Long Distance Services

It is not necessary to have long distance services from the same company as a local company. You can get it from various sources. There are three kinds of companies – one direct long distance companies – means you will be billed directly by the company. There are third party carriers, using which you will not have to pay the bill directly to the company but it will appear in your regular phone company’s invoice. The examples are “10-10-620” and “10-15-945”. In this case you have to dial these number first and then your local phone number as usual. The third option is pre—paid phone cards. There are two kind of phone cards available – one with connection fees and one without connection fees. The one with connection fees are good phone cards for making a single call of longer duration. It usually gives more minutes. However if you try to make more than one call from the same card – it will deduct certain amount of money from the card. The no connection fee cards are giving lesser minutes, but are good if from the same card you are going to make many phone calls. Please note that not all phone companies are good. Especially with phone cards there are frequent closing downs of companies, so check with friends before buying any phone card. Often Indian Grocery stores are selling Cards at much higher discount. (At present $10 card is available at $7.49)

Which service is good is difficult to tell, as from time to time companies changing their services and charges. Study well before going for anything. Oh yes, you can change your phone company whenever you want. In fact many times changing phone companies is beneficiary as the major giants are trying to give incentive to you if you change over the company.

Make sure you subscribe to a suitable long distance rate plan, to save on your phone call charges to India. Most new immigrants feel home sick and run up large bills on long distance calls to their families and friends back home.