Calling US from NZ and Australia

Old Sep 18th, 2002, 08:29 AM
  #1  
Paula Parker
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Calling US from NZ and Australia

We will be in New Zealand for 3 weeks next February, and then Sydney for an additional week. My husband will need to keep in touch with his office some of that time. I'm sure there are plenty of internet cafes, and faxes (for the fax should we ask at the hotels or B & B's to use theirs and pay them?) The main question he has is in regard to making calls back to the US as inexpensively as possible. I've checked out rented cell phones, and the cost per minute for overseas calls is HIGH! What type of phone cards are available there? Are they challenging to use, as are some in Europe!?
Does anyone have any firsthand iformation on this, and an estimate of the cost. For example does a NZ$20 card give you 10 International minutes, etc.? I know someone will know all this information, and I would be most appreciative if they would let me know!!

Thanks in advance,

Paula
 
Old Sep 18th, 2002, 01:43 PM
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LN
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Hi
I was in New Zealand in February and we took along a phone card that we purchased at Sam's Club. It gave us 600 minutes here in the States and a smaller number overseas. We used the phone card a few times in NZ and Australia and it worked quite well. We never ran out of minutes and we still have some left on it. I found that it was the best $20 we spent. In addition we stopped at Internet Cafes to send multiple messages and to check in with the office.
 
Old Sep 18th, 2002, 01:56 PM
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Debbie
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Hi,
I had absolutely no trouble finding inexpensive calling cards at the news agent's stands in Australia. Cards came in denominations of A$5 and up. I paid just A$0.09/min (5 cents US!!) to call home my family in the States. It was actually 2-3x as expensive to use that same card to call w/in Australia. If I were you, I'd just wait until you get overseas to purchase a card.

Debbie

PS The cards are rechargeable and you can even set up voicemail. I never bothered to do that, but how convenient if you can't afford to be out of pocket for three weeks!
 
Old Jul 21st, 2004, 04:30 PM
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Any new thoughts on buying NZ phone cards? We have an ATT card that I purchased, but the rate sounds more expensive than the ones people are mentioning in these 2002 posts.
Am thinking it might be easier to just use c card purchased in NZ.
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Old Jul 21st, 2004, 06:43 PM
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I use a Chi-Tel card to call China, but you can phone many other countries with it - including, at the moment, the US and UK for less than AU$0.03 per minute (or about US$0.02). They're very widely available in Australia and I'm sure also in NZ - if not, there are many other brands. On the "no such thing as a free lunch" principle, the quality is variable but usually acceptable. Mostly there's a little delay, which suggests that a satellite is involved. If you're unlucky you might get some echo (in which case I hang up and call again).

My guess is that the operators have leased cheap international transmission capacity, of which there's a glut, and subdivided each standard 64 kilobits-per-second channel into as many as 8 transmission paths. A self-respecting telco wouldn't do this - but then, self-respecting telcos charge a lot more for their calls.

You need to dial a local access number, which in Australia are only in the major cities, so in other areas you'd be up for a toll call. The cards are bought in multiples of $10. They're not challenging to use but you do have to dial quite a few digits. With Chi-Tel you dial the local access number, then "2" for English instructions, then your 5-digit card number, your 4-digit password, the international access code, country code, then the wanted number (including area code), then hash (#).

All this is a relatively laborious way to make a call, but it's dirt cheap.

There have been previous threads dealing with the mobile (cell) phone issue. Most countries, Australia and NZ included, use the international GSM standard, which presents a problem for Americans - I'm told that even the US regional carriers who use GSM operate on a different frequency. I've seen American travellers advised to buy a tri-band phone that can be used at home and in most other countries, but that's probably not worthwhile if you don't travel a lot. And mobile phone call charges aren't cheap.
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Old Jul 21st, 2004, 08:11 PM
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try zaptel.com
i got great rates on a card a year and a half ago, and it worked great.. cheapest calls i ever made!
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Old Dec 24th, 2004, 01:10 PM
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Dec. 24, 2004....Our son and his wife are in NZ now for a 2 week vacation (from LA...we live in TX), Anyway I gave them my prepaid phone card info, purchased at Sams CluAT&T). My husband and I have used it from overseas and it is a good rate. Before I left I called for the rate and it is cheaper from NZ than it was from France and Portugal a a few weeks ago (Nov.) The card rate is 3 cents a minute, but from overseas it ranges from 4 units to 9 units per minute. NOt bad. Some people purchase a prepaid card when in the country they are visiting, and sometimes that is a good rate also..IF THEY WORK.
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