Help with options
 

Hello to all,
I am really glad I found this Forum. I have this one major problem that I need to solve:

I need to Receive/Make cheap phone calls between a Canadian land line and my Mobile phone (which is based in Germany). The phone calls will be many hours per day, 6 days a week, for a few weeks.

Basically, the options right now are

1) 5c/minute (Euro) using this http://www.01051mobile.de/ if I call a Canadian land line (I found it on the web, but have not used it)

2) 9c/minute using Blauworld; incoming calls free (I currently have this SIM card in my mobile phone)

3) or something like 15c/minute if the land line calls me (Calling Card charge incurred by the Canadian caller).

It doesn't matter who accepts the calling charges in this situation (The Canadian side or me).

I have a German address and a bank account, and am willing to enter into a contract with any provider as long as I end up paying less than 5c/minute on a call between Canada and Germany. I will be staying in Germany for more than 2 years, so long-term contracts up to 2 years are fine with me.

Any help will be much appreciated.

PS - I also found this http://www.dialnow.com/en/index.html which says it has 0c/min calls to Canada - but do I have to call a local number first and pay the local rate (which would rule out Blauworld since that is 19c/min locally)? If someone has any experience with this service please let me know,

Thank you very much in advance,
Cheers,
Pawel

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Why don't you try getting a German land line OR MUST YOU USE the mobile?
I will be very surprised if the 5 cent rate CA to German Cell will work. I have never seen rates that low to cell phone lines. Of course all INBOUND to European INLAND cells are free.

You might consider XtraNONSTOP allows up to 2 hours for 29 ecents total in combination with a service like ENJOYPREPAID. They have local German lines where you can dial and pay like 3 US cents per minute to USA/CANADA. That way a two hour call will cost 29 ecents plus 3 * 120 or $3.60 US. That is still a hefty $1000+ phone bill per year.

Stan

There are ways to get inbound calls from Canada for around 20 US cents per minute or so, if you use a VoIP provider with a Canadian DID (e.g. voip.ms). That's about the lowest I've seen.

From what I've seen, the cheapest way for Europeans to call mobiles is to call them with their own mobiles, and that's not an option for Canadians because we will pay overseas toll on our mobile here (and to a mobile number, the rates are even more obnoxious than the already nasty overseas rates we pay to fixed lines).

01051mobile is not selling SIM cards anymore. Sometimes you can get one used on ebay. It works very well (have one myself....)

Chris

Hey Stan,
thank you for your reply. The rate is actually German Cell to Canadian Land Line, but, as someone a bit lower mentioned, they do not sell it any longer (I will inquire further into that). Thank you for your information about Xtranonstop; I will check it out. If you have any more ideas, let me know,
Cheers,
Pawel

Hello,
thank you for your information, but someone from Canada was using a calling card earlier yesterday to call my German Blauworld-equipped cell phone, and for the price of a $3.50 card (CAD) they were able to call me for 25 mins, without any charge coming to me. Thanks again for your help, and if you come across something interesting do let me know,
Cheers,
Pawel

Hello Chris,
thanks for the heads up - you're not planning to sell your card anytime soon, are you...?
Cheers,
Pawel

Inbound calls to a German Cell in Germany is ALWAYS FREE for the cell owner. Not true if you "roam" outside Germany or if you are near a border and the card REGISTERS on a non-German network.

14 cents per minute is not a bad rate.

As I wrote, considering the costs to you or the other parties, you might think about a LAND LINE. If you are working in an office, can't your contacts in CA call that land line? The call should be < 5 cents per minute, alot lower than the 14 to call a cell.

Stan

If you can get a landline, Alice offers a flat rate for calls to the US, Canada, and landlines in Europe and a few other countries (www.alice-dsl.de). Combined with unlimited DSL, it costs about 50 euros a month (you can make unlimited calls for this amount). You might find this a cost-effective option, and they don't have fixed contract length, you can cancel service whenever you need to.

Hello Stan,
Unfortunately I must be on the move almost every week while in Germany, and some of my calls will be from trains, etc. Thanks for your help,
Cheers,
Pawel

Hello,
will I be able to use my Cell Phone if I get this land line option? That is, will getting this land line help me get lower phone rates on my mobile? Thanks a lot for your help,
Cheers,
Pawel

No, it won't. The Alice flatrate applies only to calls made from a landline (they have some plans that include low-priced mobile calls, but these are within Germany only). Other German mobile flatrates pertain to German numbers only.

The cheapest mobile calling options to Canada are: 01051mobile (5 cents/min but no longer offered, 60/10 billing, i.e., you pay for the first 60 seconds no matter what, and the call is subsequently billed in 10-second increments), Solomo (9 cents/min in 60/1 billing), and Blauworld (9 cents/min in 60/60 billing plus connection charge of 15 cents).

Even without a flatrate, calling from a standard Deutsche Telekom landline to Canada (by selecting the cheapest provider with tariftip.de or billiger-telefonieren.de) usually costs around once cent per minute. So you'd be well advised to place as many calls as you can from a landline and get a cheap international-calling SIM for when you're travelling. 9c/min can add up, but 1c/min rarely does.

Thanks for your help so far - does anybody else have ideas on how best to minimize fees for calls between a Canadian land line and a German mobile phone assuming that it doesn't matter which side bears the costs, and that the German mobile could be prepaid or contract or any other option there is?
Cheers,
Pawel

To recap:

It will almost certainly be cheaper to call the Canadian number from a German mobile than vice versa. All Canadian numbers (landline and mobile) cost the same to call from Germany (Canada uses the recipient-pays model for mobile billing, so any cost for using the mobile is paid by the person receiving the call) whereas calls to German mobiles are usually more expensive than those to German landlines (like most places, Germany uses the caller-pays model for mobile billing; receiving calls within Germany is always free).

The cheapest international calls from Germany are from specialized prepaid SIM cards (01051mobile, solomo, blauworld). International calls from most other mobile phones can be very expensive; almost all prepaid mobile phones charge €2 per minute for all international destinations, and contract phones are usually also quite expensive.

You can call Canada quite cheaply from a landline in Germany, either by using call-by-call from a standard landline (this involves dialing a five- or six-digit code before the number to select the cheapest provider, and you can use one of several internet sites to find out the cheapest at the present moment; it's often one cent or less per minute), by preselecting one of these companies for all your calls to avoid dialing the code), or by selecting a flatrate (offered by Alice and perhaps other companies) in which all the calls to Canada would be free in exchange for a higher monthly fee (the flatrate does not apply to mobile numbers in caller-pays countries, but again, this does not apply to Canada).

As far as cheap calls to German mobile numbers from Canada go, I suspect your best rate would be using a calling card, but perhaps some of our Canadian friends might have another suggestion.

For longer calls from a German mobile, it would be worth looking at options like flat rate per call or per month to landlines, then use a callthrough access

Hello Motel,
thank you for your very detailed reply; the information you're providing is extremely helpful.
Cheers,
Pawel

Hello Andy,
can you explain a little how the callthrough access works?

Is there perhaps a way where I can get a land line in Germany, my contact in Canada calls that land line (for a small cost of say 1c/minute or so to him since he'll be using a calling card), and the call gets routed somehow from the German land line to my German cell phone? Or, alternatively, I call the German land line from my German cell phone (let's assume I have a plan which allows me to call land lines for free), and then that call gets routed to Canada to my receipient there? Would that be possible somehow, and if yes, how?

Cheers,
Pawel

If it's an ordinary landline access, then it's effectively the same thing as a calling card.

You could use VoIP providers to do the call forwarding you describe, if you can find tariffs you like. But you'd need to check if the VoIP-in numbers would still be reachable and at the same tariffs as other landlines. I don't see it working out much cheaper though

My only point really was about the German mobile networks having some options that aren't per minute for every minute of the call. Vodafone sent me a message about CallYa-OpenEnd, ; I think has Stan mentioned something similar on T-mobile, or there are Flat monthly tariffs on congstar or simyo

Super Urgent - If someone can help me out with this I would be hugely appreciative!

I have a new contract sim card from O2. It says that I can call German landlines for free (Festnetz) (I pay a flat rate for this service). Is there any possible reason why I cannot use DialNow http://www.dialnow.com/en/index.html to call Canada using this mobile number? That is, I sign up with Dialnow, then dial a German landline number they provide (they have one listed as 03031190252 which I'm assuming is a land line), dial my contact number in Canada, and talk for basically nothing? Is this too good to be true or what?

Thank you all very much for your coming replies,
Cheers,
Pawel

Should work fine. 030 is a Berlin landline. Tip: You can test it right now if you want, call the access number from Canada (011 49 30...) and see if it works.

You're the man Motel! Thanks!

Cheers,
Pawel