Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Using Phone Cards from International Pay Phones

“Will it cost me more money to use my phone card from a pay phone outside the USA?”

I really don’t like my answer to questions like this, but it’s the truth. You will most likely be charged more for using your global phone card from a payphone outside the USA. The part of my answer I don’t like is that it’sa vague statement, and I like to be as specific as I can with our customers. However, there are a few factors that prevent me from being more specific.

I think it’s most helpful to understand how phone cards work from pay phones in the USA first.

The FCC (Federal Comminications Commission) is an agency in the United States government that regulates different communications throughout the country (i.e. radio, television, telephones, satellites, wires, phone cards, etc.). They have a regulation in place for using phone cards from pay phones in the USA, a per call surcharge will come off the balance of your phone card. This surcharge is then paid from the phone card provider to the pay phone provider for the use of their telephone equipment to place the call. So if you have a phone card with a $1.00 pay phone surcharge, $1.00 will come off the balance of your phone card for every call you place with that card from a USA pay phone.

So that’s how it works in the USA. Outside the USA, though, it’s a different story.

Most other countries do not regulate their pay phones like the USA does. In most cases, the carriers are allowed to do what they’d like when a phone card is used from their pay phones. Usually, one of the following happens:

- A per minute surcharge may be applied to the call lowering the available number of minutes with your phone card.

- A per call surcharge may be applied to the call lowering the available number of minutes with your phone card.

- They could block the phone card all together.

Unfortunately, we aren’t able to say which pay phone carriers in which countries are going to follow what practices and at what cost. It could be different from country to country and carrier to carrier.

The advice I can give you is this:

- If you’ve found a pay phone that’s blocking your phone card, try a different bank of pay phones. It’s likely that the second set of pay

phones is through a different carrier who may not block phone cards.

- The per minute or per call surcharges are usually very high, sometimes triple or quadruple the rate per minute or more.

I’m sorry I can’t give you any more specifics about what this may cost, but this is about the best I can do. Any time we hear of a customer having trouble calling from certain destination, we’ll list the feedback with the access number(s) for that calling card and that country.

For more information about using phone cards while traveling abroad, click here.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Phone Cards for International Calls

Due to the tight competition in the communication market, telecom providers are coming up with innovations that will bring in the customers to their area of the playing field. These businesses aim to target the need of consumer for quality products at the lowest possible price; thus, they came up with prepaid phone cards.

Prepaid phone card is the latest trend in making local and overseas calls without being subscribed to a regular telecom service. These call media are being sold in various shops in your area and offers different features and benefits to their users to maximize each call they make at the lowest possible price. If you are having doubts on the capacity of prepaid phone cards to provide you with interesting features and functions for calls abroad, then here are some basic info about them that will help you decide whether to use it or not.

No Monthly Charges

Savings is possible with prepaid phone card since there is no monthly fee involve in using the service. That’s right! These call media requires no bills to be paid every month. The reason for this is that prepaid phone cards have their own call minutes that will be deducted with each call you make. The amount deducted from your account will depend on the rate of International calls offered by the provider.

Sold In Assorted Denominations Prepaid phone cards are sold in assorted denominations for you to choose from. Depending on the telecom provider, each prepaid phone card amount you purchased will have its own corresponding minutes you can use to make local and international calls. With the selections, you can easily pick the card amount that will fit perfectly with your call budget.

Lowest International Calls Rates

Unlike regular telecom services like landlines and mobile phones, the international call rates of prepaid phone cards are the lowest in the market. You can enjoy longer calls without any fear of draining
your wallet of your hard-earned savings. In fact, some prepaid phone cards offers extra benefits like discounts or more call credits when you purchase larger denominations of their products.

Find The Best Ones For Your Call Needs If you think that the savings you get from using prepaid phone cards is enough of a factor to merit its use, then you need to find the perfect one that will fit perfectly with your communication needs.

Aside from the savings you get, you might want to consider the features offered by prepaid phone cards to their subscribers. Read the labels of each card to determine the functions it can give to maximize your use for it; as well as making sure that there are no hidden charges since there are plenty of scammers in the world who will go through lengths to extract every single dollar out of your with fake services.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Reliance’s Calling Cards offer 50p/min STD rates on night calling to any network in ORISSA

Reliance Communications is offering 50p/minute call rates on all STD calls made during the night (between 11pm to 6am) to any network. The company is offering this unique tariff through its newly launched STD calling cards in Orissa circle. It has launched four new STD calling cards, available in the denominations of Rs 125, Rs 250, Rs 650 & Rs 875.
All the four new STD calling cards Offer full talk-time after deduction of applicable taxes and are available for both Reliance GSM and CDMA subscribers in Orissa.

The lower denomination cards of Rs 125 and Rs 250 are being offered with a tariff validity of 30 days. Along with 50 p /min night calling STD tariff, the Rs 125 STD calling card offers tariff of Re 1 / min for all STD calls between 6am to 11pm. On the other hand, Rs 250 calling card offers 25 p / min tariff for STD calling to any Reliance GSM mobile during night and 90 p /min tariff for all STD calls between 6am to 11pm.

The higher value STD calling cards of Rs 650 and Rs 875 offer 60-days tariff validity and unlimited free night calling (11 pm to 6 am) to respective Reliance Mobile network. This implies that Reliance GSM subscribers can enjoy free STD night calling benefits to all Reliance GSM while Reliance CDMA subscribers can enjoy the same to all Reliance CDMA subscribers. Apart from 50p/min tariff for STD calls to any other network during night, these two cards offer tariff of 75 p /min for all STD calls between 6 am to 11 pm.

To make calls from the STD calling card balance, customers should dial 1802206 followed by STD code and the phone number. These STD callings cards are available on e-recharge across 14,000 retail outlets in Orissa.