Prepaid telephone calls

Prepaid telephone calls are a popular way of making telephone calls which allow the caller to control spend and not be tied into ongoing commitments with the telephone operator.

There are different types of prepaid calling:

• Telephone prepaid calling cards (commonly known as Phone Cards in the UK) are available from nearly every newsstand and drugstore worldwide. They are often the cheapest means of making long-distance or even international telephone calls. Moreover, they offer complete anonymity. They operate with any compatible public telephone.

• Prepaid calling operators offer services to customers who hold accounts with them and have paid money in advance. The service is typically accessed by the user dialling a toll free number from any telephone (PSTN, call box, mobile phone etc). The user then authenticates himself with the operator by entering a PIN, types in the digits of the number to connect to, and then is connected by the operator. Often these operators have toll free numbers all over the world, so a customer can access the service even when he is abroad.

• Prepaid mobile phones are offered by most mobile phone operators around the world. Typically all the usual mobile services are available to prepaid users, except that they have to top up their balance in advance before they can be used. This is done via a variety of mechanisms – vouchers, swipe cards, debit and credit cards. An IVR is usually provided to allow the user to find out his current balance by dialling a short code. After the balance has been topped up, a user may make calls, send text messages and listen to voicemail in the usual way.

Prepaid telephone calls are usually implemented in an telephone operators network using the intelligent network functionality.