Who/what is behind your phone cards?

In this post, I want to cover the basics of who and what makes your phone card work. To start form an obvious answer, it’s the existence of phones, of course. :)

Ok, so let’s move to some not so obvious people/technologies that have made this possible. First of all, there’s VoIP (which stands for Voice over the Internet Protocol). This has made it possible for people to use internet connections to transmit voice packages (the most well-known example for this is probably Skype). However, VoIP has not reached a level where it allows you to make calls from an actual phone, using the Internet Protocol. This is what phone cards do.

In order for phone card provides to ensure you can make a call from one end of the world to the other, they have to collaborate with telecom network providers. These guys sell traffic minutes in their networks, which are then used by people when placing phone calls.

The routing dept. in a phone card provider (such as www.nobelcom.com) will pick the least expensive route for your call from one destination to the other: this means they will pass your call through various network owners (or carriers) to get YOU the lowest possible rate.

So what else does the phone card provider do? Besides simply routing your call through various carriers, they also negotiate the price for traffic minutes they buy from carriers. As they usually but bulk minutes of talk-time, they get pretty good rates, which they are then able to pass on to you.

As the end-user of this service,  you can gather all the info you need to pick the most appropriate phone card for your needs by looking at: the rates, customer support services, and a few others – usually available on the online phone cards providers’ sites.

If you’re interested in what to consider when choosing a phone card provider, here’s one good resource: Things to Look for in Your Calling Card Provider