I just found this interesting VOIP service and signed up for their lowest service level: VoiceStick They provide several services:
1. A local US (or UK) phone number.
2. Call forwarding from that number.
3. Calling through that number.
4. Standard VOIP calling from your computer.
5. A USB drive with their software pre-loaded and room for your phone book etc. Presumably you can stick this in any Windows machine and run VOIP without installing the program.

Currently their cheap plan is PAYG. The local phone number is free and international rates are OK. The one sour note, for us, is that calls to FL mobiles are about US$0.37/min.

Interesting experience. Just for fun I decided I'd see what would happen if I called my Riiing number when it was turned off using VoiceStick. Long silence and I hang up after about 40 seconds. The online billing showed a 27 minute call. I'm now trying to get them to resolve this issue.

Does it show START and STOP times? Funny if you call them BEFORE the stop time!?!

I believe I have had the same experience with other cards. NO CONNECTION, but time was deducted from my balance. TRUE, not 27 minutes.

Other times I was told the connection could not be established due to voice mail and i was NOT billed. I have too many cards to keep track. The most reliable are ATT and MCI, but they are expensive.

Good luck.

Stan

It has start times and length of call. And yes, this call overlapped another. BTW, they did refund the call, saying this was a problem of not having "supervision" which they were going to correct later it the year.