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. An old rotary telephone This article is about telephone technology. ... A telephone operator at work on a private switchboard A telephone operator is either a person who provides assistance to a telephone caller, usually in the placing of operator assisted telephone calls such as calls from a pay phone, collect calls (called reversed-charge calls in the UK), calls which...

There are different types of prepaid calling:

• What is a prepaid phone card and how does it work?

Prepaid phone cards is a service provided by various telecom companies that sell their service in advance. When you buy a prepaid phone card from website such as StartDialing.com, you are paying for long distance connection time in advance. When you make calls using the phone card, the card's value is deducted based on connection fee, duration of connection, surcharges and any maintenance charges associated with the phone card.

• Telephone prepaid calling cards (commonly known as Phone Cards in the UK and Power cards elsewhere) 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 phone 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 (commonly called "power cards"), 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. For mobile prepaid typically use INAP or CAP protocol.

Prepaid telephone calls are usually implemented in a telephone operators network using the intelligent network functionality. The competitive prices these operators offer are usually made possible by least cost routing and lower overheads than the larger telephone operators. A telephone card, calling card or phone card for short, is a small card, usually resembling a credit card, used to pay for telephone services. ... A typical newsstand in New York City. ... An old rotary telephone This article is about telephone technology. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... A toll-free telephone number (or Freephone number in the UK) is a special telephone number, in which the calling party is not charged for the call by the telephone operator. ... The public switched telephone network (PSTN) is the concatenation of the worlds public circuit-switched telephone networks, in much the same way that the Internet is the concatenation of the worlds public IP-based packet-switched networks. ... Pay As You Go, often shortened to PAYG, is used as a general term for the concept of a prepay mobile phone. ... A mobile phone operator (also wireless carrier) is a telephone company that provides phone services for mobile phone subscribers. ... In telephony, interactive voice response, or IVR, is a computerized system that allows a person, typically a telephone caller, to select an option from a voice menu and otherwise interface with a computer system. ... The Intelligent Network Application Part (INAP) is a signaling protocol used in the intelligent network architecture. ... CAMEL Application Part (CAP) is based on Intelligent Network (IN) capability sets with enhancements specific to mobile domain. ... A telephone operator at work on a private switchboard A telephone operator is either a person who provides assistance to a telephone caller, usually in the placing of operator assisted telephone calls such as calls from a pay phone, collect calls (called reversed-charge calls in the UK), calls which... The Intelligent Network or I.N., as it is more commonly referred to, is a network architecture for both fixed and mobile telecommunication networks. ... In international voice telecommunications, least cost routing (LCR) is the process that provides customers with cheap telephone calls. ...