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Avoid monthly charges and minimums on your long distance bill without paying higher per-minute rates

As an example of the industry line, MCI charges 12¢ a minute if I agree to a $5 monthly minimum. If I want to avoid the monthly minimum, I will have to pay up to 30¢ a minute for direct-dialed state-to-state calls.

How's this for an alternative? Sign up with GTC Telecom and your state-to-state long distance rates will be 5¢ a minute with no monthly fees or minimums. The only catch is that you must agree to "online billing" with the amount charged to your credit card to avoid a $1.95 monthly billing fee. You should also check the cost of in-state calls before signing up with this plan.

Notwithstanding these two minor cautions, is this a no-brainer or what?

Let's put this another way:

You can either agree to pay MCI $60 a year even if you don't make a single call, while still agreeing to pay more than twice as much as you would have to pay GTC if you make enough long distance calls, or you can agree to pay MCI six times as much as you would pay GTC for the same calls.

GTC's plan probably isn't the best if you make international calls, and it may not be the best plan if you make a lot of "in-state interlata" calls. It is an amazingly simple plan that's especially appropriate for all those people who claim they make hardly any long distance calls, and for state-to-state calls, it beats the heck out of virtually all of the plans offered by the Big 3.

International Calls

A call to Europe that might cost just a dime on some rate plans may actually cost several dollars on other rate plans. So even if there's only a slight chance that you may need to make an international call, you might want to check out your options.

The Big Three will demand a fee of two or three dollars a month for the privilege of paying low rates. This absolutely isn't necessary. Plenty of long distance carriers are happy to offer competitive international rates just for the privilege of having you as their customer, without subjecting you to monthly fees, minimums, connection fees, or other gimmicks.

When shopping for the best international rates, you'll naturally want to focus on the cost of calls to those countries you expect to call the most. If there is no particular country you're planning on calling, then look for a plan that lets you call most European countries for not more than 15 or 20 cents a minute. Third-world countries cost more, but you should be able to call almost any country for under $2 a minute. Even calling Russia shouldn't be much more than 25 cents a minute. Note these are 24 x 7 rates.... time-of-day rates on international calls are just passe!

Travel Calling

More and more, cell phones are the answer to calling while you're traveling within the U.S. You avoid connection fees, payphone surcharges, hotel surcharges, and depending on your cell phone plan, you may not incur any charges at all.

But cell phones aren't a complete answer... you might not have your cell phone with you, the battery might be low, or you may be in an area where there's no coverage. So even if you have a cell phone that offers free long distance, you need a backup plan. Your choice of backup plan can have a dramatic effect on the cost:

• credit card -- generally the worst approach... depending on the phone you're calling from, you can easily wind up paying $10 or $15 for a 3-minute call within the U.S.
• coins -- you might get lucky and come across one of those phone that lets you talk 4 minutes for $1... which is pretty reasonable compared to many other options. But this becomes an expensive option if one of those payphones isn't handy and you have to pay $4 or $5 for the same call using AT&T. Plus you have to have the coins available.
• hotel bill -- hotels are notorious for their long distance rates, so forget this! Some have featured the fact that they use AT&T, but this only assures you that the rates won't be quite as high as some other carriers might charge.
• non-prepaid calling cards -- as long as you're selecting the carrier when you place the call, you have some control of the charges. This usually means that you should use a toll-free number to place the call. The Big Three usually have connection charges of one to two dollars. Under the basic plans, the Big Three are charging 79 or 89 cents a minute for calling card calls... 5 to 20 times as much as you need to pay, on top of the connection charge. The only connection charge you should agree to pay for a non-prepaid calling card is a payphone surcharge of not more than 30 cents.
• prepaid calling cards -- you may see signs offering rates of 1.9 cents a minute or even a penny a minute. Such a low rate isn't economically feasible. Such cards operate by having many other kinds of charges ... connection fees, payphone surcharges higher than 30 cents a call, weekly or monthly maintenance fees. They also benefit from customers who don't use the time up before the cards expire and the "breakage" that occurs when the connection fee for a call exceeds the amount left on the card. If you buy your prepaid calling card in an airport, you're likely to pay 25 to 50 cents a minute. As with most everything you buy at an airport, the price is inflated. General retail stores (drug stores, discount stores, and membership stores) are more likely to offer cards with reasonable terms at competitive prices. Some of these will even be from one of the Big Three carriers. You can generally expect to pay about 10 to 20 cents a minute for these cards, although some of the membership stores currently offer a 480-minute card from Sprint for $20, which is under 4.2 cents a minute.
• collect calls -- no matter how many times Carrot Top claims you can save by calling his "collect" toll-free number, collect calls are no way to be economical, at least if you're going to end up being responsible for the bill. Except in a real emergency, don't make collect calls and don't accept collect calls without understanding the actual costs.
• toll-free numbers -- if you plan on calling your own phone number while traveling, this can be the best alternative to a cell phone. While some carriers impose a monthly charge, as with other features or your long distance service, there are other carriers that don't have such a charge. The per-minute rates from these carriers should not be excessive. Some carriers will charge more (say 15 cents a minute) for toll-free carriers, but others charge the same per-minute rates as they charge for calls made from your regular phone. Although you'll have a separate phone number to remember, you can phone home in just 11 digits (or a few more if you opt for a security code).

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