NobelDialer Makes International Phone Cards Painless

International phone rates have come down over the years, but not that much. Many people have adopted the prepaid phone card as a way to get bargain basement prices for their international phone calls. But phone cards can be a pain to use compared to just direct dialing the number you want. What would be ideal is the rates of a prepaid card with the dialing convenience of a standard long distance plan.

NobelCom has come up with an app for your favorite smartphone that makes the dialing easy again. It’s called the NobelDialer and it’s free. You have your choice of downloads for iPhone, Android or BlackBerry.

What does the NobelDialer app do? It automatically dials the access number, PINs and destination numbers for the calls you want to make. You can call your address book contacts or do a fast dial through a favorites screen. It maintains a built-in list of access numbers and call history. The NobelDialer even works with PIN-less calling cards to use ANI or automatic number identification by the service provider. If you need help, there’s a toll free number to call for assistance.

Here’s how to use the NobelDIaler. You download and install the application software for the particular brand of smartphone you own. It comes customized for iPhones, Android phones and BlackBerry devices. Then launch NobelDialer and follow a one time 3 step setup wizard to get started. What then? Start calling. Enter the country code and destination number. You don’t need to include the “011” or “+” portion of the international number.

You don’t change your long distance service or make any changes to your cell phone plan with NobelCom. This is an add-on service that you use only when you want to save money on long distance phone calls. In most cases, this means calls to another country that either cost a fortune with your current phone service or are blocked completely.

NobelCom specializes prepaid calling cards like the ones you find at convenience stores, but with more options and better rates. Prepaid calling cards can give you excellent calling rates, such as 1.2 cents per minute to France or China, 13.4 cents per minute to Afghanistan and 3.9 cents per minute to Iraq. Calls to Mexico start at 2 cents per minute, with Italy and South Korea at a mere 1.4 cents per minute. Is it possible to call overseas for less than a penny a minute? Yes. Call the United Kingdom for 0.9 cents per minute. All of these are advertised rates on the NobelCom site as of this writing.

There’s a real art to maximizing the potential of prepaid calling cards and NobelCom helps guide you through it. Every card has a certain rates and conditions. Some have rock bottom per minute rates, but charge you a weekly maintenance fee. Some have a connection fee. Rounding can be to the nearest second, minute, or multiple minutes. That’s important if you make a lot of short calls. You don’t want to make a dozen 1 minute calls but have them rounded to 4 minutes minimum. If you are going to make just one or two calls for an hour, then the rounding isn’t so important.

You can call to just about any country or from any country on Earth with prepaid calling cards. It’s just a matter of picking the right card to meet your needs. If you have a smartphone, don’t forget to get the NobelDialer and really make dialing a fast and easy process.

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.

The Surprising Low Cost Phone Option

With all the hype over bundled services and broadband phone, you're probably thinking that only a chump would keep one of those old analog landlines. Not so fast. Despite all the heavy promotion, your cheapest telephone solution may well be that century-old technology combined with a competitive long distance service.

Perhaps that sounds outrageous, but have you actually priced out your options? To do this properly, you need two things. The first is the lowest cost local service that meets your needs. You're more likely than not to get that from your local telephone company. Depending on how many local calls you make and how long you talk, you can easily overpay by buying too much service. The minimum you need is line access, also called dial tone. It's just what it says. You pick up the phone, you hear a dial tone, and you make your call.

Next you likely need some way to make local calls. You can get unlimited service. But you may also be able to get metered service that charges so much per call or so much per minute. Sit down and figure out how much you really call in a month. It will be worth the exercise. If you make only a few calls or primarily talk long distance, you don't need deluxe local service.

You may also want Caller ID. That typically adds about $5 a month. I'd never give it up, because it helps me avoid talking to political campaigns, surveys, scams scheming for donations, and banks looking to promote yet another credit card.

Next, you'll want to have a low per minute rate long distance service. Ten years ago, switching your long distance service to save money was all the rage. Now it's something of a lost art due to the emphasis on cell phones, bundles and VoIP. Once again, before you buy too much, use a long distance rate calculator to see how much your long distance calling is really worth. Competition has driven rates down to a few pennies a minute for most calls. Even overseas calling is dirt cheap these days.

Why not just use the long distance service that comes with your local line by default? Because it's the default service, chances are pretty high that it is NOT the low cost option. It's just convenient for people who just want to call the phone company, ask to have a line installed, and dutifully pay the bills when they come in.

Hey, why not just buy one of those bundled services and get everything for one price? Once again, it sounds good, but a bundle may not be your lowest cost option. Competitive bundles give you local dial tone, a package of local minutes or unlimited service, and a package of domestic long distance minutes or unlimited service. It's really convenient because you get one bill and you know what the price is going to be every month. What you don't know is how much you could save by paying separate bills for local and long distance service.

You should also know that competitive bundles have to buy their local lines from the local telephone company. That's because by law all the analog copper phone lines belong to your incumbent local telco. So you won't be getting a break on local service. You may or may not get a decent deal on long distance service and calling features, depending on your usage pattern.

OK, then, why not avoid the copper phone line issue completely and go with a VoIP telephone service? The same discussion of paying a bundled rate for service you may not ever use versus paying by the minute applies. Also, unless you have very, very good broadband service, you'll find that voice quality suffers and you may not be able to talk on the phone and use your computer at the same time.

Certainly, this discussion makes the most sense for someone with a home office, or a small office with a couple of phones and one or two lines. Once your business gets larger than this, you should consider T1 digital phone trunks or SIP trunks to get the best value for your telephone expense dollar.