Look Out World! Vonage Launches Digital Prepaid Calling Card!

Vonage put out a press release today announcing the launch of it's new stand alone, Digital prepaid calling card offering. A first for Vonage! They have long had a calling card feature bundled with their home phone service but they never offered a stand alone calling card until now.

The card is available exclusively online and is can be purchsed in $5, $15 or $25 amounts. The $15 purchase amount comes with a limited time intro promotional $5 bonus and the $25 purchase amount comes with a limited time inro promotional $10 bonus. The product seems to have very aggressive, yet not rock bottom, A to Z rates on par with it's main competitors like Pingo and PennyTalk. Some sample rates for the card are as follows:

• India $0.017/min
• Mexico $0.033/min
• UK $0.01/min
• Philippines $0.109/min
• Pakistan $0.111/min

New Vonage Digital Calling Card

There are no connection fees, no monthly fees and is fully rechargeable! However, the card is not completely fee free, charging a $2 inactivity fee per month after 6 months of no use.

The card also offers pinless dialing from up one registered phone, speed dial settings and a convenient auto recharge option.

For more information about this card, visit the Vonage website at  http://lp.vonage.com/callingcard

SpeedyPin Introduces VoxCall Pinless Calling Service

The latest news on the war to win the PINLess dialing battle, online phone card giant SpeedyPin recently announced the release of their new PINLess international calling service called VoxCall.

The service, offered directly online or through an extensive agent network, offers super low rates which they claim can help customers save up to 95% on their international calling costs (versus calling with traditional long distance plans). Some of the other great features of this product include:

- No-PIN Dialing from any Phone (home, office or mobile)
- Online Account Management
- No Added Fees
- No Contracts
- Toll Free & Local Access
- & and much more.

Calls are billed in one minute increments and complete CDRs are available to the end users at anytime via their super convenient online account center. VoxCall is so confident that you will like their service that they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee to each and every customer. They also maintain full accreditation with the Better Business Bureau with an A rating.

Later this year VoxCall has additional plans to offer:

- International access numbers
- A Spanish version of the website
- Direct calling via a phone number mapping feature

If you are a consumer who would like to try their service for free just visit their site at http://www.voxcall.com for a free trial.

Dollar Phone Enters The Pinless Agent Space

Not to be outdone, Dollar Phone has finally entered the pinless phone card agent/dtc game. Joining IDT (Boss Revolution), CallDirek, Inc. (Call Direk Pinless) and many others already in this space. The product will be called Dollar Phone Pinless and will be sold on their website directly to consumers and will also be available to agents/retailers.

While the offer is nothing new, Dollar Phone and their strong market presence in the prepaid space, should end up making some significant inroads with a product like this!

To read the full press release go to: http://www.pr.com/press-release/313039

Boss Revolution Pin-Less Phone Card

IDT has been promoting their fantastic new product Boss Revolution very heavily over the last few months with ads in the Prepaid-Press, Craigslist, email blasts, and lots of local point of purchase material. The product is basically a standard pin-less rechargeable calling card like Pingo and PennyTalk but with much lower rates and a unique distribution program which allows anyone with access to the internet to become a reseller of the product.

Much like the Avon model, Boss revolution allows everyday people to sell the service to their friends, family and anyone else who could benefit from cheap international calling. Some people online are even reporting profits of up to thousands of dollars a month. If reselling is not your interest and you just want to enjoy great low rates you can visit a local store or go online to purchase one of the lowest priced calling cards out there... and to make it even better, they offer a try before you buy program which gives $1 free for first time customers.

To purchase, become a reseller, or to learn more visit them at http://www.bossrevolution.com

STI Launches A Sweepstakes To Help Boost Sales

Much like IDT did last year with it's Boss Card sweepstakes, STI has launched their own sweepstakes this year right in time for the important holiday sales season, it's called "Connect The World Sweepstakes." The sweepstakes offers a grand prize of $1,000 Cash and 1 year of free calling. Their are also other prizes: 2nd Prize of an LG 225 camera phone with $20 of calling time and a third place prize of a $20 phone card as well as other calling card prizes.

The sweepstakes officially began on 10/15/09 and will continue into the new year ending on 1/3/10. There are two ways to enter with the first involving entering in your phone card pin online along with your contact information or you can enter online by testing STISWEEPS to 878787. No purchase is technically needed to play and free codes can be obtained online or by SMS by following the instructions provided.

Full rules can be found here: http://www.stisweeps.com/STIOfficialRules.pdf

New Calling Card Application Released For The IPhone

A new application for the Iphone has just been released that makes using calling cards from your mobile phone real easy. For a small fee users can download this application from itunes and install it on their Iphone. The application allows users to store multiple calling card access numbers and pins in one easy place and also allows them to call any one of their contacts using a calling card with a simple one touch dialing.

Iphone Calling Card Application Main Features:

• Set up multiple phone/calling card accounts and easily switch between them.


• Automatic card selection based on contact and/or number prefix.


• Set up a list of favorite numbers to dial, select any number from your contacts, or directly enter a phone number to be dialed.


• Full support for international prefixes (numbers stored starting with '+').


• Flexible call details setup allows for automatic dialing of most phone cards even if intermediate menu selections have to be made.


• Display local time for the contact to be called (time zone look up based on the phone number).

Full information on how to use this application and how to do the set up can be found at the following website: http://homepage.mac.com/aamann/CallingCard.html

To purchase the application visit Itunes and type in "calling card" in the search field

India Telco Bharti Brings Itself Into The Canada Rechargeable Calling Card Space

The large Indian Telco Bharti announced this week that they have introduced their rechargeable online calling card product called Airtel CallHome into the Canadian marketplace, just months (8 months to be exact) after entering the US rechargeable calling card market (service has also been available for some time in the UK and Singapore). With over 1.5 million Indian's living in Canada, they feel well positioned with a rate of roughly $0.058 per minute to take over as one of the prominent companies serving this community.

The space has been traditionaly held by Reliance but with Bharti's brand name and heavy marketing spend (see the Airtel CallHome TV Commercial) they feel well positioned to take over a significant market share. The battle will be tough as Reliance has held the #1 position in this market for a while now and they will no doubt put up a strong fight!

Get Your Own Online Phone Card Store - Little to No Experience Required!

For many phone card distributors, selling online is an impossible task! You need to get a hosting server, register a domain, hire a web designer, purchase and install a shopping cart software, register for a merchant account and then hire customer service agents to handle all of the issues. Most likely some of you have though about opening up an online store but get scared away by all of the work! Well don't worry, I have a quick and easy solution for you to get your very own online phone card store up an running with none of the headaches and very little work!

Vtel Phone Cards offers a virtual phone card store where you can register your own domain and start selling phone cards with your brand and your name. How it works is simple:

1) Register at Vtel Phone Cards
2) Choose your stores name and register your own domain name
3) Pick from one of over a dozen off the shelf store templates or customize with your own HTML (requires some web design experience).
4) Drive customers to your site
5) Earn a commission on every sale for the life of that customer (ranges from 8 to 13%)

Best of all you don't have to worry about any of the day to day management issues like order fulfilment, credit card processing, fraud control or customer service... it's all done for you! All you do is drive traffic to your site to get sales and watch the money roll in!

Once you reach $50 in earnings you can request payment by either a check or via PayPal! I know of some people making well over $2,500 a month with this program!

Check it out now and be sure to sign up!

Online Calling Card Pingo Lowers Rates to Over 70 Destinations

The popular online only rechargeable calling card Pingo provided by Ibasis announced this week that they have lowered rates to both mobile and fixed lines on over 70 locations by as much as 59%. The rate reduction is facilitated by new efficiencies and streamlined carrier relationships at Ibasis and is geared at trying to be more competitive than it's other online rivals such as pennytalk.com and pinzoo.com.

Some highlights of the the rate reductions include:

Jordan - Lowered by 58%
Bangladesh - Lowered by 57%
Iraq - Lowered by 59%
Iraq Baghdad - Lowered by 48%

The complete list of rate reductions can be seen here

Featured Online Phone Card Store: nobelcom.com

Nobelcom.com

If you are a regular seller or buyer of phone cards online you are no doubt familiar with the calling card store called nobelcom.com. Online since November 2002 nobelcom.com has been a dominant force in the online retail space with cards like Long Call World and Most Minutes World. Owned and operated by Thomas Knobel of NobelTel, Ltd, this company has quickly become the leader in the international phone card market. Their position as a global carrier helps them offer some of the lowest rate phone cards out there today.

Just about all of the phone cards on their site are fully rechargeable, reducing the need to have to remember a new pin number every time you need a new card.

NobelTel, Ltd headquarters is located in Hamilton Bermuda and also sells prepaid long distance phone service through it's Enjoy Prepaid brand and post paid long distance service through it's NobelTalk brand. The company also maintains a strong carrier wholesale business which helps them support their extensive retail offering while keeping their rates low.

Speedypin.com Sold to NewWest Capital Partners

Speedypin LLC, one of the oldest phone card websites online (founded in 1997), announced that they have sold off the assets of their business to Denver Colorado based NewWest Capital Partners. The financials of the deal have not been disclosed nor is it clear if the existing management of speedypin.com will remain on with the company.

Speedy pin is also known as 1st USA.com Phonecards, Inc

speedypin.com & New West

The full press release can be seen here

MySpace and Skype Partner

In one of the more common sense deals in the telecommunications industry, Skype has agreed to partner with MySpace to empower their huge social community to make voice calls. MySpace will be introducing a new IM client that will also have the Skype engine built in. The service has been launched in beta and should be available to the masses in early 2008.

A great move for Skype as it will allow them to tap into a new market of social community users, mostly here in the US , an area where they are extremely weak. For those of us in prepaid, we really don't have much to worry about as this youth market was not big on prepaid calling cards in the first place, so our markets should not be eroded any further by this deal. It may have a small effect on prepaid mobile consumption but I don't think anything of note... young people just love to talk on the phone anyways so I think they will just end up talking more!

Montel Williams Teams Up with CallingCards.com

In one of the first celebrity endorsements I have seen in the phone card business in a while (dating back to the Bollywood days), Montel Williams has created a partnership with callingcards.com to promote free calling card giveaways.

While not a high level celebrity, it should give them some good buzz and a little more website traffic!

Check out the site here....

Nobel Expands It's Online Calling Card Business Into the UK

As an online calling card retailer myself, I have to say I am envious of Nobel for their recent announcement of an expansion into the UK online calling card market. Next to the US, this is probably the next biggest calling card market in the world.

Nobel will be launching the web site Nobelcom.co.uk in the coming weeks and they should have no problem replicating their US success even though the UK market is fairly well saturated. In their business it's all about online advertising and implementing a strong organic search engine strategy as well as a sound PPC campaign.

With the calling card market getting more competitive here in the US, a lot of people have turned to other products and services, like prepaid mobile, voip services and prepaid cash cards to make up for the lost phone card revenue but in my mind going outside of the US is probably the best way to expand and/or keep your business growing. Some other markets of interest for phone cards are: Canada, Australia, Italy, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal and Germany.

New Sponsor - PinlessWorld.com

Hi everyone, I am happy to announce that I just received a new sponsor Pinlessworld.com.

PinlessWorld provides prepaid phone cards, wireless refill products as well as ringtones. Please pay them a visit and see what they have to offer.

http://www.pinlessworld.com/

Sponsors like them help me keep providing all of you the up to date content and gossip from around the industry.

Around The Web - Prepaid Telecom Sites

Being that prepaid telecom is such a niche subject I thought I would help everyone out by sharing some of the web sites I know that deal with the subject:

www.intelecardnews.com - Print and Web publication about the prepaid calling card, mobile and debit industry

www.phoneplusmag.com - Print and Web publication about with regular coverage on everything relating to telecom, including prepaid products

www.prepaid-press.com - Web site with news and information about anything prepaid

www.drprepaid.com - A nice site with news and info on the prepaid mobile buisness

www.cardweb.com - Web site and print publication on the prepaid debit and credit card industry

http://www.prepaidgrapevine.com/ - Prepaid mobile and calling card forum

If anyone knows of any other sites relating to prepaid business please feel free to post a reply to this post.

UnionTelecard.com Receives a Face Lift

The perennial super power in the prepaid calling card business just launched it's newly redesigned Uniontelecard.com which features less product selection but all cards are now fully rechargeable and feature pin less dialing. They no doubt realized that most of their cards were not suitable for the online consumer and decided to limit it to about 8 cards.

This new web site design and focus on rechargeable cards now make Union Telecard Alliance one of the most powerful online retailer of phone cards.

Getting Your Telecom Site Found on the Internet

There are so many players in the Telcom space today that it is becoming increasingly hard to get your small to mid sized company found on the world wide web. Part of my job over the past year has been helping these types of companies overcome the big boys, by making them more visible on the web.

While I can't give away all of my trade secrets to becoming more visible on the web, I thought I would at least share the basics to help get you started:

1) Identify the major trade publications for your industry and see if they have an online web directory and post your link

2) Submit your site to all of the free directories you can find. While not the greatest thing, it will help get you started.

3) Buy a handful of directory listings with the major players like joeant.com, yahoo.com and businesseek.com

4) Find other web sites in a similar industry and ask them for links (you would be supprised what many people will do for nothing in return... yes there still are some good people left in this world).

5) Trade links with others in your industry

6) Create an affiliate program with Link Share where you pay people commission for qualified sales that they bring to your site. This is great because you only pay for sales and not clicks.

7) Buy AdWords on Google and Yahoo... don't go crazy but this is a essential part of any online marketing program. These are pay per click programs so expect to pay a little more than with LinkShare since you are paying for each click on the link and not for sales.

8) Buy a few well placed banners on some major sites like yahoo. This is expensive and you pay by impressions but it can be helpful for branding.

9) Try some shopping sites like shopping.com and yahoo shopping. These are also pay per click programs but unlike the adsense programs they bring you much more targeted visitors and a better CPA.

10) Post your URL in a few subject relevant guesbooks... be careful as this can get you blacklisted by the search engines so keep it to a minimum... no more than 20 or so tops!

11) Try posting on some free online classifieds

12) Ask your friends and family with web sites to give you a link!

You don't have to follow all of these to be successful but doing some will definitely help and remember be patient it can take months for search engines to take notice of your hard work.

Good Luck!