Don's Home Services Telephone Long Distance | Calling Cards | 1010 Contact

Calling Cards


Cost of a 3 minute interstate pay-phone call:
$0.13 to 0.30 Prepaid phone card
$0.45 to 0.60 Cellular phone call with national no-roaming-fee plan
$0.75 "1 800 CALL ATT" dial-up and AT&T One-Rate calling card plan
$1.50 to $2.76 Verizon calling card
$3.50 MCI calling card
$3.75 Pocket change
$3.92 "1 800 CALL ATT" and AT&T calling card
$7.66 "0" dial-up and regional calling card or credit card, when AT&T is the picked carrier
Phone Card Distributers at dmoz.org

Prepaid Phone Cards With prepaid calling cards you can get rates as low as 3¢ per minute (with pre-paid cards).

In Consumer-Action's 2002 Survey they state:

"It's tough to directly compare cards and rates from different providers. For one thing, there are hundreds of companies and thousands of distributors and brand names in the marketplace. And it turns out that the kind of card we were stalking, a card with decent rates and no fees, is very difficult to find."
Among the pitfalls to look out for are expiration dates, cards that automatically deduct minutes weekly after the first use and cards with high extra fees on payphone calls.
Costco MCI Card: 2.9¢/min. ($20 for 670 minutes, which expire in 2 yrs.) - 30¢ payphone surcharge
Sams Club AT&T Card: 3.5¢/min. - 32 ¢ payphone surcharge - no expiration
Just Phone Cards: 4¢/min. - 50 ¢ payphone surcharge - expires in 1 1/2 yrs.
Clean and Clear (produced by Radiant Telecom)  5.8¢/min. - 49 ¢ payphone surcharge - expires in 2 yrs.
GE Prepaid - 8.9¢/min. - 50 ¢ payphone surcharge - expires in 6 mos.
The surcharge of at least 24¢ is a government-mandated fee that reimburses the owner of the pay phone for use of its equipment.
See also:
Calling Card Products and Services at Cognigen Networks
Prepaid Phone Card Industry Survey
 at Consumer-Action.org