It all depends on the cost, availability, and quality of the Internet on the woman's end. Don't assume that the Internet in the FSU is the same as it is in the suburbs of Boise, Idaho.
Cost - Internet providers in the FSU rarely offer one price, unlimited access. Dial up charges by connection time (with different rates for peak/off-peak times), and DSL may also have a very low data cap, with addition upload/download data costing additional. Cellular data plans also are pricey, and many carriers will either block or penalize users that use VoIP over their cellular networks (after all, they are in the voice communications business!). Just because you have a lower cost on your end, doesn't always make it less expensive. You may just be offsetting the cost to the other end, to someone whom is less able to afford it.
Availability - Broadband Internet (and even wired landline telephones) are not available everywhere. My wife's parents, who live in a good size city, only got a wired telephone a few years ago. There wasn't even telephone wiring on their street (one block away from a major road). They had to find nearly a dozen other homes willing to pay the TelCo company to run the wiring so they could get telephone service.
Quality - The standard format for VoIP telephone calls is the g.711 codec, which requires around 80-100 kbps (nearly double what a dial-up modem can do). There are other formats that use less bandwidth by compressing data, but sound quality suffers. Skype uses proprietary codecs, which may compress enough for use on dial-up, but it still will take a quality hit. Most people experienced with VoIP networks (and I know a number of them) don't recommend VoIP if dial-up is used.
One issue to watch with Skype is that it also uses bandwidth when the user isn't on the phone. There have been reports of people running Skype finding that it used 2.5GB/month as a 'Super Node'. If you are paying your ISP for data used, one could find an expensive bill waiting for them.
Paying $0.16/min is also an expensive rate. As someone who has been calling Russia daily for nearly 5 years, you can get the same or better quality for less than half that price (7 to 10 cent/min to Ukraine). I'll attach two links to the VoIP providers I use. You can either 'geek out' (like I did) and integrate it into your home telephone system, or you can use a soft phone program (similar to Skype). Or you can use them as a calling card, where they know your caller ID (no PINS to enter). If you are on the road, and can't dial out on the available phone, you can enter your telephone number and your woman's number on their web page, and they call both of the phones. All without the service fees and connection charge junk the calling cards throw at you.
http://www.future-nine.com/A2BCustomer_UI/rates.phphttp://www.voipstunt.com/en/index.html
