There are three kinds of VOIP you could be talking about.

The first kind sends your call out from a local number in the country you're calling to. So someone in France has a French number, and you can use it following French local tariffs + a bit. The owner of this number would be prosecuted if he didn't cooperate with enforcing the law.

The second way is that you use IP to connect to your own country's PSTN. Normal international rates apply.

The third is that you use a platform like WhatsApp with no relation to the PSTN. In this case I don't know how the law applies.

The fourth kind (which you are not talking about) is that your PSTN carrier privately uses IP to connect to the French PSTN carrier but it looks like PSTN on both sides.

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gruez 2 days ago | parent [-]

At least in the US, VOIP providers (think google voice or twilio) interconnect with telephone companies similar to how landline/cellphone companies interconnect with each other, so #1 and #4 are essentially the same. The only difference is what the "from" number appears as. If you look at the price lists of voip providers, you'll note that the only factor that determines the price is where you're calling to, not where you're calling from.

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inigyou 2 days ago | parent [-]

That provider is either only providing service to one country (very likely because this is separately regulated in every country), is showing you prices specific to your country, or is doing #1 and making themselves liable for spam.

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gruez 2 days ago | parent [-]

>That provider is either only providing service to one country (very likely because this is separately regulated in every country),

twilio can hardly be described as "providing service to one country", and has the same price list whether I'm using an American VPN or Dutch VPN:

https://www.twilio.com/en-us/voice/pricing/fr

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inigyou 2 days ago | parent [-]

You see how it says "local"? That means a local call.

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gruez 2 days ago | parent [-]

That doesn't make any sense when you look at the other options, one of which is "Mobile calls", but no "long distance" or "foreign" option. Moreover twilio operates over the internet. There's no concept of "local" on the internet. The concept of long distance only really exists for landlines and cell phones, but even in the latter case it gets blurred because of wifi calling. You could have a SIM for a US carrier but be using wifi calling from hong kong, and that would still be a "local" call.

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inigyou 2 days ago | parent [-]

Exactly, no long distance or foreign option. So these must be local calls, meaning they are made from a French twilio number to a French number.

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gruez 2 days ago | parent [-]

>So these must be local calls

No, you're just reading too much into "local". The price page for US also only has "local" only, but I know for a fact that "long distance" calls work fine.

https://www.twilio.com/en-us/voice/pricing/us

	▲	inigyou 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		So you called yourself from a French Twilio number and got a French caller ID and got billed the local US rate?