Can anyone advise on the best way to get cheap phone calls from the US to Germany? I found one good website at http://lowestrates.pushline.com which sells discounted calling cards. You can search for the best rates and the cheapest came out as 2.3 cents a minute.
Does anyone have experience using calling cards? Is the quality acceptable?
Yes, I always use locally-purchased phone cards to call home (England) from the US, and I'm sure they're equally useful for calls to Germany.
These cards are widely available from convenience stores, gas stations, etc in the US and come in standard denominations, eg $10, $20.
You dial a toll-free number and key in the pin number given on the card when asked by a recorded voice. You then dial the number you want and a recorded voice tells you how many minutes (or hours!) of call time you've got left.
On long calls the cost per minute can be surprisingly low. The bulk of the cost lies in making the initial connection, and if you are making several calls one after the other you should not hang up between calls - the instructions on the card will tell you to press the # key (or similar) before placing the next call.
One advantage of these cards is that you can make calls from the comfort of your hotel room (for example) without worrying about a massive bill from the hotel - though check the hotel doesn't charge for making toll-free calls.
To answer your question, I think phone cards are a good way of phoning abroad from North America. I'm sure if you shopped around you'd find some calls are better value than others - but I've never bothered.
The cheapest way to make a long-distance phone call from anywhere to anywhere is by using technology called "Voice over IP" ; that means using the internet to make phone calls. This technology has been around for a few years, and is now becoming readily available.
To use this, walk around any reasonably-sized city centre and look out for signs (often a board on the sidewalk) advertising cheap phone calls. You will likely find a shop containing several phone booths, all controlled by a guy with a computer. They have a permanent internet connection and use this to relay "voice data" via the phones in the store. You take a booth, make your call to wherever and then pay afterwards for the number of seconds you were "online" (usually they charge per minute or part thereof).
These calls are VERY cheap, but the downside is that you have to go to the store. I recently made several international calls like this from Belgium and Luxembourg to France and South Africa, and the cost of each call was less than a Euro after speaking for several minutes.
Posts: 78 | Location: Cape Town, South Africa | Registered: December 27, 2001
Wait till you get to the US and find a cyber cafe. Look up a site www.priceline.com at this site you can use a credit card to purchase minutes. It will give you a 1-800 number and a Personal Identification Number. I have made calls all over the world using this service. I have been able to call europe for as low as 1.9 cent a minute and Australia for as little as 2.5 cent a minute. that is the best cheap phone service i have found that i can use to call from the US to anywhere on the world one of my office mates has a son in Japan and Uses this to call him for 2.3 cents a minute. You bid on the amount of time total and price you think is fair for the call. and if they accept your bid you are charged if they reject it you are never charged. I have been using this for over 8 years and have been pleased with it for both business and personal usage. Hope this helps you out. It is an american company so you have to purchase inside the US. It would not let me purchase when i was in Barcelona in 1999 it may have changed since then but i am not sure. I have always purchased before i leave the country since.
I am not sure if you want to use the card for travelling or that you currently live in the US. I live here and have used cards but also internet. On internet I can suggest Skype. Skype runs on many platforms, Windows, Mac, Linux and is easy to use. If you have a pc and the recipient does too.. it costs nothing. You can also use it to make calls to land lines or cell phones. For that you would have to buy some credit. For cards.. I have always used nobelcom.com cards, but I know there are many more around. For this, you will need to have a phone number in the US where they can call you to verify your cc number. You could use a phone number at a hostel or hotel for this. 2 cents sounds like a reasonable price for a call. Like I said, there are many cards around but they all charge more or less the same. Look at the small print some cards charge less per minute but will charge $0.50 for the connection. Others take money from your card on a weekly basis.
