Good IM providers.

Most of the people who are living in the USA have internet connected PC's, Laptops or Smartphone or all of them. And most of those internet connections are broadband connections that are designed to provide high speed transfers. So if you want to call someone living in USA it is better to call them through the Instant Messengers. Where you will get HD video and crystal clear voice connection and most of the time the service is free if both of you are using web based IM.
But don't relay only in one IM as recently the most accessed IM Skype went out of service temporarily and most of the people didn't know how to proceed with their business talks or to talk with their loved ones. Putting more IM will take little more space of your hard disks and the starting time of your PC may take little longer. But this is a best idea to be connected with your people through the internet for free.

Before you are going to get one IM find out about it's its popularity and see whether it is coming from a good company. For example Skype is the leader in this free PC to PC calling with HD quality video conferencing service. This is a top rated service provider with 16 million registered members. They offer PC to land lines and mobile phones at low priced calling rates.

Then here is another quality product from the Google Inc. They offer Google Talk which is now available through their Gmail account. If you can download and install their softphone system, you can make PC to PC voice and video calls free while from UK or from any other country you can make free calls to landlines and mobile phones in any part of the USA.

If you are a member in the AOL web site then you can have their IM which is called as AIM will allow you to make PC to PC calls with video if you liked it.

Yahoo Messenger. Their IM provides the free call facility with video conferencing when you become as a member with them.

VoxOx, TokBox, Logitech and ooVoo are other popular IM service providers for the internet community to communicate with their friends and families. Many of them offer multi party video conferencing through the internet. Most of the voice calls are unlimited ones and they are free when it is web based ones. If web based to landlines or mobile phones you have to buy credits from them using your credit cards.