How To Make Low-Priced Cell Phone International Calls

Written by author on July 19th, 2009 in Wireless Plans.

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A recent government study found that over 20% of US households have given up their traditional landlines in favor of using mobile phones. Probably the biggest reasons are to save capital and the convenience of having a single communications device. This estimate is no doubt expanding at a rapid pace given the prevailing economic conditions.

Most US cellphone plans consist of a certain number of “anytime” minutes that can be used during the busy hours and “unlimited” night and weekend minutes. The price of a basic plan is practically interchangeable to that of a landline with Caller ID and voicemail features so the idea of using a mobile phone in place of a traditional landline makes strong budgetary sense. In addition, you’d have to hand over extra for domestic long distance calls from a traditional landline whereas your cell phone minutes include that as part of the plan. The issue comes if you need to make international calls on a cell phone: even with the discounts offered for an additional monthly fee, the international rates charged by cell phone service providers is still over twice as much as can be had elsewhere.

The simplest way to make cheap international calls from a cellphone is to “dial-around” your mobile service provider using international calling cards. It’s easy to purchase internet calling cards and many offer features like PIN-less dialing if you tell them the number you’ll be calling from. There are also carriers that offer “dial-around” services without a calling card and speed dial to frequently called numbers. The trick is that you provide them the number you’re going to be calling from and when they see that ID calling their access number they will simply prompt you for the speed dial code or the internatonal number you want to call.

While using an international calling card mobile international calls is not very complicated it does require a great deal of additional dialing. To solve this complication some dial-around providers are now offering free software downloads to iPhones, Blackberries and other smartphones that will automatically discern when an international call is being made and steer the call to their network through a local access number for completion. All the user needs to do is enter the international number or dial it right from the phone’s contact list. If you have a smartphone, this may be the best option as rates for these services are comparable to international calling cards.

While looking at cell phone international calling options it’s necessary to understand that no single carrier will have the best rates to all countries. This is because of the arrangements they’ve made for terminating traffic in any given country. A good thing to do is have a list of countries you want to call between and compare the rates to find the lowest cost overall. Another option is to use more than one service if you find the rates to be significantly different between the countries you need to call. Click this link to find cell phone international calling plan options.

Another idea is that, if your cell phone plan has unlimited minutes to frequently called numbers, you can utilize the calling card access number as one of those. Even the smartphone services will typically route the call to the same access number every time. You can look at the display as the call is being set up to get the number to use.

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