Over the weekend I was undertaking my regular review of international calling charges offered by several of the prepaid mobile phone providers. 2011 has certainly been the year where a lot of the prepaid mobile focus has been on international calling offers. Lyca Mobile have entered Australia, Virgin and Telstra have new offers. Optus have reviewed their Connect 4 Less offer. gotalk have also launched new product offers. It has been a busy time.

In reviewing several of the key plans I did notice that one in particular “Hello Mobile” listed its rates on its website and noted them as promotional rates, with an expiry. The actual rates if you downloaded their rate sheet where quite a bit higher. In their defense, Hello Mobile had all of the information there, they where not trying to hide anything.

They aren’t the only prepaid mobile provider with promotional rates on their international calling charges. They all do it from time to time. Whilst you might think the call rate to China is still 0c, it may have actually changed to 3c or 5c etc. In the scheme of things it probably doesn’t make a big monetary difference but it does need to be pointed out.

The second thing I did notice was the connection charges. With rates at 0c prepaid mobile providers can really only make money on the connection charge for these countries. These connection charges are sometimes higher than what you would pay for a local call.

To demonstrate the differences between them all, I have listed several providers below:

Some of the plans listed as 0c are exactly that for a set of countries, not all of them so all keep this in mind.

If you are traveling to Australia, long or short term, you might be wondering what the best solution is for your mobile phone. I wish I could say that we have a tourist sim available that would solve all of the for you. Unfortunately we don’t. What do have is a smorgasbord of prepaid mobile sim plans that you can use for your short stay here that can be used for both local and international calls.

These are the plan that I recommend:

• Telstra is Australia’s largest mobile network with the best coverage regardless of where you travel. Whether you are in the city or in rural Australia viewing our great sites, Telstra Prepaid Mobile will provide you with the best coverage for both your calls, text and data. If you are going to use both calls and data (ie smart phone) then the Cap + Plans are ideal. $30 recharge gives you $250 in calls and 500MB data.
• The other option is Optus Turbo Cap. Optus has the second best network coverage in Australia. If you are going to be located in the capital cities and suburbs then they are also worth considering. Turbo Cap Plus offers similar value with $300 in calls, 500MB data and unlimited social media access.

Either of these options will do great.

The other thing to think about is calling back home. You can either purchase a calling card (available from any convenience store) for $10 which will provide you with hundreds of minutes of overseas calls or you can also look for a mobile plan that offers cheap calls.

If you are only traveling in Australia for a short time and your overseas calls are going to be irregular, then a Prepaid Phone Card would be your best bet. If you are going to make lots of overseas calls then look at plans offered by the likes of gotalk, Lebara Mobile, Lyca Mobile, even Vodafone and Optus have plans dedicated to cheap international calls.

If you are planning on being a student here or doing some temporary work, then also consider which plan your friends might be on. Many plans offer free member to member calls, eg Vodafone, Lebara Mobile, Lyca Mobile, Virgin and gotalk. If the people you mainly call are using one of these plans then it might be worthwhile choosing the same provider. Why pay for these calls?

How organised do you need to be before you arrive? Prepaid sim cards are sold just about everywhere. You can pick one up from the airport when you arrive or from a convenience store anywhere in any city. You can’t have it mailed to you overseas but if you have friends here, then it can be sent to them.

Source The Age

Users wanting to call home from abroad are increasingly turning to Skype’s internet telephony service to the detriment of international carriers, new data showed.

“Skype is now the largest provider of cross border communications in the world, by far,” said Stephan Beckert, analyst at research firm TeleGeography on Tuesday.

Skype’s technology allows consumers to make practically free long-distance calls over the internet on fixed lines. It is mostly used on desktops but Skype has made the move into mobile too and it now comes pre-installed on some mobile phones.

According to the firm’s data, over the past 25 years, international call volume from telephones have grown at a compounded annual rate of 15 per cent.

In the past two years this growth has however slowed to only 8 per cent, rising from 376 billion minutes in 2008 to an estimated 406 billion minutes last year.

By comparison, Skype’s on-net international traffic between two Skype users grew 51 per cent in 2008, and is projected to grow 63 per cent in 2009, to 54 billion minutes.

“The volume of traffic routed via Skype is tremendous,” said Beckert.

In general, TeleGeography said, “demand for international voice has been remarkably robust, but it’s clearly not recession-proof.”

Traffic to Mexico, the world’s largest calling destination, declined 4 per cent in 2008 for example, and aggregate traffic to Central America declined 5 per cent, data showed.

Established in 2003 and based in Luxembourg, privately owned Skype has more than 520 million registered customers who use the free web service for voice, video or text communication.

But despite its size, its revenue is relatively modest — at about $US551 million ($596 million) in 2008 — as the company has had a difficult time getting users to pay for its largely free services.

Skype aims to nearly double its annual revenue to $1 billion in two years.

Virgin has just launched a new prepaid service for customers who like to make international phone calls. It seems that this is fast becoming a popular market and given the amount of international students in Australia, you would probably have to agree.

These are the details:

If you’ve got friends & family back home or in Oz, our Home Made recharge option is a great way to call them from your mobile phone.

Call rates to selected countries which include US, UK, Ireland, India, New Zealand, & Canada are at a flat 10c per minute. Rates also available for all other countries. No connection charge for o/seas calls.

The sim card can also be used for calls within Australia. Charges include a 20c per min and a 20c connection fee.

Text is 35c for o/seas and 25c locally. Credit expires after 28 days if not recharged.

Given its a Virgin plan, you also get Unlimited Calls, Unlimited Video Calls, & Unlimited Text 24/7 to other Virgin phones in Australia.

Now Virgin joins Lebara and Go Talk with an international flavour to their prepaid mobile range. You can learn more about the Virgin International Prepaid Mobile plan here.

Now this is a confusing industry. Walk past most Milk Bars of mini convenience stores and see the phone card posters plastered on the window. There are just so many of them. Cheap Calls, Cheal Calls. Its just so hard to compare them.

I did some research into this market about 12 months ago and found that there are real differences between the providers of these cards. And the key characteristics to look out for are, obviously the call rate, the connection fee and the expiry of the card. As per any prepaid card you can recharge these cards, but you need to do tis regularly otherwise they do expire.

Prior to me discovering that these cards can so easily be purchased online I used to buy them from a store. Today when I needed to make and o/seas call I used prepaidplans.com.au to purchase my All Seasons card. It took me under 3 mins to buy my card. Prepaidplans did all the comparing for me, so I new which card to buy. I paid for it online via their site, they called me within a minute to tell me that I would be receiving my PIN shortly via email. Within a minute it arrived, along with the number I needed to call to begin the connection. One minute later I had made my o/seas call and was paying 2c per minute to call Europe. Is that good or what? Certainly beats waiting till tomorrow to remember to visit a shop and buy a card.

If you want to make an o/seas phone call and don’t want to pay what Optus of Telstra are charging you, visit us and buy yourself a $10 card to make your international calls.