Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Calling Afghanistan

Afghanistan is one of the most expletive and difficult calling destinations. Although all calling cards advertise rates for calling Afghanistan, only very few provide reliable connection and acceptable quality of lines. The part of the reason is lack of reliable routes to Afghanistan as well as lack of advanced local telephone infrastructure.
We have analyzed sales data for many calling cards and did not find any conventional calling cards with good return rate to Afghanistan. We noticed some popularity of Lycatel calling cards (Kites, Perl, Roca), but problem is that these calling cards only keep good rates and actual minutes for the first few months after the release. Another popular card for Afghanistan is Inferno (Service by Primus Canada).
The best return rate and feedback we have for Afghanistan is for Ertebat Calling Card. Ertebat uses direct Afghan Wireless connected Fiber Optics/Satellite Connection. According to most feedback we have Ertebat Phone Card provides significantly better connection and very competitive minutes. Ertebat is provides best minutes for calls to Afghan Wireless and Etisalat networks (26 minutes). For calls to other Afghanistan mobile networks Ertebat delivers fever, but still competitive minutes.

Gold Line Phone Cards

Calling Cards by group of Gold Line have been on Canadian long distance market since 1993. Currently Gold Line provides over one billion long distance minutes per month employing over 250 individuals. Gold Line retains complete control of all aspects of its infrastructure, it owns the all back-end infrastructure required to supply customers with a complete solution in all long distance services. According to many sources Gold Line is the largest and one of the most reliable calling card service providers in Canada.
GoldLine phone cards have earned the reputation of Canada’s best-values and reliable calling cards. Gold Line's most popular calling cards are Gold, 2020 and CiCi Calling Card.

Connection and Line Quality


Group of Gold Line provide long distance service in partnership with many world’s leading communication providers. Gold Line is one of the very few providers who offer excellent-to reasonable connection and line quality to almost all international destination. In fact, according to many reviews, CiCi and some other GoldLine’s cards offer the best deal to most calling destinations.

Marketing Strategies and Advertised Minutes


GoldLine’s most popular calling card – CiCi has accurate minute-by-minute billing and no fees of any kind.
Gold Calling Card has better published rates and minutes, however it deducts 15¢ after 3d minute of every call. This makes rates more attractive, but in real life most customers could have a better deal using CiCi calling card for short calls. Gold may generally be better for longer calls.
20/20 calling card uses the most common calling card advertisement strategy: Posted rates and minutes do not include per call service fees. In short, this card is only good if entire balance pf the card is used for one or two calls. Realistically customers get not more than 50-60% of promised minutes. Although 20/20 could be good for long calls to “expensive” destination, we would only recommend 2020 for experienced calling card customers, who use calling cards a lot.

General customers' feedback


Mostly positive. Most negative feedback relates to lost minutes while using 20/20 calling card. CiCi is one of the best rating cards in Canada.

Recommendations:


We believe that CiCi calling card offers one of the best deals for multiple or short calls to most international destinations. We also recommend CiCi for all casual or inexperienced calling card users. Depending on the rate to specific destination, CiCi could be good to all types of calls. We would only recommend 20/20 for experiences customers, who plans to use up entire balance of the card in one or few calls.