Your Cell Phone Is A Tool For International Business

Do you conduct business internationally? If so, your cell phone can be the business machine that keeps you in touch with clients overseas.

The first tool you’ll want is a way to make cheap international phone calls from your cellphone while using U.S. mobile service. The cell phone plan that enables you to make local and long distance domestic calls may well prohibit calls outside the country. If you can make them, you’ll pay a pretty penny. So, right now you wait until you have access to your landline or VoIP calling service to make those calls. Sometimes, that’s really inconvenient. So much so that you could lose a valuable customer just because you aren’t available.

There’s a better way. Use a low cost international dial-around service when you need to call overseas. You simply dial a local or toll-free access number to reach the service. Then dial the international number you want to reach. It’s that simple. You’ll pay just a few pennies per minute to call many destinations. With the special promo plan that’s available right now, calls to China are just 1 cent per minute. Call to Canada are less than a penny a minute.

You might not even be able to call that cheaply on your landline or VoIP service. No problem, use the Tel3Advantage international calling service from any phone you happen to be at. The rates are incredibly low and the service is easy to use. In fact, you can download a special app for many cell phone models so that making international calls is as easy as calling the next state.

But what happens when you need to travel overseas and call back home. If you’d like to use your cell phone, then you’ll be accessing the towers and cellular service in the countries you’re visiting. For that you need the right cell phone and access.

In the United States there are two competing cellular technology standards. One is CDMA used by Verizon and Sprint. The other is GSM used by AT&T and T-Mobile. GSM is the global standard, so you need a GSM phone if you expect to use it outside U.S. borders. The best phones for this are called quad-band GSM phones. They can access all 4 international mobile bands, so they work virtually anywhere.

You also need a phone where you can access the SIM card. That’s a tiny circuit card, often located behind the battery, that is removable in many GSM phones. When you travel outside the U.S., you replace your domestic SIM card with an international SIM card. A great value is the OneSimCard prepaid international SIM card. With it in your GSM phone, you’ll save up to 85% on your calls and even receive calls for free in more than 60 countries. If you don’t have a GSM phone or are only traveling for a short time, you can also rent a mobile phone for a small fee from OneSimCard.

With business becoming increasingly more global in nature, these simple tools can give you the capability of being an international player wherever you happen to be. Why, it’s enough to start shopping for a more capable cell phone.

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.

Lower Rate Long Distance Options

Want to save money on your phone bill quickly and easily? Simply switch to a lower cost long distance service.

What? Didn't that ship sail years ago? How can you expect to save money on phone service without buying a bundle or changing to VoIP?

Surprisingly, the newest technology options aren't always the cheapest. Good old analog telephone service works just fine for many users. It's especially good if you have only one or two phone lines and your Internet service is a bit flaky.

Not everybody needs unlimited local and long distance calling. That's because not all of us hang on the phone all day. You may think you're getting peace of mind by having no limits on how much you can talk and not change your monthly phone bill. But how much of a premium are you paying to have that luxury?

Try this. Keep a phone log for a week. Just write down every time you pick up the phone to make a call and how many minutes you talk. Don't worry about incoming calls. With most standard landline plans incoming calls are free.

So who did you call and for how long? Are most of your calls local? How long are they? Or, do you mostly call out of state? This isn't just a game. Your calling pattern really makes a difference.

Here's a suggestion. Check out the cheapest service from your local phone company and see what it costs. Now, use the domestic long distance rate finder tool to price out competing long distance plans. You enter the first 6 digits of your phone number, which identifies the phone company office you are using. Then, from your log, enter the number of minutes you call in-state long distance and state to state on a monthly basis. If you logged for a week, just multiply those numbers by 4 to get a monthly estimate. Click the "Get Long Distance Rate Now" button and you'll see the results.

Since I'm not a big caller, I entered 60 minutes for in-state minutes and 120 minutes for out of state calls. The best deal for this arrangement on a residential line is Pioneer with a total bill of $6.22 for long distance service per month.

You see correctly. It's $6.22, not some enormous bill. That's with 3 hours of calling. There are months when I'm not on the phone calling long distance numbers even that much.

Click on the total bill amount (it's a link) and you'll get a breakdown of the cost. For the search I just ran, it's $3.24 for the 60 interstate minutes (state to state) and $1.14 for the 30 intrastate (in-state) long distance minutes. Add the federal taxes and fees plus a 99 cent monthly and the total adds up to $6.22. This doesn't include state or local excise taxes, which are too many and varied for this tool to deal with. These tend to be the same for every service, so comparisons between carriers will still be valid.

What's with the 99 cent fee? That's due to low usage. If you spend more than $15 a month for long distance calls, that fee disappears. Some carriers charge these fees. Others don't. It doesn't matter, because what you are looking for is the lowest total cost each month. A competitive carrier like Pioneer has such low per minute rates that it often makes them the best deal.

So, do you have a local landline phone service you like, with reliable service, good voice quality and a low monthly bill? You don't have to give it up to save money. Just switch to a different long distance provider. You can order quickly and easily online and the long distance carrier you choose will make the change in conjunction with your local phone company. See, it is quick and easy. Now, find out how much you can save on your long distance phone bill.

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.

You Pay Too Much For Phone Service

A shocking new study says that most cellphone and landline users overpay for their service. Not just by a little bit, mind you. They grossly overpay. How gross? How about $3 on a cell phone and up to $1 per minute on a landline?

You may think that's impossible and, anyway, YOU don't pay anywhere near that for any type of phone service. Are you sure? Have you sat down and run through the numbers lately? You may be in for an eyes-bugging-out experience.

"What do you mean by do the math ?," you say. After all, you bought into one of those all-you-can-talk bundled plans just so you never had to do any math. You get charged a flat rate per month regardless of how much you call. There is only one bill and there are never any overage surprises.

Well, you may be paying a pretty penny just to avoid some simple calculation work or the overwhelming pain of a - gasp! - phone bill that varies from month to month. Want to be absolutely sure that you're not one of those unlucky stiffs who's shelling out $3 a minute for cellular service? OK, do this. Keep a 3x5 card in your pocket for the next week to a month. Every time you're on the phone, record how many minutes elapse. If you want to be precise, keep track of seconds too. But rounded to the nearest minute will do the job nearly as well. Now, at the end of the week add up all the minutes and multiply by 4. Or just add up the minutes for a month. What's the total? Divide your cellphone bill by that number of minutes and you'll get the dollar/minute figure reasonably close.

Shocked? I'll bet you are. I'll bet if you bought a plan with too few minutes and paid the outrageous 40 cents a minute for overages that some carriers charge, you'd still be ahead. Once you know your actual usage, you can order your next service plan for not too much more than you need. If you get one with rollover minutes you'll have some cushion for the months when you spend more time on the phone. Or consider getting everyone in the family on a single shared plan. That may take some discipline if you have chatty teenagers, but for responsible adults the cost savings could be enormous.

The same comments apply to residential and home office landline service. People have become so enamored by bundled packages that they've lost track of how much they actually use long distance. In many cases you are better off getting a basic local service from your phone company and then signing up with a competitive long distance service. Yes, you'll get two bills a month but one will probably stay the same and the other will vary from zero if you don't make any long distance calls to some small number of dollars when you do. Set it up to automatically charge to your credit card and you'll eliminate the onerous effort of writing a second check each month.

Here's another point to be aware of. Traditionally, landline phone services offer unlimited incoming minutes at no extra cost. That includes long distance. It's only when you place outgoing calls that you pay for long distance minutes. You may or may not pay by the minute or the call when you place outgoing local calls. That depends on your service plan.

What about VoIP service? It makes sense for many people because they already pay for Cable broadband. With DSL, chances are you pay for a phone line anyway so you might as well use it. But even if you add a VoIP phone service to your Cable broadband, you don't necessarily need to overpay for unlimited minutes that you'll never use. VoIP.com has a nice 200 minute per month plan available for $9.95 per month. Packet8 will give you unlimited incoming minutes and 500 outgoing minutes for $14.99 a month. Find these plans and more at AffordableVoIP.com You can buy larger plans, but you could save a fortune if you just tracked your actual usage for a month and bought a plan that covers that much plus a little extra.

Tel3Advantage Valentine Calling Special

Have someone special a long distance away, perhaps in a distant foreign land, that you want to stay in touch with this Valentine's Day? Tel3Advantage can make it happen for you at a very affordable rate. Tel3 is known for its excellent international calling rates. But sign up for their service between now and February 20 and you'll get a 30% discount on your long distance calls for a month plus $3 free talk time.

Tel3 is known for its ultra-low cost international telephone rates for both business and residential users. How low? With the special in play right now, your USA calls are 1.4 cents per minute. Call the U.K. for just 1.8 cents/min. How about some place that's expensive to call, like China? China calls are only 1.2 cents per minute. What's that about being expensive? Oh, you mean when you use other long distance services. You really should just get Tel3Advantage if low rates are important to you.

Tel3 is a leader in pre-paid long distance phone services. You buy your minutes ahead of time, like you would with a calling card. But unlike a card, Tel3 services use advanced technology to maximize your convenience and minimize your costs. You can make calls from any phone - home, work, cell phone, or even a payphone. Use the customized online control panel to set up your phones, track charges and update your balance. You make calls using the system without having to dial in some onerous pin number. Just dial the access number and your destination number and the system will take care of making sure you get the best rate possible.

But what if you don't want to switch your long distance service? No problem because Tel3Advantage doesn't require you to make any changes to your existing phone services. This is an independent service that you use only when you want to. That's probably often, since the calling rates offered by Tel3 are so much lower that you are probably getting charged now. Leave your current service in place. Use Tel3Advantage to make those expensive long distance calls, even when on the go.

Are you hesitating to make an important overseas phone call because you fear getting a huge bill in the mail? Put your mind and budget at easy. Take advantage of the special Tel3Advantage limited time offer right now.

Lonliness of the Long Distance Landline

The latest telephone usage statistics confirm what we've already suspected. People are running away from landlines like they're allergic to copper. If Alexander Graham Bell came back to life in his lab today and spilled battery acid in his lap, he'd be screaming for Watson in his prototype transmitter to no avail. Nobody would be listening at the other end of that wire. Now if he had the presence of mind to whip out his cell phone and select the picture of Mr. Watson as one of his favorites, that call would likely go through. Watson, like just about everybody else, has gone wireless.

It's no surprise that most everyone carries a cell phone. They probably have two or three more old ones, sitting in a drawer, that should be recycled. People just love staying connected. They're on those phones even when they shouldn't be. Sit at any stop light and watch the cars turning left in front of you. About every third one has a driver on the phone. Sadly, one too many of those has a cigarette in the other hand is driving with their elbows. Ma Bell would never have sat still for that.

Ma didn't have to. In the days when houses were built with special nooks for the telephone set, you needed wires to make anything happen. Those wires might happen to include a run of barbed wire cattle fence. No matter. It was the requirement for electrical conductors that led to the universal copper pair that runs to every home and business. But the way things are going, you might as well dig up that copper and use it to make pennies. People are abandoning their landlines. Today 30% wouldn't pick up a home phone even if it rang.

My how things have changed. Growing up in our house I remember everyone but my grandmother being thrilled when we finally got off the neighborhood party line and got our own private phone line. I used to watch her comically sitting at the desk with her hand cupped over the transmitter of our one heavy flat-black non-dial telephone set. Neighborhood conversations were at least as amusing as the early TV shows. By the time I became a homeowner, there were outlets for telephones in just about every room including the basement. Your phone was your connection to everyone near and far. You wanted your number printed in the telephone directory so that people could find you.

At my house, we're the kind of people who just wouldn't feel right if there wasn't a telephone hanging on the wall or sitting on the desk. Who isn't? Younger people. Those who have no memory of "number, please" operators or a day when the term "cell phone" sounded like something you'd find in a prison. That's everybody under 30. A third of those have only a cell phone. If mom wants to call, she better have the number written down. It's not published.

There's another group that's somewhere in the middle. They either have regular landline telephone service but don't use it, or they've moved on to the latest technology. Cable companies want to be in the phone business. They offer bundles of TV, phone service and broadband Internet called "triple play". The telephone service actually uses the broadband rather than standard phone wires. This is VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol. It's big advantage is that you can get more features for less money, especially in a bundled service. It does have the annoying problem of going dead when the power goes out or when the Cable broadband dumps. Then you use your cell phone.

But if you are going to use your cell phone some of the time at home and all of the time while mobile, why bother with a landline or VoIP phone service at all? That's what the younger generations think. Many kids today get their first cell phone when they are in high school, take it to college, and by the time they're out in the world everybody they want to talk to knows their cell number. Why not just keep the cell on at home instead of having a completely different number or a "find me follow me" setup? You don't need finding or following if you only have one number.

Along with landlines, the concept of competitive long distance phone service is fading from the scene. This was one of the first products of phone system deregulation. You could save a lot of money by switching to an alternative provider, and probably still can if you are a heavy landline user. This service was so aggressively marketed that it became a TV punchline for someone to pick up a ringing phone during dinner and say: "No, I don't want to switch my long distance phone service."

Now, what's long distance? Most cellular service plans work the same whether you are calling across town or across the country. You buy bundles of anytime minutes and just make sure you don't go over your monthly limit. If that's a chronic problem, you can now get plans with unlimited anytime minutes.

Long distance still comes into play for international calling. If you have relatives or business associates overseas, you're sensitive to international rates. International minutes are almost always an additional charge. You can keep your costs down by using low rate International calling cards and whatever phone you wish. This is also probably the best justification for VoIP going forward. Simply coordinate with your contacts overseas to use the same VoIP service, and your "on network" calls are free. The Internet becomes the phone line.

Verizon has a interesting approach whereby fiber optic cable replaces your TV coaxial cable, your telephone line, and your DSL or Cable broadband connection. Signals beamed through glass fibers are far faster and more flexible than other technologies. So much so that TV, broadband Internet and telephone service all have their own wavelengths and don't interfere with each other. In this case, the telephone company is taking over the television business and perhaps preserving the legacy of home phone service for future generations.