A plethora of advertisements on the Internet and magazines these days can make for a confusing and complicated decision regarding which prepaid calling card to purchase. Prepaid calling cards are intended for utility while being away from the home city or hometown for an excursion or business trip somewhere else. These handy accessories are designed to provide ease in calling from most phones as well as affordability by slashing those astounding charges or surcharges tolled by hoteliers in most tourist attractions. Usually, the prepaid phone card calling rates are as good as to those imposed by major telecom companies such as AT&T, Sprint, and MCI WorldCom. These telecom giants levy users within the range of 69 to 89 cents per minute for long distance calls with an additional surcharge if not renewed monthly.

Contrary to expectations, schemes for paying a monthly subscription dramatically bring down calling card costs. For instance, a monthly fee of $2 to MCI will slash down prepaid calling card rates to just 15 cents per minute; a monthly fee of $1 to AT&T will cut it down to 25 cents per minute; Sprint is offering dime-a-minute deals on prepaid calling cards for a monthly subscription of a whopping $10.95. This is the main reason that prepaid calling-cards with rates hovering around a penny per minute are becoming more and more preferred by many users each day.

Owing to a deliberately deregulated telecommunication market, many prepaid calling card companies that offer really cheap rates have sprung up. Furthermore, because of a very tight competition within the calling card industry, many companies use marketing perks in order to entice customers. One need to be aware about scams out there and thus should be careful in selecting a prepaid calling card to buy. The primary difficulty that is confronted by many people today is to choosing the best-valued prepaid calling card among numerous providers. “Best-valued” implies the lowest final cost of a call. Cheap calling rate does not necessarily mean low final cost because some deals are subject to hidden charges and surcharges.

The disadvantage of using a prepaid calling card is that, before one dials a destination number there is a need to dial a special 1-800 number and a long PIN that can hardly ever be memorized. Yet in spite of this minor hassle, prepaid calling cards are very popular among international callers because of the low calling costs that they charge. There are three basic things one should learn about prepaid calling cards in order to be aware of neglected aspects while or before using them. Many prepaid calling cards charge a standard connection fee for every successfully connected call on top of the per minute rate charges. However, if a prepaid calling card is used to make long calls. The longer a call is, the lower its cost per minute. Thus, it turns out that using prepaid calling cards render a less per minute cost because of a fixed connection cost that typically is at 49 cents. Lastly, whenever you make a call using these cards, a computer advises you about the status of the card, i.e., how much airtime credits are still available.