I've used my MCI/Costco prepaid phone card to access my local access phone number, when I'm on the road, at 3 cents a minute, using a dialing string with all the numbers in there. This comes in handy if I end up in a U.S. city without a local number for SBC Yahoo, or just haven't checked the number ahead of time and need to dial in to get it. If you have a local provider with no out of town numbers, this would work for that, too, at an effective rate of about $1.80 an hour to call back home to get on line. I know we all don't have providers with nationwide phone networks.

With hotels that sometimes charge $1 for a local call, and may offer free 800 access, it's cheaper for me to call the MCI 800 prepaid number and only pay 3 cents a minute if I just need a few minutes of access. I've been pretty lucky to run across free wired/wireless on my last couple hotel visits, though.