The Internet is a good source of prepaid phone cards, as most sites give you information and rates for calling to and from various countries. You can buy online, get the pin number by email and start talking. Your prepaid balance is reduced as you go on making calls, until your amount is entirely used up. Most of the card dealers sell their cards online through websites that specialize in international calling cards.

1st-usa.com is a popular website that sells international calling cards from various telephone companies and card manufacturers. You can get cards from major companies like Clear Connections, Access, Atlas, AT&T and Diamond Phone card on this site. The website provides information on the differing rates of various companies, and comes with buying and recharging options for any of these cards. Cards are categorized according to the caller and receiver countries, and also as cards for businessmen, students, military and missionaries.

You can also shop online for international calling cards at www.call-and-talk.org. Apart from buying and recharging cards at this site, you can also manage a personal account accessible round the clock. You can choose your caller and receiver country from a drop down menu and get the best rates available on the web. This website covers all the continents and almost al -important countries in their calling card search and sales.

Or you can visit www.webstel.com, as it meets all your telephone card needs including international calls. All you need to do is to type in the country from which you are calling and the country which you need to call, and the website displays international calling cards for sale as well as recharge. Webstel also has its own prepaid calling card which rounds off calls to 1 minute, for which the PIN is emailed to you instantly.

Are you missing somebody at home? Or is your sweetheart out of the country? The best way to make international long-distance calls is by using an international calling card. Such telephone cards were introduced to make long distance calls simple and effortless. But they have slowly developed into the cheapest way of making telephone calls from one country to another, owing to the increase in the number of private telecom companies and their price wars.

Before the advent of calling cards, it required a lot of time, money and preparation to make an international call, and involved contemplation on how much should be spent, how to convey maximum information in the shortest time, and how many minutes that would take.

Today’s international calling cards are activated either by entering a pin number into a toll free number, or by placing a call from a number that is pre-registered. A secret pin number can be used to activate some cards. Others use a combination of any of these methods. You can pay for these cards online, or by cash or credit cards. Many cards are prepaid and will automatically hang up once you have used the allocated amount of time. But there are some calling cards that allow you to extend the time of call by paying extra, even after the allocated amount is used up.

There are many calling card operators on the web as well as in your neighborhood. You need to be judicious while buying a card, and choose your operator prudently. You have to check the reliability, rates and time slabs offered by each operator and for different countries. Customer service standards of the operator have to be taken into consideration; also, avoid any problematic pin codes or disrupted voice lines.