Travel Technology - International calling cards

Hi all,

My daughter is traveling to Germany this summer. Our Sprint cell phone service does not include Europe. Can anyone recommend an international calling card service that she can use when Internet cafés are not available?

TIA

Nobelcom.com. Prepaid, easily rechaged, germany to the US is 2.9 cents per minute. Love them for calling back.

Check out Masterbell (http://www.masterbell.com). They've done us right for years now.

I should have some kind of inner switch that prevents me from starting my Asterisk rants...but for some reason I lack that control.

Ok, I'd set-up an Asterisk@home server and get a number in Germany from Voxbone.com - they may even have toll free ones by now.
Then you can either use a softphone or get an linksys PAP2 ($40 on ebay) and connect a regular phone to it. Then she calls the voxbone German number and it connects straight to your Asterisk@home server which rings your phone.
The Voxbone account is like $15/month for unlimited incoming calls.

You could get extra fancy and get a Broadvoice BYOD lite plan for $5/month that would let her call out. So she calls in on the German number, gets a dialtone and can make calls to anyone, including you guys on your cell or house phones, etc and she can call friends....

Ok..I'm done...calling card is probably easier...but not nearly as much fun!

Hi all,

My daughter is traveling to Germany this summer. Our Sprint cell phone service does not include Europe. Can anyone recommend an international calling card service that she can use when Internet cafés are not available?

TIA

I like using http://www.idt.net/personal/cards/gc/ both when calling Europe from the US and when in Europe. You can set up an account with automatic recharge and pinless dialing, the rates for calling most Euro countries from the US are 10 cents/ minute. A lot of other services offer rates of 2 cents/minute but there are almost always connection- and maintenance fees. There is a free local access number to use when abroad and rates back to the US are around 20 cents/minute.

The same company has another service called "International Wireless" which seems like a good deal at first but when looking at the rates you see that only calls to landline phones are good deals- when calling a cellular phone the rate is five times as high! :-:

Check out Masterbell (http://www.masterbell.com). They've done us right for years now.
Took this recommendation and got a card from them for my daughter to call FROM Japan to the US. Rates can be difficult to fathom (local call vs. toll free in Japan), and there are two companies involved when I needed customer support (masterbell vs the actual card vendor), but in the end the rate is 6 cents/min and customer support was superb.

Great recommendation. Thanks. ^

With any calling card be sure to check out the Units charged, not the cents per minute. I have an AT&T card from Sam's Club that gives 5 cents per 'minute' worldwide. Call from Germany to the US and be charged 3 'minutes' per minute. (Just an example, I can't recall how many units they really charge.)

Also, note that most of these cards charge a monthly fee of some sort no matter what they tell you. For instance Nobelcom, and they are all the same in that you have to seek out the catches, has a $20 card that you can use to call the US from Germany for 2.9 cents per minute with no connection charge.

That assumes that you are using their local access codes which they have in 8 cities. Whether that local Berlin number is a local call for YOU is something you might not know until you get there. Now assume it is not and you need to use the German toll-free number. Well the toll-free access is 11.5 cents per minute with the 2.9 cents on top of that.

Now let's assume that you are using the toll-free number and she calls and gets your voicemail. Well since they are billing in 2 minute increments that short "Hi Dad. I'm fine. I'll call back tomorrow" cost 11.5 cents per minute for 2 minutes and another 2.9 cents per minute for 2 minutes or 28.8 cents.

Oh and did you notice that there is a weekly maintenance fee of 69 cents? That just gets deducted off the $20 card you bought each week so don't test it out in the US before she starts the trip.

And, by the way, is she going to be visiting relatives or is there a chance she'll be using a payphone. That payphone surcharge is 99 cents. So if she happens to get your voicemail from the payphone that 28.8 cents just went up to $1.28.

By the way, they charge a higher rate when calling a cell phone although if just calling the US there is no way for them to know it is a cell phone.

Calling cards aren't evil, you have have to be very careful to be getting the right one for you.

BTW IDT Global Call is weakly supported product and it is nigh impossible to get any credit back or any information from customer support unless you happen to call during the window of time when the one person with any power is working and you are able to get to them.

Trust me. I know.

Nobelcom.com. Prepaid, easily rechaged, germany to the US is 2.9 cents per minute. Love them for calling back.


Good deal. I just signed up. I like it that I can give the pin to my family in the US and Canada and they can call me in Europe, too!

Thanks, cordelli!

Here is Japan (http://www.telthreeadvantage.com/) 5 cents(Tokyo 4) and no maintance fee, tax. Basicaly no fee at all. Everything online(your calls, setup additional phones, SPEED DIAL) Only pay for your calls.

I using Tel3Advantage (http://www.telthreeadvantage.com/) for 2 years without problems. Many local numbers in USA and Canada ^

Just a few selections from their small print.

FCC mandated payphone surcharges of sixty-nine ($0.69) cents per call may apply. Calls originating from a payphone are subject to FCC mandated payphone fees.

Note that many hotel room phones are registered as payphones.


Additional charges may apply for calls made from Alaska , Hawaii , Puerto Rico , US Virgin Islands, Guam, Saipan and Canada and other international destinations.

FCC mandated payphone surcharges of sixty-nine ($0.69) cents per call may apply. Calls originating from a payphone are subject to FCC mandated payphone fees.

I never called from payphone. I guess .at least .69 charge for all cards but other hidden in your maintance fee or higher price

Note that many hotel room phones are registered as payphones.


Additional charges may apply for calls made from Alaska , Hawaii , Puerto Rico , US Virgin Islands, Guam, Saipan and Canada and other international destinations. [/QUOTE]

I am in NY so for me it is working great :)

These are good points about checking the details carefully. I got really burned using an AT&T card in China a few years back so I'm REALLY careful.

The rec to use masterbell has turned out as advertised: 1 minute billing, no setup fee, no monthly fee, 6 cents/min from a real Tokyo local call.

Slightly off topic, I also rented a cell phone for my daughter to use in Japan, from a company I've used before, and based on a flyertalk rec: Rentaphone Japan (http://www.rentafonejapan.com/). These guys are by far the cheapest, and everything just works.

I too used IDT--I saw it in Continental Magazine--but it looks like some people have found even better value with other companies! :)

Maybe I missed it on their web site, but as best as I can tell they only have U.S. access numbers.

Personaly I like Tel3Advantage (http://www.telthreeadvantage.com) No fee,tax,PIN Very good service avialable from US and Canada.