I don't think that's really the case. I can call Germany for $0.02 with gVoice and that's pretty much the cheapest I've ever seen for a international rate. Even my family over there can't call the USA for less than EUR 0.019 (which is MORE than gVoice)

My preferred carrier has it for about half that, even after markup: http://www.callwithus.com/showrates/G

I use 12voip. It's cheaper. http://www.12voip.com/en/calling-rates.html

Holy crap that's cheap. How's the quality?

Satisfactory to most destinations, speaking as a phreaker with sensitive ears. I strongly recommend them.

That's not cheap at all! I use JustVoip where landlines to most of the countries are free (after you charge your credit) and mobiles are less than half this amount.

http://www.justvoip.com/en/calling-rates.html

Maybe you intended to say 0.19.

0.019 < 0.02

0.019 Euro > 0.02 US Dollar

Watch the units :)

Sorry, my fault. This really teaches me to read better comments, especially here on Hacker News. Thank you for pointing this.

Yes, sorry for not being more clear in my original post. It sounded to me like fees from outbound international calls originating in the US will be used to subsidize the domestic US calls.

This is based on the very shaky assumption that international callers won't learn to use Skype or Google's own VOIP chat.

It's hard to get my 93 year-old grandma on Skype.

Easier once she takes a look at the bill and sucks air through her teeth and says "so then, how do you make this computer free phone thing work?"

I doubt they're her teeth.

No it can't be interpreted to mean that, because it's incorrect.

I'm in France, and if i want to call France, i have to pay. But i'm not making any international calls.

What it can be interpreted to mean though, is that Google wants to focus on us audience first, as they do with nearly all their services.

I'm not in the US, but i'm fine with that. If they want to offer good service, they first have to make it viable economically.

It relies on Google Voice which is not available in France anyway.

Ah, that makes more sense. Like Google Voice, this will probably not even be available for the rest of the world for a long, long time. Still sucks, but less :)

It appears to me, just because I've got my country/language set to US English.