Our youngest has just started Uni with our eldest now in her third year and like most youngsters have their mobile phones whose calling minutes are precious and become pricey if you go over your limit.
I found out the other day, that if you are a BT customer, you can download the BT Smart Talk app which lets you use your mobile as if you were calling from the home phone so that you pay the same rates for calls as you do from your landline.
You can have up to five mobiles using it per Account and means, as long as you have an internet connection, that you can save money calling UK landlines rather than using your mobile minutes allowance or credit. It even lets you call home from abroad at the same rate as if you were at home.
For us it means the kids can call home whenever they want, are able to call 0800, 0845 and 0870 numbers and not worry about using up their credit.
If you have family living abroad they can get the app and they could save money when they want to call home too.
How much, if any charges per call depends on your call plan, so if you have free evening/weekend calls and some one uses it to call home from abroad they would have to make sure they only called when it was the evening or weekend in the UK.
You can limit each user's calls if you want to so for our girls I have barred them calling any premium rate, mobile or international numbers so that they can only call UK landlines.
It also acts as a second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth line at home so if one of you is on the phone the other/s one can use their mobile to make calls as if they were using the home phone.
Bit of a longer post than I thought it was going to be but I thought it might be of use.
Dom