If you find yourself living and studying abroad, learning to stir sauces in Provence, or stirring watercolors for your Art class in Florence, you understand that culture is so much easier to come by than cold hard cash. A student is a student, and more often than not, they’re just as strapped for Euros as they are for dollars. Well, a new service from Lingo may be just the ticket to staying in touch with your family. I mean, why spend all of your parents’ money on calling home to ask for more money?

For just $7.95 a month, Lingo, the high-speed VoIP service from Primus Telecommunications, is offering a new calling service designed to enable any two Lingo customers to call each other from anywhere in the world and talk for an unlimited amount of time.

The service is designed for individuals who place frequent calls to the same people, and is available to anyone who has a broadband Internet connection. So if you find yourself putting down roots in Rome, Italy, and your family is rooted in Rome, NY, Lingo Link might be just what the doctor ordered.

The service covers all incoming calls, and included voice-mail means you don’t miss any of those calls. Calls to non-subscribers are charged Lingo’s usual long-distance VoIP rates (for example, $0.03 per minute for calls to the U.S. and Canada).

I’m glad to see service providers such as Lingo raising the bar and providing the kind of services we’ve been writing about for years in Internet Telephony magazine. Specifically, services that make sense for users, services that will drive IP minutes of use skyward, and services that can be adapted and changed to suit a variety of groups as need be.

This is the true benefit of switching to IP and it thrills me to see services such as Lingo Link exploding onto the scene.