There are plans which offer you one phone and one number, which you can use in the United States and abroad, keeping in touch with the world where-ever you go, making and receiving calls. International calling plans provides you with the facility to be always available where ever you might be and provides you with seamless connectivity. With one phone and one number, you, as an international traveller, can stay connected virtually anywhere.

If you are not a frequent traveller, international calling plans still remain the best economical way, taking advantage of the cheap rates and rental plans, making it convenient for you with its affordability and short term international wireless services. International calling plans offer you affordable cheap service to over 200 countries in the world, with voice, whether you are calling abroad from the United States or from abroad.

If you are travelling to a specific country, you may save as much as 80% of your call charges when you opt for a pre-paid SIM card for that country. You get a local number and you pay as the locals do for all your call charges. On top of that you are not charged for incoming calls, no matter where it generates from. Since you pre-pay for your calls, you do not receive any bills at the end of the month and you do not have to enter into any contracts. For this you will need a compatible GSM handset and even if you have one, it is most unlikely that it would work in the country where you are going.

The Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card is of the size of a postage stamp and when inserted in your handset, renders it intelligent and you may then make and receive calls in your phone. SIM is essentially a printed circuit board, which has a microprocessor with memories, and holds all your relevant information to identify you with the network. All the information stored by the SIM is unique to your phone and connection plan and as you switch on your phone, this data is automatically sent by your SIM to the network, which, after verifications, logs you in. The SIM card also has an address book where you can store the telephone numbers that you frequently call and also logs the calls received and made by you by date and time. The SIM card allows you to secure your handset misuse by accepting your Personal Identification Number (PIN) to be punched into the SIM card through the handset keyboard.

You have the calling card options, offering you low rates to your international destinations. It is important that you stop and choose the right card which can possibly give you the cheapest international calls. At the same time, it should be noted that the quality of voice transmission are not always at par with the choice of the cheapest rate and therefore it is a balance that you need to strike when choosing a card. Never-the-less the actual experience in choosing such a balanced card comes from experience. A calling card may give you a cheaper rate, but if you consider all the add-on, like the factoring in all charges, billing increments and other stipulations of calling cards, you may find that it is worth considering a far better service of a switched long distance service. Further, fraud has been detected in those calling cards, when you find that you have run out of the whole credit by making only one short international call. Therefore, you need to be careful when you opt for using a calling card.

In using a calling card, you would be required to dial out a long access number and when you are prompted, you will need to punch in your Personal Identification Number (PIN) after which you are through to dial your destination. It is rather a long process.

Most of the landline and wireless service providers’ offer lower-priced plans to call internationally, through different calling plans. A typical standard plan would be where subscribers do not pay any monthly fee, but the charges of calls are comparatively high. There are discount plans where subscribers would perhaps pay $4 a month to access to a far less expensive per-minute rate. This boils down to, that even if you make few international calls every month, the monthly fee that you pay automatically pays for it. In this existing plan, if you choose to pay $3.99 extra on the monthly fees, you get cheaper per minute rate to access more than 100 countries in the world. A call to London under this plan would cost you 20 cents per minute, when, without such a plan it would cost $1.49 a minute. Another company, under the same sort of plan, charges a monthly fee of $4. Under this plan, a call to the United Kingdom would cost 6 cents a minute, while it would cost 49 cents without such a monthly fee. A number of smaller companies are offering much lower rates on international calls with no monthly feels. Others are offering call rates to the United Kingdom at 6 cents a minute on cellular and landline.

It has observed seen that in most cases landline offers you cheap rates in international calling under discount plans. It is a good way to pick your right plan by looking at your landline statements to find out which countries you mostly call and how often. This will give you the first knowledge as to how you should go about choosing an international calling plan, relevant to the countries you call often. In this regard you must be aware that if you look at international calling plans of specific countries, without having a broader look at the plans, you shall find that single-country plans are not always cheaper.

The international calling charges are falling and the cell phone rates for such calls are following the landline slide. These rates have been coming down for sometime now. In the year 2003, the average landline international call rate was 20 cents per minute, down from 50 cents in 2000. This is according to the recent data from Federal communications Commission.

Landline companies offer discount rates like the cell phone companies, which offer assorted discount plans. As an example, one such company charges $4 a month in addition to a regular phone subscription, and offers discounted rates to more than 250 countries. The same company offers single-country international calling plans providing unlimited calling plan to the United Kingdom at $34.95 a month. It offers the same kind of plan to South Korea, Italy, France, Germany and Japan for $44.95 a month for each plan.