Money is one thing and the usually the big thing. Quality is obviously another. The third thing I want to toss out there is the ability to control call forwarding from a mobile device. If you have a foreign SIM with voicemail preconfigured before taking off this doesn't matter as much. Conversely, half of us are buying the SIM card in the airport on landing and trying to get it going on the fly.

I have my own Asterisks box and use Voicetrading as my main international long distance server. I am not thrilled with my temporary forwarding solution's prices (Line2) but I use them as my virtual mobile number and they are easy. I just looked at my annual bill and it came to under $50 for international forwards so I'm not going to worry about my bill. Skype offers this. VoxOx is another utility in this group but their rates look too high. Again, they are not the best rates, but you can change the forward on the fly and they have voicemail while calls are parked. What other solutions do people use?