Phone cards seem to be available all over the place, including the Internet. All they have to give you, after you pay the fee on your credit card is a pin number and a 1-800 number to call. You dont have to have long distance phone service and can use the virtual phone card from any phone.

Unfortunately, due to FCC regulations, they have to charge you 55 cents per pay-phone call. This because the trolls that own the pay-phone have the right to charge you a lot; they also charge the 1-800-number company.

The phone card companies leverage the Internet to make the international calls as cheap as possible, going through various DSL lines, VoIP connections and some other stuff.

This default setting for your service requires you to enter your secure personal identification number (PIN) whenever you make a call. Every customer of a phone card company has to get a PIN. For some companies it is a temporary PIN, good only for the amount of minutes on the card. Other companies have permanent PINs with rechargeable cards. If your card has a multiple dialing service, or zip dialing, you only have to enter the PIN once and then you can make a series of calls. Of course if for some reason you lose your PIN or it is stolen , you are in trouble, but if you have an Internet based phone card company, you can contact them on the Internet and get another PIN. Some areas seem relatively expensive to call no matter what you do. For example a call to various remote South American countries such as Bolivia, Paraguay, Guatemala, and Honduras cost about 13 cents a minute on an average phone card. Calls to some African countries are even more expensive. A call to a U.S. Service-member in Iraq or Afghanistan will cost 28 cents a minute, or to Kuwait, 21 cents a minute. This is through the Military Exchange Prepaid Global 550-unit phone card, marketed by AT&T. That compares to 40-cents a minute on some other phone cards. The cards have no connection fee, dont expire, and can be recharged through a credit card. These phone cards are even cheaper if they are bought in Iraq Phone Cards, Kuwait and Afghanistan. They make a great gift for service-members at holidays, or any time of the year.