How To Choose International Phone | Calling Cards
A telephone card, calling card or phone card for short, is a small card, usually resembling a credit card, used to pay for telephone services. Such cards can either employ prepaid credit system or credit card style system of credit. The exact system for payment, and the way in which the card is used to place a telephone call, depend on the overall telecommunication system. Currently, the most common types of telephone cards involve pre-paid credit in which the card is purchased with a specific balance, from which the cost of calls made is deducted. Pre-paid phone cards are disposable. When the balance is exhausted you simply buy a new card. Cards purchased can often be refilled. The other main type of card involves a card with a special PIN printed on it that allows one to charge calls to a land-line telephone account.
Why would you want to buy an international long distance calling card? What do you need to know before you purchase an international long distance calling card? I am going to give you all the information you need so that you can make a wise decision on which international long distance calling card to purchase.
Calling cards are, unfortunately, all different and all have their own little catches. There are calling cards that will let you call for extremely cheap per minute rates, but charge you a ton to connect. There are some that don't have a connection fee, but charge you if you call from a payphone or they will charge extra per minute if you don't go over 10 minutes per call.
When choosing an international long distance calling card you have to be careful and make sure you get one that is going to allow you to talk for the longest amount of time for your money. Make sure that you buy the right one for your needs. If you plan to call someone that is using a mobile phone make sure you get a calling card that will allow this.
Also, make sure to check the card for what countries you can use it to connect to. Some of them advertise how many minutes you can get to each country, but you have to read the fine print and make sure that you figure in connection charges. It is best to connect with a calling card once and talk until it is gone.
I recommend buying your calling card online. This will save you a lot of hassle because you can recharge this card anytime you want online or over the phone. Other calling cards will allow this, but I just find it easier to use the online cards and store the numbers they give me. If you are calling from a mobile phone you can store the number in your phone and have your card automatically linked to your phone so that you don't have to re enter your pin number every time you call.
Overall you need to make sure you research what you are buying. Look for unadvertised connection charges and conditions that apply to your purchase and use of the card. Make sure you know what you are buying and make sure you are getting the card that will be right for you.
There are principally two core technologies for phonecards: stored-value and remote memory.
Stored-value phone cards
In stored value, called so because the card itself contains the balance available. The balance is read by the public pay-phone machine when it is inserted into the machine's card reader. This is similar to an automated teller machine at a bank. There are several ways in which the value can be encoded on the card.
The earliest system used a magnetic stripe as information carrier, similar to the technology of ATMs and key cards. It was issued in 1976 in Italy, manufactured by SIDA.
The next technology used optical storage. Optical phone cards get their name from visible marks left on the card, such as holes or lines, so that the card reader scans for such marks and determines the balance on the card. Optical cards, such as ones made by Landis+Gyr and Anritsu, were popular early phonecards in many countries. Such technology is quite simple and easily hackable, thus for security reasons, among others, optical phone cards have been steadily phased out around the world. Optical phonecards are still in use in several countries, perhaps most notably in Japan.
The third sub-system of stored value phone cards is chip cards, first launched on a large scale in France in 1986 by France Telecom. Many other countries followed suit, including Ireland in 1990 and the UK circa 1994-1995, which phased out the old green Landis & Gyr cards in favor of more colorful smart cards. The initial microchips were easy to hack, typically by scratching off the programming-voltage contact on the card, which rendered the phone unable to reduce the card's value after a call. But by the mid-to-late 1990s, highly secure technology aided the spread of chip phone cards worldwide.
