Flat Rate vs Pay As You Go Conference Calling

You’ve already discovered that telephone conference calls and Web conferencing can save your company hundreds or even thousands of dollars per meeting. So why quibble about the small costs involved? For one thing, a penny saved is worth more than a penny earned. For another, the better the deal on conference calling, the more you can use the service to improve productivity.

Let’s take a look at how much you can get for what you pay from AccuConference, a leader in the teleconferencing services field. AccuConference offers both flat rate and pay as you go conference calls.

The Flat-Rate option is perfect for anyone who wants to have regular meetings, even on a daily basis. The beauty of flat-rate is that you don’t have to sit looking at the clock, worrying about what this is costing when somebody takes too long to get to the point. Flat rate is what it says. You pay a single monthly fee that determines how many participants you can include in your conference call. Participants call a 404 Atlanta dial-in number and pay the cost of their long distance calls. You can keep the call going as long as necessary, although people will tend to fade after an hour or two. After 10 hours, the system will mercifully cut you off and you’ll have to start another conference.

How much is this flat rate? It starts at $14.95 per month for up to 5 lines on the conference. Of course, people may be using speakerphones at the other end of those line to include an entire conference room group in the conversation. Five lines is plenty for most working groups and project teams. But what if your company wants to host training calls for employees or affiliates? You’ll need more lines. You can get up to 50 lines for $199 a month and have a conference every day if you have that much material to share.

AccuConference pay as you go conference calls are also toll-free conference calls. There are no set up fees, no monthly requirements or contracts of any type. You simply pay for what you use. What you pay is a small per minute charge, typically 7.9 cents per minute for each participant. Participants call a toll free number and you pay for the cost of the calls.

How about international participants? They can call-in toll free like domestic US callers. The cost for each participant depends on where they are calling from. For instance, callers in Canada cost 9.9 cents a minute instead of 7.9 cents a minute for US participants. Calls from Australia are 12.9 cents a minute, UK participants are also 12.9 cents a minute, while calls from Mexico are 32.9 cents a minute. Most of Europe is under 20 cents per minute.

Now, think about how much it costs to travel to wherever you would have a meeting and then decide how often that cost is worth it. In between visits, you’ll be surprised on how well connected you can be with low cost flat rate or pay as you go conference calls.

Clearest International Calls on Your Cell Phone

You want to make international phone calls but you’re not all that happy with VoIP and you’d really like to use your cell phone. Is there a way to get the clearest international calls from a mobile phone?

There sure is, especially if you are located in the U.S. or Canada. The secret is a special service that works with your cell phone but gives you cheap international calling with excellent voice quality.

The service is Tel3Advantage’s international long distance service. It allows you to call international from any phone at rates as low as 1 cent per minute. There’s a promotion going, so you’ll get special discounted rates for 30 days plus free minutes on sign-up. Even the regular rates are excellent. How about 1.7 cents to call China any day? How about making that call on your cell phone?

If you’ve ever picked up your home or office phone, or worse yet your cell phone, and dialed an international number, you know the feeling of shock and horror that comes when you open the next phone bill. Those services may be fine for local and state to state calls, but the international rates can be sky high. Phone companies like to keep that quiet, so you often don’t find out until you actually call overseas.

Tel3Advantage is a specialized telephone service called international dial-around. All they do is long distance. You use whatever phone you already have. Just dial one of their local access numbers or a special toll free number to access the service. Then place your international call. You’ll be talking for pennies a minute. In fact, it’s such a good deal that you may want to use it for your domestic long distance calls also.

But what about call quality? Many people have been driven to VoIP to avoid high international calling rates. But unless your broadband access is excellent and everything is running smoothly on the Internet, calls can easily become garbled or dropped completely. Plus most VoIP services want to give you local and long distance service as a bundle, something you may not even need. Don't forget that VoIP runs on DSL or Cable broadband. That ties you to your home or office landline when you’d really rather be mobile with your cell phone.

The Tel3Advantage system works with any phone, including your cell phone. It maintains the call quality that you already enjoy on local and long distance calls. What’s different is your ability to call around the world at bargain rates. There’s no big commitment to worry about, because there are no contracts or obligations with this service. You buy time and use it when you wish.

Here’s another bonus. Tel3Advantage offers a special “TEL3 Smartplug” software download for your cell phone. The Smartplug knows the access numbers, so you can simply call the number you want as if you are using conventional long distance service. The big difference is about an 80% savings on your calls.

If you have US or Canada phone service but have friends, family or business contacts in another country that you’d really like to call if it wasn’t so expensive, then learn more about Tel3Advantage international calling and enjoy new freedom in making phone calls anywhere around the world.

NobelCom Offers Cheap Prepaid Phone Cards

Why use prepaid phone cards? To save money, of course. Not just a little bit of money, mind you. These are for saving a LOT of money, especially on international phone calls.

Let's say you need to make a personal or business call to China. How much is that going to cost, do you suppose? You may be flinching at the thought of paying a dollar or more per minute or even, say, 25 cents a minute. Well, how would you like to be paying 1.1 cent per minute?

What? That can't be right, can it? Just over a penny a minute to call China? Yes, that's the current best price using the Hello China prepaid phone card from NobelCom. This isn't some ripoff deal, like some of the cards you may have gotten stuck with in convenience stores. The Hello China card is highly rated and does not charge a connection fee. Watch out for that on other cards!

Now there are some things you should know to maximize the number of minutes you'll get from this and other prepaid calling cards. You pay $20 for this card and get 1,816 calling minutes. You'll want to call one of NobelCom's local numbers to get that rate. A surcharge of 1 cent per minute is charged if you need to call their toll free number to connect. That's still just over 2 cents per minute. Also, you'll get the most minutes with this card if you make one really long call or a number of shorter calls right after you get the card. There's a 99 cent maintenance fee per week. Choose a card that has no maintenance fee if you expect to be calling many times over the course of a year.

Do you have to call from the United States? For this particular card, yes. But you can pick other cards that let you call from just about any country to any other country at low rates. The best U.K. to China card rate happens to be 2.7 cents per minute at this time.

Some other popular destinations from the U.S. include Afghanistan for 10.9 cents per minute or to Iraq for 4.4 cents per minute. You can call Mexico as low as 1.8 cents per minute or Germany for 1.3 cents per minute. These are the rates available as of this writing.

Well, you get the idea. The calling rate with NobelCom International Calling Cards is typically a small fraction of what you'll pay with your regular long distance service. Plus, you can use these cards for travel. Can't do that with the office or home long distance service.

Have some place in mind that you'd like to call and pay less than you have been? Then get all the details and the latest rates on Phone Cards and International Calling Cards from NobelCom.

New Online Tool Finds Better International Long Distance Rates

Do you make international or overseas telephone calls? Expensive, aren't they? Well, help is here in the form of a new long distance rate finder tailored to the international caller.

The problem with phone rates is that you're never sure if you're paying a reasonable rate or missing out just because you don't about better rates that have only recently become available. You can do your own online searches, work your way through the vendor's websites, and pick the one with the lowest rate. But that can take hours. You'll probably give up after looking at just a few offers because it's too much like work. What if you could comparison shop a wide variety of competitive carriers and see in seconds what the best deals are?

That's what the International Long Distance Rate Finder does for you. Go ahead and click on this link or the screen shot image and the rate finder will open in another window so you can follow along.

The first thing you see is that the interface is very simple, even sparse. There are only two steps to get started. You need to select the country you are calling from and the country you are calling to. That's really all the database needs to run your search on a reasonable data set. You'll notice that nothing is asking you for your name, address, phone number, email or anything else personal. There's no need for that information to generate a rate list, so your privacy is easily protected.

Let's try one. We'll call from the United States to China. The United States is already selected, so you can just leave that box alone. Using the pull-down menu select China as the country in "STEP 2". If there is a specific number you want to call, you can enter that for a more precise targeting of rates. But just the country will do.

Notice that a "STEP 3" box now appears with more choices highlighted in an orange color. You can just click the radio button that says "China". Or you can more precisely target an area in China. The reason for this is that there are often lower rates to specific areas of a country. If they are available and you can, say, select Beijing, then you may get a better rate than just the general rate to China. If you are calling a mobile phone, select "China (cellular)". Rates to mobile users are different, usually higher, so you might as well know what your call is really going to cost.

Let's just stick with China in general for right now. Now click on the black "Search For Rates" button. In a couple of seconds, literally, you'll get a chart of carriers and their rates to China. I count 20 separate service providers and their rates to China. They are ranked from lowest per minute cost to highest. In this case, the best rate is from Packet8. This is a VoIP provider who charges 1 cent per minute for calls from the USA to China. You'll also see what it costs for a 5 minute call (5 cents) and a 30 second call (30 cents). Since the billing increment is 6 seconds for this provider, it doesn't affect the cost of these calls. If you made a 5 second call, you'd still pay for 6 seconds. Big deal. Well, some carriers bill in larger increments of 60 seconds, so sometimes it matters.

Want to know more about Packet8? Click on the magnifying glass next to the name or on the linked name of the service provider. You'll be taken to their site where you can get a lot more detail about the services they offer. You also have the option to order service right from this page by clicking on the "Order Now" link on the right hand side of the page.

Notice that there are a wide variety of service providers offering low rates to China. You can select a VoIP service or dial-around, 1-Plus service, post paid calling card or conference call, depending on your particular need. If you want to limit the display to a particular type of service, unclick the check boxes of the services you don't want. You'll find those at the top of the chart.

Of course, you can change your search parameters at any time. There's a link called "Make changes to your search" at the bottom of the chart. Pick another pair of countries or different areas within your desired country and you'll get different results.

You may want to play around with this tool to get a better feel for what is available and how to use the service. You may also want to book mark the International Long Distance Rate Finder so you can come back whenever your needs change and run an up to date search for the lowest telephone rates to wherever you want to call.

International Cell Phone Calls for Pennies

How would you like to be able to call the world from your cell phone for rates as low as 2 cents per minute?

What? Impossible! No, it USED to be impossible. Now there's a new add-on service for cell phone users that enable you to make calls from the USA and Canada to overseas locations and pay international rates as low as 2 cents a minute.

Here are some actual per minute rates for calls placed right now. Calls to China are 2.36 cents per minute. That's right, China. Remember when you shelled out a buck a minute or more for those calls. Oh, you still do? Well, then get the TEL3AdvantageMobile Plan right now before you make another call. Are you paying more than 10.49 cents a minute to call India? 2.64 cents a minute to call Mexico City? 2.4 cents a minute to call Paris? How about 6 cents a minute to call Tokyo? If so, don't you dare spend another penny on phone calls until you sign up for the TEL3AdvantageMobile Plan.

But what about your current wireless service plan? For local and domestic long distance calls just keep using it the way you have been. It's those international rates from the cellular carriers that will kill your budget. This service doesn't interfere with your wireless services. It adds to them. You only use TEL3AdvantageMobile when you want to make international phone calls and save up to 80% of the cost. Now, isn't that EVERY time you make an international call?

But can't you just get one of those cheapo pre-paid calling cards and do the same thing? Cheapo? That's what they want you to think. There's nothing cheap about their rates once you've factored in all the usage and inactivity fees they hit you with. You might see some cheap rate printed on the front of the card to entice you buy it. But then you find you don't get nearly the advertised number of minutes that you think you are paying for. There's all sorts of hidden gotchas in print so small you need a magnifying glass to read.

The TEL3AdvantageMobile plan is genuinely low cost. Plus it's a lot more convenient than using a calling card. This advanced service offers a free software download for your cell phone. With it, you can quickly make calls without having to search for access numbers or enter those incredibly long access codes. What a pain! TEL3AdvantageMobile automates all that so all you have to do is make your calls and save a bundle in the process.

If this sounds like the kind of rates you get with a VoIP service but on your mobile phone, you're partially right. But TEL3AdvantageMobile doesn't suffer from the voice quality problems that plague many VoIP services, especially when your broadband service bogs down. Call quality is excellent and there's no cord or broadband connection needed with TEL3AdvantageMobile.

Did I happen to mention the bonus minutes for signing up? Yes, you can get up to $10 in free minutes added to your account when you sign up for a TEL3AdvantageMobile account. This special offer may not last forever, so take advantage of the free minutes special to learn more and sign up for TEL3AdvantageMobile now.

Prepaid Business Calling Controls Phone Expense

Your telephone expenses are out of control and getting worse. In boom times you can pretty much let employees make whatever calls they want, wherever they want, and talk as long as they feel like. But not now. This year you have to get a grip on calling activities and get the best rates possible for domestic and international calls.

TEL3Business has just the tools you need to manage fixed and mobile business telephone calls. Their approach is a combination of technology and rates that give managers what they need to get more for their telephone dollars. Here are some surprising features that you may not have known were available to business users.

First, TEL3Business works with both landline phones, such as the standard desk set, and cell phones. This is significant as more and more telecommunication goes wireless. But you can't just implement a wireless solution or you leave out the significant amount of business activity transacted on office phones.

Second, this is prepaid phone service. Instead of getting a bill every month and the shock of finding out how far out of budget you are again, TEL3Business begins with a prepaid account that can be set up for manual or automatic recharging. Moreover, you can give every employee their own user account with a set limit. Then you know what your maximum charges can be.

Third, this solution is not a new phone system. It is a management system that works with your current suite of telephone equipment. VoIP telephony is often presented as a way to get new telephone features. But if you are happy with your phone system operation and quality now, there is no need to tear out everything and install an expensive new VoIP phone system. By implementing TEL3Business, you can get the management tools you need to maintain tight control of telephone expenses.

Fourth, you'll pay less for long distance calls and especially international long distance calls with the TEL3Business service.Your USA calls are 3 cents per minute from the contiguous states. Go ahead and call those numbers in Canada. The rate is 2.14 cents per minute. Doing business in the U.K. You'll pay just 2.7 cents per minute to call there. How about your operations in China? Relax. The calling rate is a mere 2.14 cents per minute.

These international rates are even better than you'll get with many prepaid calling cards. Plus, cards can be a pain. There are all sorts of hidden fees and you have to enter long access codes and pin numbers before you can even make a call. None of that is true with TEL3Business. You set up your accounts and phone numbers using a Web based management tool. There is a software application you download to mobile phones to enable them to use the system. After that, it gets really easy... and cheap.

There's no hardware or software to purchase. You don't even need to change your current phone carrier. Use this service for all your calls or just those expensive international conversations.

Does this sound like a valuable service for your business? If so, learn more and sign up for a TEL3 Business solution now.