Mia nonna non usa le app di messaggistica

The weekly call that could not be automated

Carlos had been living in Stockholm for six years. He came from a small village in the Alentejo region of Portugal, a quiet, agricultural area where most people knew each other and where his grandmother had lived her entire life.

His grandmother was 81. She had a landline phone and a basic mobile that she used only to receive calls. She had never used messaging apps. She had no email address. She had no interest in acquiring either. When Carlos called her, she picked up the phone, and they talked for an hour.

He called every Sunday.

The cost, over six years of calling a Portuguese landline from Sweden, had never been trivial. Swedish mobile plans charge approximately SEK 4 per minute for calls to Portuguese landlines, about €0.35. An hour-long call costs approximately SEK 240, around €21.

Over six years of weekly calls: approximately SEK 74,880, or roughly €6,500.

The economics of regular family calls abroad

Carlos's situation is not unusual. There are tens of millions of people living abroad who maintain regular contact with elderly family members who have no access to, or interest in, internet communication. These calls are not emergencies or administrative tasks. They are relationships. They happen every week, they last as long as they need to, and they cannot be shortened or replaced.

The economics matter differently for regular personal calls than for occasional administrative ones:

• ›Frequency multiplies cost. A €21 weekly call becomes €1,092 per year. Over a decade, it is a significant personal expense
• ›Duration is determined by the relationship, not the task. You cannot cut a call with your grandmother to 10 minutes because it's getting expensive
• ›Predictability matters. A fixed per-minute cost that you can budget for is more manageable than variable mobile roaming charges

"She doesn't do video calls. She doesn't do WhatsApp. She picks up when the phone rings. That's the relationship we have. The cost of maintaining it should be as low as possible."

The switch to browser-based calling

Carlos discovered WorldDial through a forum for Portuguese emigrants abroad. He set up an account, topped up with €20, and called his grandmother the following Sunday as usual.

The rate for Portuguese geographic landlines from any country is approximately $0.02 per minute. A one-hour call costs approximately $1.20.

His grandmother noticed no difference in the call quality, WorldDial routes through the traditional telephone network, so the call arrives at her phone the same way any other call does. She does not know or need to know how the call is made.

Carlos has been using WorldDial for weekly calls for the past two years. He tops up €10 every three months. His total annual cost for weekly hour-long calls to Portugal: approximately €20. Previously: approximately €1,092.

Understanding the technology behind the savings

Traditional international calls from mobile plans are expensive because they are routed through carrier networks at each end, with interconnection fees charged at every step. A Swedish operator calling a Portuguese landline pays interconnection fees to a Portuguese operator, and those fees are passed on to the consumer at a significant markup.

Browser-based calling services route the call via internet to their own telephony infrastructure, then connect to the destination through the local telephone network at the final step. Because the international routing is handled through their infrastructure at bulk rates, the cost to the end user is dramatically lower than what a retail mobile plan charges.

The result is the same call, to the same landline, with the same audio quality, at a fraction of the retail price.

Who this matters to

• ›Children of immigrant parents who live abroad and whose parents remain in their home country with basic phones
• ›Expats maintaining contact with grandparents who are not comfortable with technology
• ›Digital nomads who want to stay connected with family members who cannot or will not use apps
• ›Anyone who makes regular calls to a specific country and finds the monthly mobile bill disproportionate to what the calls are actually costing the carrier

The technology exists to make these calls affordable. The challenge has been awareness. Many people simply accept that calling their parents or grandparents abroad is expensive, not realising that a browser-based alternative can reduce the cost by 90% or more.

The grandmother who knows nothing about this

Carlos's grandmother still picks up the phone on Sunday mornings. The call still lasts an hour. She still asks whether he is eating properly and whether the Swedish winters are as cold as people say.

She has no idea the call is arriving via a laptop browser. She has no idea the cost has changed. From her end, nothing is different.

From Carlos's end, everything is.