Well we are now into the new year and I started to reflect on the past year and the year ahead. For the most part 2009 saw a substantial decline in overall phone card sales and I'm afraid we will continue to see the same trend throughout 2010. Prepaid Mobile phones with competitive international rates are only going to get more aggressive this year and with increased penetration of broadband in recent immigrant households, VOIP services like Skype and Vonage will also continue to errode the phone card market share.

Nobody beats phone card rates, but drop dead lowest rates is not always the most important factor, the convienience of these other services along with decent (and clean) rates seems to be the deciding factor in most purchases.

I don't want to be all gloom and doom here so I will point out that there are some positive trends that I have noticed:

1. Prepaid Mobile sales have been growing (lower margin and higher risk)
2. These new International Mobile Top-Up products have delivered a nice volume of sales (lower margin)
3. Prepaid cash cards have seen a slight increase in demand

While the above have certainly helped, they have not replaced the amount of traditional phone card sales volume lost. If we could just get another product like International Mobile Top-Up, I think we would all be able to return to our business levels of years past!

Here's to hoping for something new and revolutionary will come in 2010!

The original post: http://phonecardmania.blogspot.com/
The original picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29638096@N08/3077522731/

Prepaid Phone Cards
A prepaid phone card is sold already having a fixed balance on its account. Calling card customers can employ the product on any type of telephone, and the minutes are deducted right from the card. When the balance on your card is empty, you can either add extra money or throw it away. Prepaid phone cards are sold in rates per-minute or with a fixed amount of dollars. Commonly no cards are charged in minutes but local ones, as the telecom services on the territory of the US are provided for a unique price per minute. Long-distance phone cards, though, are defined in dollars, as every nation is characterized by its particular rates. This makes possible for a customer to employ the phone card for connecting with any country.

Credit Based Calling Cards
This type of calling cards is commonly called post-paid. It provides the same options as a common prepaid phone card; though, it's not based on amount of money being deducted. In this case, the calls you make are listed on a phone bill which you get at the end of the month. In some cases these calling cards are filled directly from a credit card.

Refillable Calling Cards
Refillable calling cards are the phone cards which may be refilled when the balance becomes empty. The company from which you've bought your phone card commonly has its own way of refilling. For a card which has been bough through the Web, address the web-site from which you've bought your card and refill it there. Refillable cards which have been bought at a local store are supplied by additional data on how to refill the account.

In accordance with the business from which you've purchased the card, the product can be refilled through your credit card, personal check, money order, or with cash.

Permanent Personal Identification Number
The phrase instant Personal Identification Number (or PIN) can be addressed to the majority of phone cards purchased through the Web. PIN can be received by email to get rid of delivery time and expenses and the period you have to wait from the purchase date and the day you get your card. Having an immediate PIN the customer does not have the card itself. He or she simply gets an email after investing money and making the card purchase. The letter you'll receive will include all tips necessary to know for employing the phone card, as well as your PIN, access number, and support service. Commonly the letter contains a photo of your phone card supplied by additional data. You can print the phone card's image and additional data, and it will perfectly suit your pocket or purse, like conventional cards do.

Long-Distance Calling Cards
A long distance calling card is a card which allows you to make calls to other countries. International calling cards may be employed in the US to make calls to any point on the globe. Lots of international cards will also fit you if you are on the go. They are supplied with international access numbers. The customers enter the domestic access number special for the area they are located in, then type in the PIN, and the number they want to call.

Article from: http://www.market-card.com/u/article18.html

Picture from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hamed/1552383685/

These days people are used to connecting with each other via the net at light speed. Connecting with people over the net does not cost us any money too. These facts lead telephone users to look for services that would enable them to make long distance and international calls at ease and cheap.

Cheap calls can be made using the net too. Still these techniques require the caller and the call receiver to sit by the computer, headset on and make the call at a preset date and time. Not convenient, not easy, no fun.

This is why many are looking for alternative cheap call service providers to make long distance and international calls at lowest possible rates.

VoIP (voice over internet protocol) had become a household term. Most people are aware of the possibility to make cheap calls to destination of their choice using a Wi-Fi phone and a wireless internet connection. Advanced Voip technology enables you to not only hold clear, uninterrupted phone conversations over the net, you can also save money on your standard phone bill. This is especially true when dialing internationally with notoriously expensive mobile phone calls.

This is a great way to make cheap calls, but what happens when you're out of your home, out of Wi-Fi range?

That is what phone service provider companies are offering - the exact solution for this problem.

The goal of telecom is to provide the caller with cheap call rates, using his mobile, from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world for lowest costs possible.

You can make cheap calls to UK, cheap calls to Finland, cheap calls to any country of your choice using such technologies. You can save up to 90% off your phone bill.

Secret is using internet technology without needing a computer or even a near by internet connection. Some companies offer a service with which subscribers use any touch-tone telephone to dial a local access number, followed by an identity code and the number they wish to reach. Some have the ability for the local access server to identify the caller and save the need to punch in any identity codes, just a 1 touch speed call using any cell phone.

Yes. These services are already available to be used in making cheap mobile calls.

All you need is to get informed.

On my quest for cheap mobile calls, I have researched the subject and found the most reliable service providers that offer cheap mobile calls, cheap international calls and cheap long distance calls that I am proud to feature on my blog.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Make-Cheap-Mobile-Calls---Cheap-International-Calls-Using-Your-Mobile-Phone&id=1239079

Landline long distance plans enable families living astride continents to focus on their day-to-day lives, thereby making it more tolerable for them to be apart for long periods of time. Compared to the meager choices that the cellular telephone companies have to offer, a well-chosen permanent long distance carrier such as LDPOST-PNG long distance service provides the ultimate savings for families who are achieving success in their professional lives in the U.S. while supporting their extended families abroad.

The versatility of an advanced long distance plan makes it ideal for most subscribers, enhancing their quality of life through 24-hour access to low per-minute rates to such destinations as Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, just to name a few. Whether you're calling within one of the larger metropolitan areas or a smaller city or town in Ukraine, for example, there are long-distance plans available to suit your needs. Plans with any-time-of-day discount periods represent the best and most flexible of subscription-based long distance services.

By combining low rates and 24-hour availability the better plans can help you achieve great savings in your monthly telecommunications spending. One of the principal ways that a plan like LDPOST-PNG can reduce your long distance bill is reducing working with the most advanced carriers with fewest system failures, which enhances service availability. Thus, the savings are passed on to the end-users of the long distance services, making for one of the best package plans available today. Some of the greatest contributors to overall success of an advanced long distance plan are the management and engineering teams who work hard on reducing development and connection costs.

This behind-the-scenes work is what makes it possible for numerous long distance plan subscribers to benefit from low rates and excellent connection quality, which have historically been the two key factors in selecting a long distance plan worth calling home about.


Source: http://www.ldpost.com/telecom-articles/ukraine-long-distance.html

Alex Saunders says, yes, it’s dead (http://saunderslog.com/2008/12/30/2008-the-year-that-voip-died/) with the caveat that it’s the VoIP-specific industry that’s dead and not the idea.

On the side of “VoIP is not dead”, Jeff Pulver leads the charge (http://pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/008747.html). Ever the IP Communications optimist, Jeff thinks that it’s just a timing issue and there will come a day when innovative VoIP companies will rise from the ashes, just you wait. Uber analyst Jon Arnold, who sparked the most recent thread (http://www.ipcom-insights.com/blog/jon/2008/12/my-take-on-2008-voips-not-dead-yet.aspx), declares VoIP is not dead and ready to thrive.

Silicon Valley blogging giant Om Malik of GigaOm covers both sides of the debate (http://gigaom.com/2009/01/01/voip-dead-or-alive/) and doesn’t come down either way. But clearly he is a skeptic given the many failures for new companies to arise. Ian Bell (also of GigaOm) comes down harder on VoIP saying that VoIP had promise back in the day. But Ian inexplicably blames the failure of VoIP on the “PSTN” getting in the way of true innovation.

To be sure, VoIP is now the de facto standard for all future telecom service (ALL current deployments are VoIP and in the near future, 100 percent will be VoIP. All carrier switches. All enterprise PBXs. All transported calls. Everything). So let’s put this question to rest. VoIP is the present and the future of telecom with absolutely no doubt about it.

But who cares. The mistake many in the telecom industry made is assuming that VoIP was something innovative from a business model perspective or that you could differentiate on it. Also, most in the industry either used VoIP to essentially do the same thing (i.e., plain ol’ telephony service aka POTS) or continue to use VoIP transport as an arbitrage mechanism for telephony.

To the defense of the former VoIP industry, there were many in the vendor community that tried to create both the underlying innovation structure (e.g., VoIP and SIP) and in fact, did create a number of compelling applications and features for service providers to deploy. At my former employer BroadSoft, we created many interesting applications (a click-to-dial toolbar in Microsoft Outlook, rich video telephony, custom ringback for landlines, easy to use find-me-follow-me a.k.a. “simring”, a compelling fully hosted PBX application, integration with Salesforce.com). The list goes on and on.

However, the bottleneck was not on the vendor side but with our customers (the service providers). They cried the clarion call for “innovative applications” but at the end of the day, really only wanted to deploy the same thing they were comfortable with (POTS!!!). It did not matter that it was VoIP, the offer was the same thing. For some service providers, they bought the dream of innovation but could not execute (or more accurately, could not market to end users anything more than the same thing). And lastly, there are the arbitrage players: Service providers that used this wonderful new technology to focus on the innovative offer of low prices (most famously Vonage, SunRocket, Jajah, and iBasis, but also hundreds of others).

One could make the argument that service providers tried but ultimately end users did not want new services. I think this is a cop-out and a bunch of BS. There were (are) a few players like PhoneTag and Skype that ultimately looked at the underlying technology and asked the question: “How can I provide either a better experience for the end user or disruptive economics?” or some combination thereof. The fact of the matter is that most service providers never tried.

There continues to be some amazing underlying technology being created but mostly sitting in the software vault of vendors waiting for someone to unleash it in a meaningful way. It takes not only great technology but the ability for someone to both harness and execute on a vision.

I got tired of waiting around for the industry and decided to take the future in my own hands. After 13 years on the vendor side, I determined that what the industry needs is a service provider to get something directly in the hands of the ultimate end users – consumers and business customers.

And so I’m putting my money where my mouth is with Vidtel (http://www.vidtel.com). My vision is that VoIP is a nice technology for POTS but a great technology for video. Video is to VoIP what radio was to TV in the 1930s: A visual superset including human voice but also the human face. We are building on the great underlying VoIP and SIP plumbing developed in the past 13 years to create something meaningfully compelling and new for the end user that is easier to use at a reasonable price but also life changing.

So is VoIP dead? As a method of better plumbing, it couldn’t be more alive and successful. As a driver of innovative telecom deployments, it is surely in intensive care hanging on for dear life. For all of our sakes, let’s hope the post-mortem blogs of 2009 hail the rebirth of VoIP and innovation yet to come.

Source: http://www.ipbusinessmag.com/departments/article/id/486/is-voip-dead

These days progressively smaller people are able to imagine their living with no telephony. If you want to spend less on placing calls you need to select the cheapest prepaid cards. In such case you can as well pay attention to unlimited calls. If you wish to accurately keep an account of utilized time, and your account, an excellent option will be to use prepaid calling cards. Choosing cheap telephone cards for IP-telephony, you will be enabled to place rings with convenience and saving. It is so much easy to place long-distance phone calls and domestic rings with our internet phone cards.



As you must know, IP-connection is the most low-cost way of communication so acquiring these prepaid calling cards you save many dollars. Besides, the usage of such cheap calling cards brings the easement to the client. Living in any place of the world, you may place a ring on any telephone number using our card. Our phone card helps you save not solely time but as well finances. You don't need to spare much time or efforts to become an owner of internet calling cards. The card of IP-connection is not only easy-to-use, but as well helps manage your personal finances. You can all the time track your balance on the card. One more significant advantage of such international calling card is your total anonymity at the time of the ring. Placing cheap calls means to call with the cards of IP-connection. Internet rings have recently been appreciated as the most appropriate and affordable way to place rings of placing rings by the global network consumers.



In reality, calls though the net are becoming extremely widespread throughout the world. With the help of the global network you may place long-distance phone rings and inland rings to whatever phone number in the world. These are the cheapest calls as compared with other services. Also persons are pulled up by their accessibility and practicability. By means of the agency and its services placing international telephone rings and inland rings is possible. On the interstate level, the agency proposes relatively reasonable internet phone cards for making calls. It's rather low-cost to ring to whatever telephone number worldwide. Calls to Asia, America or Europe are available with these top-quality inexpensive cards. Over and above low-cost rings, the firm proposes its customers to apply the unrationed rings. Such kind of telephony which is rather popular at present is also rather opportune. Persons choosing unlimited connection are enabled to make extended calls to a receiver located in any corner of the world. Nowadays Internet calls are as well getting extremely widespread.



Such communication, added to its convenience, is comparatively cheap. Our agency offers our consumers to use our low-priced and comfortable Web calls to place international telephone calls all over the world. If to collate all wireless rings, online rings are the most favourable amid them. We offer the consumers various calling cards prepaid for calls worldwide. Making low-cost calls at present is not very difficult. Working with this firm, you will all the time be enabled to make rings to your relatives and friend from all over the planet. Due to our phone connection you will easily keep in touch with your commercial companions living overseas.



The company provides the buyers with the information regarding how to opt for appropriate AT&T phone cards international from USA. Most people seeking the best prepaid cards to make international phone calls and home rings would be eager to know several useful points suggested by our experts about characteristics of phone cards. Info on prepaid calling cards is obtainable on our site on the net. So if you want to acquire high-grade phone cards with the finest characteristics do not be in two minds to contact our company. You will be definitely satisfied with our facility as our officers would put in their best licks to help you.

Every month, millions of people buy thousands of different calling cards from over-the-counter retailers such as convenience stores, gas stations, liquor/beer stores, and large retailers like Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, and Costco. With such a wide variety of options available (locations to buy from and number of cards), trying to find the right calling card for your needs can be a daunting task. Fortunately, a small number of savvy online calling card retailers have made buying a calling card easier than ever before.

Here are three reasons to consider buying your next calling card online vs. over the counter.

1. Total Shopping Convenience
2. Accurately Advertised Rates
3. Dedicated Customer Support

1. Total Shopping Convenience

From the comfort of your home via your personal computer, quickly and easilycompare prepaid calling cards that are ideal for calling to any country worldwide. Most calling card retailers offer multiple cards for you to compare by displaying them in an easy to read top-down format, which aligns card details, rates, and available denominations.

After finding the right calling card for your needs you can buy it within a few clicks. Leading retailers make your purchase secure and easy by offering trusted payment options like PayPal or Google Checkout, in addition to credit cards or debit cards. Some even allow you to purchase with a money order or personal check. Upon approval, your calling card PIN and dialing instructions will be sent to you via email and posted to your online account for future access.

TIP: Before purchasing a calling card from any online retailer, look for trust symbols and seals related to safe shopping (i.e. Verisign), business associations (i.e. Better Business Bureau), guarantees and even third party security partners (i.e. McAfee Secure).

2. Accurately Advertised Rates

The Internet makes it very easy for online calling card retailers to publish rate updates for any of their products in real-time or near real-time. As a result, you will see much more accurate advertised rate schedules for any of the calling cards you are interested in comparing or purchasing. Some retailers even publish a time stamp to let you know when a card’s rates last changed.

TIP: Research indicates that most advertised rates are based upon exhausting all available minutes on a calling card in a single call. If there are not any minutes left, on a calling card then the carrier cannot assess any additional fees; fees directly reduce the number of available minutes on a calling card. As such, customers should consider purchasing the lowest available denomination, which will allow them to enjoy their conversation and exhaust all available minutes in one phone call. If you plan to leave minutes remaining on your calling card, consider purchasing one with no fees beyond the advertised per minute rate. These are known as “clean calling cards.”

3. Dedicated Customer Support

Buy a calling card online and get the benefit of having access to two customer support teams (Retailer and Carrier). The carrier is your primary contact for card performance inquiries and the retailer can help you with any purchase related questions.

TIP: Consider buying a calling card from a retailer that clearly publishes customer support and contact information for the carrier and themselves. It’s also a good idea to find out if a guarantee is offered. Do not settle for anything less.

Source: http://speedypin.com/phone/card/articles-3reasons-to-buy-calling-card-online-vs-over-the-counter.html

Calling cards have made our world easier. Calling cards are actually the simplest and cheapest solution of making a phone call around the world. The market is brimming with various prepaid calling cards and each one comes with different schemes to allure the target customer. 

To make a call from a calling card is easy. You are able to make a call through a landline phone, or a mobile phone to any phone in the world at a cheap rate. All you have to do is to buy the prepaid calling card and then follow simple instructions to make your call. To start with, you are supposed to enter an access number, then the pin number and finally the destination number, where the call is being made. 

These global calling cards are issued by all the service providers and with different incentive schemes and at different rates. You must try to do some bit of analysis in order to find the most lucrative scheme available in the market. 

To talk about the advantages of calling cards apart from making cheap phone calls are as follows. You can keep a check on how much you are spending on a call. Therefore, you are able to keep a tap on your phone bill. Secondly, Calling cards also allow you to track the phone calls that you are making. Last but not the least, these international calling cards also provide you with some interesting schemes and offers that they keep on introducing as a means of sales promotion. Eventually, the benefit is enjoyed by the customers.

Prepaid calling cards are indeed useful way of making cheap international calls. Make best out of this benediction that is a result of the trend of consumerism and stay connected!

Source: http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/print_article.php?articleId=134300

If you are not sure about which calling card to select and are confused with all the difficult calculations, then read on this article to help you select the cheapest and best calling card for you. First of all you should search the card of your interest. Before buying, it is a good thing to check out the complete details of the card.

When you select the phone card then there are some charges associated with it. You should pay attention to the different hidden charges or the card will become more costly than you bargained for. Here are some hidden fees that you need to look for. First is connection fee, also known as first minute surcharge. Connection fee is the extra charges imposed by the phone company every time when you make a call. This varies between 24 cents to $3. Connection fee can increase the per-minute cost of a call.

The second one can be disconnection fee. Be careful of different disconnection fees, which works the exact same way as connection fees, but are applied when your call ends. It is also called hang up fee.

Maintenance fee is also another additional fee that is deducted from your card without making any call. These fees are charged on  a weekly, monthly or daily basis. Some calling cards charge the maintenance fee either when the call is connected or after the end of a call. It can be as high as $2.00 so you need to check it out too. There are some cards that charge communication fee up to 25% of the phone call. This makes the call rate 25% more costly in reality.

The advertised minutes usually look more attractive because these charges are deducted after the end of a call. However, despite these fees, most calling cards will still give you an overall better cost that any other phone company. Just check out the fess, to select the best card of the ones available.

Have you seen the Eiffel Tower in France or tasted the tasty pasta in Italy? Perhaps on a trip to Malaysia, you studied their colorful culture of Malaysia or scurried along with the hurried lifestyle in Japan. While in Hawaii, did you try surfing or put on dancing shoes in Spain to give the catchy flamenco a try? There’s so many places to go and people to meet. If you’ve been to any of these places and more, you may have traveled as part of your job. Working for a company that has its operations spread out worldwide, you might be given a chance to visit these many wonderful places most people only dream about. You may also be given a chance to travel to see other potential foreign clients that could be an asset to your company. The creation of international calling cards is a good thing, especially for people whose routine job is traveling the globe. It enables them to keep in touch with anyone at any given time. International calling cards can be used by anybody any place in the world to call home. There are companies and businesses that offer these calling cards in prepaid plans or in postpaid plans. Either way, these calling cards give users the opportunity to call home anywhere they might be. They can also be used any time of the day. Each of these companies and businesses that market these calling cards provide different rates depending on where you are and what company you have chosen to use. By using international calling cards, calling your loved ones and even your boss is no longer a problem. Wherever you are, you can call long distance for a much lower cost compared to hotel rates or cellular phone rates. International phone cards also provide clear and crisp connections.