cheap international calls

[PDLM]

That's not free - it's national long distance rate. Long distance calls within the UK are significantly more expensive than international calls with calling cards or similar.

[briand.west]

Well yes, but only for free to other people who are similarly equipped, and you have to schedule times when they are in front of their computer and so on. To me that's nothing like as convenient as mobile-to-mobile.

Completely agree, but you can use SkyPE to call any phone in the world and pay a very competitive price e.g. UK is HK$0.166/min:
http://www.skype.com/products/skypeo...l?currency=HKD
There is a similar service called Globe7 that is even cheaper: http://www.globe7.com/rateplan.php

[PDLM]

There are calling card services on the market in Hong Kong which offer calls from Hong Kong mobiles to UK fixed lines for HK$0.09 per minute...

[cerberus]

two calling cards i like are COW (Call Over the World) and Chatchat. funny names but they work and are pretty cheap to most call destinations. there's a store right next to Wanchai station, exit A1 i think, selling them and others.