One of the most important calls I make during the week is the one to my mother, followed by another one to my baby brother. These are international long distance calls, and for the first 15 years of my American life, those calls went over AT&T’s wired or wireless networks, forging a very special bond with Ma Bell.

This past year, however, that bond has been broken. AT&T has been replaced by Truphone, a UK-based mobile VoIP company that offers better quality voice calls at lower rates and doesn’t require me to own a landline. A WiFi-enabled Nokia phone is all it takes. (These days, I am totally in love with my Nokia E61.)

Truphone has become indispensable to my work and personal life, and perhaps that is why I’m glad to learn it just raised a whopping $32.7 million in Series B funding from “new investors,” although the company wouldn’t name names. Previous investors who have pumped in over $24.5 million in Series A funding — Burda Digital Ventures, Eden Ventures, Independent News & Media and Wellington Partners — came back with more cash as well.

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SIPphone just released Gizmo Project 4.0, a soft client that includes video calling. You can make free video calls, even if only one person has a webcam, and the Meta IM and Tabbed Chat interface make it a worthy IM client for your Windows desktop. Mac people will have to wait, but 4.0 works on Nokia tablets. Now if they would just improve their quality of service…

Mobile VoIP/IP startup Fring has released the fringME! widget, which lets web visitors fring you from anywhere you’ve placed it. Among the cool features on this widget is the real-time ‘find me’ feature, which instantly opens a GoogleMaps window to show the fringster’s physical location via their GPS-equipped handset.

And lastly, my favorite voice-over-Wi-Fi company, Truphone, has released a Facebook app that allows folks to call you directly from the social network, just add the Truphone ‘Call Me’ button. They also have a video explaining how it works.