What is the most economical and practical way to telephone the USA from France?

The most practical is to buy a t&eacute;l&eacute;carte at any tabac or caf&eacute; and use the public telephones, which have instructions for using it in several languages, including English.<BR><BR>If you're going to be making a lot of calls, it might be worth it to buy a French cell phone and a pay-as-you-go Mobicarte. You could use that phone to call home from other European countries as well.

We were also able to use the telecarte from our rented apartment by punching in all the code numbers. We got a lot of calls from the one we bought. It was very easy to use.

Be prepared - you can not use your MCI or ATT or other long distance calling cards from France. You would be wise to do as the others suggested and get a telecart for phone calls to the US. I wish I had known that before my trip.

Last year we used our ATT calling card.We have international calling on it so there was no problem, we checked our home messages every day and called the baby sitter!

Be prepared - you can not use your MCI or ATT or other long distance calling cards from France. You would be wise to do as the others suggested and get a telecart for phone calls to the US. I wish I had known that before my trip.

I've used my AT&T calling card from France. Now I have an MCI card and although I haven't used it for that, it gives you complete instructions on how to do it, even specifically from France, so I don't see how they would be doing that if it were not possible. You just have to follow the instructions and get the right access code. Here are the MCI instructions<BR><BR>http://www.mci.com/home_family/products_services/international/walletguide/wallet-ENG.pdf<BR><BR>I don't expect that is cheapest, but I don't make many calls from abroad home, so just used my regular card.

You can use an ATT or MCI calling card, but you'll pay thru the nose for the privilege. The rates to call back to the US are extremely high, and they'll only disclose it if you call them to ask. Get a prepaid calling card instead, at least you'll never go over the cost of the card.

Julie has a repeating problem, there are calling cards from ATT that you can use in Europe and they are not that expensive. You can call and get one before the trip. Easy.

Thanks for the tip about the telecarte. I've used this kind of service in Italy and Turkey. Do you know if similar cards are available in Spain? Jocko

Just this week I got the 800 information number from the back of a prepaid 600 minute ATT card from SAMS Club. Information from site says that if you call US from France it will cost you 7 minutes for every minute used. The price of that card is about $20. so the price works out to less than $0.30 / minute. Not bad price to check your answering machine and return important calls. Walmart has similar cards but not quiet as chaep.