There was a time, before phone cards, when long distance and international calls – even to friends and relatives - required a good amount of preparations. Everyone making international calls had to back-calculate:

•How much money do I want to spend on this international call? •How many minutes does it give me? •And what do I need to talk for this many minutes?

Sound funny?

Yes it does in today’s world, where phone cards are making long distance and international calls cheaper day by day. Phone cards were first introduced to make long distance calling easy and convenient. One could make long distance and international calls from any phone using these cards. Then came price war between long distance operators and cost of calling using phone cards started coming down significantly compared to post-paid phone connections.

Phone cards offered today come with different facilities and operating modes:

•Some need a PIN to activate. •Some need a call to be placed from pre-registered numbers. •Some need a call to be placed on a toll-free number first to dial long distance, or •A combination of two of more of above.

As soon as you find a good station,you will drive out of area and it will become static and then fade away completely. It was a pain to travel from one area to another constantly fiddling with tuner to get a working station. And it seems that as soon as you find one that picks up properly, you have driven out of area and can’t pick it up anymore. But now technology has advanced and with satellite radio, you can now pick up any station from satellite.