bigzoo does seem good BUT for my needs (business)

acculinq is better

calling mobiles is cheaper
no hassle of prepayment
no need to type in a PIN each time - if you are making a large volume of calls then this is a real hassle (i used to use US 2 Global calling cards)

BUT 2.4 cents is a great deal! :-)

'Cept that's twice the cost of bigzoo!

.... which also has 1-800 numbers for most major cities, no connection charge (and a 2.9¢ rate in other places), and in my experience is almost 100% reliable.

The only negetive is a 75¢ a month standing fee.

Will these suggestions work if you are calling from a US based mobile phone to the UK?

Big Zoo charges 22.4 cents to a mobile from US to UK

I can't guarantee this is the whole answer, but, what does your cell phone service charge to call an 1-800 number? You will have to pay at least that to call from your US cell phone to your bigzoo account, plus the bigzoo rate to the UK.

I am still in the UK at the moment, so as yet have no cell phone plan.

Still waiting for my H-1B visa to come through at the moment, but very eager.

Why not try looking at the web sites of the major cell phone services in the US to see if they tell you cost of calling a 1-800 number? The big ones are Alltel, Cingular, Verizon, Nextel, .... (any others?)

I use "Tracphone" a pay as you go service, but I have never called the UK through bigzoo from it.

Thanks, I'll have a look around. I know that some of the calling card numbers that I have checked from the above messages do not work with cell phones.

The best calling card I've found is Masterbell card you get online at www.masterbell.com.

It costs 2.5c / minute, with no connection / maintenance / startup fees, or surcharges at all that I know of. I got stung with few bad cards when I first moved over (including one which said in bold letters "No connection fee", then charged a connection fee, and had it's customer service handled by a separate company that knew nothing about it and put me interminably on hold - but I'm not bitter but I've had no problems at all with this one.

Hope it helps.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by JoanneKarr
Hiyah,

If you go to www.clarkhoward.com, you can find all kinds of long distance deals there! I call the UK for 2.9 cents a min. I use "BigZoo"

I've started using 10.10.987 for calls to the UK, something like 3c/min and 39 to connect, good as you can use it for long distance US calls too.