Calling from India to US suggestions (Calling card?)
 

So, random question - my exGF will be spending a couple of months outside of Bangalore with a non-profit in a fairly remote place.

She'll likely have a local number and will have her iphone which she can use the various apps over wifi (Viber, Talkatone, Skype, WhatsApp, FaceTime, etc) - but she'll likely not have regular access to wifi.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a calling card - yes, a calling card - that can be used over a land line to cheaply call the US from India? Looking for something that has a low rate & low/no connection charges that can be used from any landline in India?

Thanks in advance!

Either get a cheap prepaid card and call from that (Vodafone prepaid is 8Rs/min to the US) or get a worldcard from Vodafone: https://shop.vodafone.in/shop/worldCallingCard.jsp

Or alternatively get a 3G data plan for her phone, you'll be surprised at the availability of 3G in the remotest corners of the country :cool:

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BB10; Kbd) AppleWebKit/537.35+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.2.1.3253 Mobile Safari/537.35+)

Or just call long distance from the phone. When I was based in India, my cellphone bill rarely reached USD100/mo despite hours and hours of international LD calls. It is (or was) very inexpensive to do.

Given the relative lack of landline infrastructure in India she might not actually have much access to one.

Thanks all - I'm sure she'll have local access because work will be providing her with a phone, but I wanted to get her some sort of a back-up plan as well. Thanks!

she should just get a local sim....calling rates to the us are fairly cheap & she will also have access to 3g all the time which she can use for viber, facetime, skype, etc....

I think that's what i'm going to suggest as a first option.

That is what we do or would do for most parts of India.

I don't know any Indian who uses a calling card in India to call the US, as that era seems to be over in the era of cheap data plans and cheap international dial facility from mobile phones. I think my mobile phone calls (using an Indian SIM) from India to the U.S. several weeks ago cost around 8 rupees a minutes.

I know this might sound backwards but I call India almost every day......so I have a low cost system worked out with my contacts there. They call me and do a "missed call".....they let my phone ring once or twice then hang up. That way I know they called. Then I call them on MY calling plan which is IndiaLD.com

Sign up at IndiaLD.com........then first step: put the ExGF"s Indian cell phone number (India Country Code is 91) in the "Auto Dial" section at indiald.com...make a note of the US phone number that is assigned to her Indian number..this will be clear when you see the "Auto Dial" page

Second: enter the cell phone numbers of her most important US contacts who she wants to talk to in the "PINLESS DIAL" section. Then all they have to do is call the aforementioned assigned US number and bingo...they call her at 1.5 cents/minute which is like one eighth the cost of her calling the US from India. Again, if she wants to talk to a friend in the US she just sends a missed call (or just calls for a minute or two) and then they call HER back and chat for an hour for 90 cents!! Ask me questions if I didn't explain it well enough.