Parents - Calling Your Student

Calling Charges

Abroadco provides international mobile phones to all students on an Abroadco program. While students receive free incoming calls on those phones, the calls made to those phones are now being charged at a higher rate than regular land line phones. And the costs for students calling the U.S. from their international mobile phones are even higher. Many telecommunications companies outside the United States now impose additional fees to complete telephone calls to mobile phones. We have listed several of the largest phone carriers below. You must have a long-distance or international rate plan with one of these carriers to receive these rates. If you subscribe to another service, make sure to ask them about any surcharges. All international plans may have additional monthly charges imposed by the carrier. (Rates valid as of January 2006)

AT&T

Per-minute international rate plus surcharge
France .10 + .19 = .29
Germany .10 + .19 = .29
Italy .10 + .23 = .33
Spain .10 + .17 = .27

Sprint

Per-minute international rate plus surcharge
France .12 + .23 = .35
Germany .12 + .22 = .34
Italy .12 + .20 = .32
Spain .12 + .20 = .32

Qwest and Vonage charge a separate per-minute rate for calls terminating at an international mobile phone. These are the actual per-minute charges (no surcharges)

Qwest

France .28
Germany .28
Italy .27
Spain .27

Vonage

France .21
Germany .31
Italy .40
Spain .30

Dialing Instructions

When calling an international cell phone, you need to use both the country dialing code and the cell phone dialing code for that country. Your student will provide you with the cell phone dialing code (some countries have many different codes) and the actual cell phone number. If calling from a land line, you will need to use +011+country code+cell phone dialing code+phone number.

For your convenience, the country codes for Abroadco programs are:

When to Call

We recommend that you work out some set times with your student that would be convenient for both you and your student. And don’t forget time zone differences! Continental Europe is six hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time and nine hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time. While we encourage you to call your student, try to limit it to once weekly. For non-urgent communications, we suggest you use email.

Money-Saving Suggestions

As you can see, calling an international cell phone can be costly, especially if you want to talk for more than 10 minutes. Here are a few suggestions for ways to lower your costs:

• MobileCaller.com is a website that offers pre-paid international calling to cell phones. This works with any phone, including your cell phone. You can search for the best rates for the country you want to call.*
• PhoneCardQuick.com allows you to search for the lowest cost pre-paid international calling cards to international mobile phones and regular phones.*
• Have your student find a convenient, safe public phone and send you that number. Then arrange to call your student at a specific time for longer conversations.

* Abroadco does not guarantee the service of either website.