Phones

This is where many people get confused - or overcharged. Make sure your calling card provider lists all of the charges associated with your card (CallingCards.com has detailed information and full disclosure for each of its cards - see example). Taxes and payphone charges are mandatory fees that calling card providers can't control, so don't think your provider is ripping you off. Maintenance charges are usually imposed on high-quality cards - customer service and clear call quality aren't free.

Now to be clear, the government should be picking up soldiers roaming charges; I mean how can you ask someone to risk their life for you and then nickel and dime them? But in the absence of that Cell Phones for Soldiers is stepping in. A grassroots non profit started by Brittany and Robbie Bergquist, then ages 13 and 12 in April 2004; Cell Phones for Soldiers has gone from being bankrolled by $21 of lunch money to raising nearly $1 million and giving away over 75,000 prepaid calling cards.

I’ve always hated day time talk shows, especially since every one of them morphed into one of Jerry Springer’s ugly stepkids and started airing the same “scandalous” content. But Montel Williams is giving away free global 10 minute calling cards so that people can stay in touch with their families over the holidays, which is A-ok in my book!

CIf your attempts to call a number in Rodrigues, using a cheap pre-paid international calling card, often fail, here is a possible explanation.

My younger brother, Matthew (aka. Natural), has been hiking Southbound, Maine to Georgia on our Nation’s grand Appalachian Trail. Using calling cards he checks in periodically to let us know he’s alive. That, and the tree-bark content of his stools. He called from Duncannon, Pennsylvania last night to holla at his peeps, and give us a long overdue update on his trek on the AT.

It’s bad enough that they overcharge domestic customers but we have alternatives. The soldiers don’t because, according to The Prepaid Press, AT&T has an EXCLUSIVE contract to put payphones in PBXes in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, you ask, can’t the soldiers get cheap calling cards to call the US? No! Because AT&T is using (abusing!) its position as monopoly supplier of payphones to block the 800 numbers necessary to use nonAT&T calling cards.

Well, about 9 the next morning, the buses finally came. We packed up the buses and then rode for about 2 hours to March Air Force Base. There they had like a USO set up, where they provided us with free snacks, free hygiene gear, and free calling cards. After about 2 hours, it was flight time.

iBasis, Inc., a player in international long distance, VoIP, and pre-paid calling cards, announced that Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), the national carrier of Pakistan, has interconnected with The iBasis Network for international VoIP services. The interconnection will enable PTCL to route international voice traffic over The iBasis Network, a global VoIP network, as well as complete calls for iBasis over its extensive network in Pakistan.

This subject came up today at lunch, so I did a little research. It seems that the calling cards purchased through the Army Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) are the way to go.

We don’t have long distance phone service on our phone. Instead we use calling cards from Costco. They only cost 2.8 cents per minute. Our home phone still works for 800 numbers and we could dial a long distance call in an absolute emergency if we lost our card somehow (it will cost a fortune). But our long distance costs are minimal when you can talk on the phone for 30 minutes for 84 cents!

Most telecom reps will privately recommend calling cards as the cheapest and most economical long distance solution. The best are less than 4 cents/minute, no per-call connection fee, no monthly fees, and the ability to recharge minutes at any time. Cards provide higher value than cell phone minutes, and certainly have higher quality connections over traditional land lines.

The biggest problem facing us now is that I live in Florida and she lives in New Zealand. We’ve spoken on the phone, though; prepaid calling cards are relatively inexpensive. (I have one that costs 1.9 cents per minute with a $0.39 surcharge per call.) I’ve linked to her blog in my sidebar, but she has another website here.

We got rid of our long distance phone carrier and use Sam's calling cards.

His mother told me the AT&T cards are the only calling cards that work from Iraq and the minutes purchased on the card are only worth about a third of that purchased. As we all can imagine, those calls home are pure gold.

Home > FCC Daily > Federal Register Notice of Rulemaking on Calling Cards >

The Commission has published Federal Register notice of Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ("NPRM") FCC 05-41. The Order section of that release denied AT&T's May 15, 2003 petition requesting a declaratory ruling that intrastate access charges do not apply to calls made using its "enhanced" prepaid calling cards when the calling card platform is located outside the state in which either the calling or the called party is located.

On November 22, 2004, AT&T requested a similar ruling that two new variants to its "enhanced" calling card offering are information services and jurisdictionally interstate. The Commission noted that those changes to AT&T's calling card services may be significant for purposes of regulatory classification and jurisdiction. Rather than try to address each possible type of calling card offering through a declaratory ruling, the Commission initiated a NPRM to consider the classification and jurisdiction of new forms of prepaid calling cards comprehensively...

The Department of Defense announced today that any American can now help troops in contingency operations call home. The Defense Department has authorized the Armed Services Exchanges to sell prepaid calling cards to any individual or... [Stryker Brigade News]