

Cheap calls to Spain with your home phone provider

Some UK home phone providers, such as the Post Office (www.postoffice.co.uk), offer free calls to Spain at certain times of the day, depending on your call plan. Signing up to a package with one of these providers will definitely help to reduce your monthly landline bills. Remember to look at all the different call costs though, as well as line rental, because you may find that a different provider, offering discounted rather than free calls to Spain, would help you save money in the long-run.

Signing up to TalkTalk’s Talk UK Anytime deal will get you free daytime, evening and weekend calls to all landlines in the UK, and calls to the US are charged at just 25.1p per minute, plus the one off call connection fee of 12.5p. The call plan costs £6.21 a month for the first 12 months, and line rental costs £13.80 a month. However, you could make further savings on calls to Spain with TalkTalk's International Calls Boost.

With TalkTalk's International Calls Boost you can keep in touch with your far-flung family and friends and be sure it won't cost the earth. For just £2.99 a month you'll get unlimited calls to 36 international destinations, including Spain, anytime. Plus, you'll also get discounts of up to 95% on call charges to all other international destinations.

You could switch to the Primus Home Phone Max package, which offers free calls to UK local and national landlines and charges customers just 3.9p per minute to call landlines in Spain during the day - a saving of 21p per minute compared to BT’s international rates. The Home Phone Max package costs £2.79 a month, and line rental is £10 a month, if you sign-up online through Homephonechoices.co.uk.

YourCalls.net (www.yourcalls.net) also offers discounted calls to Spain if you choose the country as your “Golden Destination”. YourCalls.net’s Golden Destination deal lets all customers choose one country which they call most frequently to receive a discount on call charges. For example, calls to Spain usually cost 3.2p per minute during the day, however with Spain selected as your Golden Destination, calls will cost just 1.87p per minute during the day, 1.46p in the evenings and 1.42p at the weekend.

Making calls to Spain via your broadband

If you’ve got a broadband connection at home, you could also make cheap calls to Spain via the internet. Using an internet phone provider (VoIP), such as Vonage (www.vonage.co.uk), could help to trim your bills.

Internet phone services, or VoIP as they’re sometimes known, work in exactly the same way as a traditional phone service - you can even use your existing phone to make calls from your landline to other home phones or mobiles. What makes VoIP different to traditional home phone services though is the hardware - your phone is plugged into an adapter, which is connected to your existing broadband router or modem. This converts the call to a VoIP call.

If you sign-up to the Vonage V-Plan 2, calls to Spanish landlines are free, all day every day. All Vonage-to-Vonage calls are also free, though a minimum set-up fee, monthly subscription and line rental charges do apply.

You could also try using Skype (www.skype.com), which offers a similar service. You can even make video calls to friends and family in Spain for free if you’re both on Skype, and take advantage of cheap call rates to Spanish landlines if the person you’re calling is not online.

Choosing a phone provider to make cheap calls

Whichever countries you call, whether it’s Spain or Australia, Pakistan or the US, there are plenty of home phone calling plans to choose from that will suit your needs and help you reduce your bills. You should also consider VoIP calls, as these can be free for some destinations.

Use the Homephonechoices.co.uk postcode checker to find the packages available in your area, then compare call rates for France and see if you can save money on your phone bills.