How do you make cheap international calls by Dmitry Pavlov
Added April 21 2006
Dmitry Pavlov
I came to the US at the time the calls to Russia, Moscow were expensive as hell, to say the least. Unless you went with a runner-up like Quest, you could easily end up paying over a 1$/minute. With the cheaper carriers it would be 65-70 cents, which was still a lot. What adventurous people like me who liked calling their parent abroad but didn't have much money ended up doing, was using all sorts of internet based programs, of which hottelephone.com and especially Microsoft's NetMeeting are the primer examples. The quality was horrible but it was free!
Nowadays, I wonder if there is anyone (and I mean anyone who even doesn't know how computer looks) paying these humongous rates: unlike gas that goes through the roof, the calls to many international destinations like China, UK, Russia are way cheaper than calls within the US, or even the local calls. The primary reason for that is
the development of the internet telephony. If you go, say, with Yahoo! Messanger, you could get a relatively high quality of sound for PC to phone calling, almost for free, with PC to PC being free but advancing in quality from 10 years ago quite noticeably.
And if you still want the convenience of using your phone, and especially if your cell phone plan allows for free long distance, then you can take advantage of a variety of calling cards that many retailers offer. In my case, calls to Russia, Moscow cost me around 1 cent a minute which is about 5 times less than what I would pay if I were to call within the US. You can explore some of the options by looking at the ads on this page and I assure you that in case of ComFi phone cards, you will get high quality and low prices.
The cards will typically differ in a way they round your conversation, typically 1 or 3 minutes, when the card expires, usually within 3-6 months, whether it is rechargeable or not (if it is you won't have to change your pin, but it may cost you some extra), where they offer local calling which is cheaper than using 1-800 number (by 1-2 cents a minute as a rule). You will get the best deals on the most restircted cards but I want to assure you that it is well worth it, paying orders of magnitude more with AT&T doesn't make much sense.
Please email me if you would like more information.
