Make international calls at very low rate, even free of cost

I have been traveling to different countries since end of 2006. One major concern I have, when I go to a foreign country is, what would be the most cost effective way to call back to India. I have to talk to my parents, my girlfriend, and for some important and urgent work to my banks and friends.

Usually I try to search for a calling card that would give me the lowest calling rates with good voice quality. If I can find rates lower than Skype the online VOIP service provider. Skype costs me 9.2 cents per minute to call to India from any country.

While in Japan and Ireland I found that Skype was the cheapest of all the cards available.

Currently I am in Toronto, Canada. And I discovered a wide variety of calling card services that gives me rates much lower than Skype, in addition to that they have special offers that allows calls on even lower rates.

Here are some services that I have tried and found to be useful.

1. Stana Card

This is an excellent online calling card service that you can manage online. The big advantages this services provides are:

• Calling to India for 7.8 cents per minute.
• The referral program.

Let me explain the referral program briefly, when you refer some one, both you and the referred person would get additional talk time. So if the person you referred starts with a balance of $1o he gets an additional talk time of $10 and you too will get $10 worth of talk time.

So it is wise to join the service using a referral link from some body. you can use my link if you want to try it out.

All you have to do is click here, create an account, register your phone number, and yes, provide your credit card details. And you are ready to go.

Stana Card also provides the facility to assign local numbers to your international numbers, so that you just have to dial the local number to connect to your international number without the hassle of entering pin codes.

2. Reliance

Reliance provides you with good voice quality and calling rates of 7.4 USD to any moblies in India and 7.2 USD to reliance mobiles.

The registration process is simple and easy. And they have a 24/7 customer care service, if you need any assistance.

Most of the Indians use in US and Canada use the Reliance India Call service these days.

3. Jaxtr

This a new service where you get to talk FREE of cost. However you have a limited talk time, you get units called JAX and each country have different rates (jax/min).

You get 100 jax credited to your account every month and you receive about 10 jax for bringing in another user via your reference.

So when you call anyone through Jaxtr the jax gets deducted from the person who is being called. They have a feature of choosing the people who can call you.

The call quality is good, however you have to try more than once to get connected.
Another drawback is that both parties should be registered with jaxtr.


There are a few more calling cards and VOIP services present but these are the ones I liked.
If there are better services please post them in your comments to this blog.

Happy Talking.