A recent government study found that over 20 percent of US households have given up their landlines in favor of using mobile phones. Probably the biggest reasons are to conserve money and the advantage of having a lone communications device. This number is no doubt burgeoning at a mercurial pace given the present-day economic conditions.
Most US cell phone plans consist of a certain number of “anytime” minutes that can be used during the day and “unlimited” night and weekend minutes. The price of a basic plan is about indistinguishable to that of a landline with Caller ID and voicemail features so the thought of using a cellphone in place of a landline makes tremendous economic sense. In addition, you’d have to dig up extra for domestic long distance calls from a traditional landline whereas your mobile phone minutes include that as part of the plan. The issue comes when you have to make international calls from a mobile phone: even with the discounts offered for an additional monthly fee, the international rates charged by cell phone service providers is still over 2 times as much as can be encountered elsewhere.
The least complicated way to make cheap international calls from a cell phone is to “dial-around” your mobile service provider using international calling cards. It’s easy to buy internet calling cards and many offer features like PIN-less dialing if you tell them the number you’ll be calling from. There are also providers who offer “dial-around” services without a calling card and speed dial to frequently called numbers. The way it works is that you provide them the number you’re going to be calling from and when they see that ID calling their access number they will simply prompt you for the speed dial code or the internatonal number you want to call.
While using an international calling card to make cell phone international calls is not very complicated it does require a lot of extra dialing. To solve this difficulty some dial-around services are now offering free software downloads to iPhones, Blackberries and other smartphones that will automatically discern when an international call is being made and steer the call to their network through a local access number for completion. All the user needs to do is enter the international number or dial it right from the phone’s contact list. If you have a smartphone, this may be your best option as rates for these services are comparable to international calling cards.
When reviewing cell phone international calling options it’s important to understand that no one service provider will have the best rates to all countries. This is because of the arrangements they’ve made for terminating traffic in any given country. A valuable thing to do is have a list of countries you want to call between and examine the rates to find the lowest cost overall. Another option would be to use more than a single provider if you find the rates to be significantly different between the countries you want to call. Use this link to find cell phone international calling plan options.
An additional suggestion is that, if your mobile plan has unlimited minutes to frequently called numbers, you can enter the calling card access number as one of those. Even the smartphone services will normally route the call to the same access number every time. You can watch the display as the call is being set up to get the number to use.
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