In less than five days, I'm going to South-East Asia to spend a month relaxing, trekking, inhaling pollution and fighting cockroaches the size of my fist in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. It's going to be wonderful.

My problem is that it is very expensive to call to and from most of the countries in the area. The tariff for a call between a Telenor fixed-line in Norway and my prepaid mobile in Thailand is an outrageous €1.41 (NOK 11.38) per minute. The worldwide telecom tariffs are not based on distance, but destination bandwidth, de-facto monopolies, local regulations, corruption and several other complicated factors. In this case, Telenor really helps out with their typically inflated tariffs. For comparison, the Dutch telecom KPN charges "only" €1.08 (NOK 8.69) for the same call. Nevertheless, the tariffs are unacceptable, and Skype is really not an option, as it's not as flexible and portable as a mobile phone.

This is where broadband telephony like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) comes to the rescue. Thanks to VoIP, there is a market for call termination over internet trunks where prices are slashed to the bone due to the globalized marketplace that internet provides. Now everyone can take international calls at wholesale prices and perhaps become their own little telecom company. By shopping around, I have found VoIP providers that will terminate a call between Norway and Thailand for only €0.0066 (NOK 0.053) per minute, or 0.46% of the Telenor tariff, and even 50% less than the Telenor domestic tariff. I'm laughing all the way to the bank.