Prepaid phone cards or calling cards offer a cheap and convenient way to make calls internationally or within Australia at a fraction of the cost of using your normal phone. This is possible because phone card companies have strong buying power when it comes to buying air time and can buy bulk minutes at wholesale prices from major tier one carriers like Telstra, Optus, Primus or AAPT. Due to their strong buying power, phone card companies can get a much better rate than you can from your telephone carrier as they are literally buy millions of minutes each week from these carriers. The calling card companies package these minutes into a phone card so that you can enjoy the same buying power that they have. Many phone card companies say that they can offer rates that are up to 95% cheaper than the rate that you would pay when you call from your home phone or mobile without a phone card. We have compared the rates of most of the phone cards listed on our website and found that this is generally true for nearly all destinations.
Unlike internet services like Skype where you need to sign up, set up a microphone on your computer and call from your computer, a phone card can be conveniently used from any telephone including your home phone, work phone or mobile phone. What the phone card companies are selling you is actually a unique PIN number which will give you access to their network. For example, there are many websites on the internet that sell phone cards like
www.phonecardpoint.com.au or
www.telephonecard.com.au. When you buy a phone card from these phone card websites they will email to you a PIN number and a phone number. To use the phone card, you simply call the local phone number in the city or town that you are in, which is listed on the email and a computerized voice will ask you to enter your PIN. After you enter your PIN using your telephone keypad, the voice will announce to you how much money you have on your phone card account. The voice will then ask you for the destination number that you are calling to. After you enter the destination number there will be an announcement of how many minutes you have for that call based on the phone card’s rate to the destination that you are calling to and the money that you have on your phone card. The phone card system will then connect you to the destination that you are calling. You can then talk for as long as you like and like a normal phone you simply hang up after your call is completed. The next time you use the phone card again, by going though the above process, there will be a running total of how much money and how many minutes you have on your card so that you know when to buy another card or recharge your existing card.
