Calling Card Per Minute Rates

The per minute rate of a calling card, phonecard, or prepaid plan is the amount charged for each minute of billed time.

Billed time is the amount of actual talk time rounded up to the next billing increment. For more on what that means, check here.

But back to per minute rates: As you shop for a card, you will find that advertised per minute rates vary widely from vendor to vendor and from card to card - like by a huge amount.

It is easy to get confused - maybe that's the goal! And probably nobody really understands how it all works - except maybe the vendors themselves.

In the following sections, we discuss the main factors that influence per minute rates:

Originating Country

One major factor that determines your per minute rate is the originating country you are calling from.

In other words, rates to a particular destination country are different if you are calling from the United States or from the United Kingdom.

The table below shows this for calls to Australia from 3 different originating countries. Note that rates are cheapest from the US, even though the US is furthest away.

Per Minute Rates to Australia from
Different Originating Countries
Originating Country
Card USA UK Russia
Card A 2.0¢ 3.0¢ 12.0¢
Card B 20.0¢ 40.0¢ 80.0¢

Card A is the Jupiter card from ECC
Card B is an AT&T international calling card
Calling card and pricing data from ComFi.com

Many cards allow calling from only from one originating country. Such cards have only one price schedule showing per minute rates from that country to all destination countries.

However, some cards allow calls from several originating countries. If you have a card, then each originating country will have it's own per minute rate schedule. The price schedules will show the per minute rates from each originating country to all possible destination countries.

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