In the world of telecommunication, there are two main billing methods, namely;

1. The Prepaid billing system commonly referred to as “pay-as-you-go”.
2. The Post-paid billing system also known as “mobile phone contract plan” or “contract-based phones”.

The prepaid mobile phone is a mobile phone for which credit is purchased in advance of service use. This credit remains in the phone and is only used whenever the service is consumed during phone calls, SMS or while accessing the internet via the phone. Without available credit in the phone, access to the requested service is denied by the mobile phone network. Users can top up their credit whenever they wish using a variety of payment mechanisms. The most popular means of recharging a depleted credit is by using a prepaid phone card.

On the other hand, the post-paid mobile phones which are also referred to as the Mobile phone contract or the Contract-based phones make use of a billing system where users enter into a long-term billing arrangement with a mobile network operator or Carriage Service Provider (CSP).

Having known what the prepaid and contract-based mobile phones are, let us see their merits and demerits.

ADVANTAGES OF PREPAID MOBILE PHONES

1. No service fee or monthly rental fee is required.
2. No activation fee
3. No termination fee if you decide not to use your phone card again. This gives freedom to change your network provider whenever you want.
4. You are always in control of call cost
5. No compulsion to top up your credit rather some operators come up with reward schemes to encourage frequent top ups.
6. No age limits
7. No hidden cost, you just pay as you go.

DISADVANTAGES OF PREPAID MOBILE PHONES

1. Often, prepaid customers pay more for their calls and SMS messages.
2. Prepaid phones allow the user to be anonymous and therefore facilitate criminal or terrorist activities.
3. The possibility of running out of cash at a crucial time that you need to make call.
4. Some carriers put a time limit on your credit. You will have to use it within a stipulated time frame or else it will be classified as invalid.

ADVANTAGES OF POST-PAID MOBILE PHONES

1. Lower cost as compared to the prepaid
2. No increments in monthly rate during the contract period, as long as you remain on the same rate plan.
3. You might receive a billing credit a few months into the contract.
4. Fixed rate for minutes unless you go over your minimum.

DISADVANTAGES OF POST-PAID MOBILE PHONES

1. Phone purchase price is likely higher.
2. There might be set up charges
3. You are restricted to your monthly plan for the duration of the contract. During this period, rate increases are permitted but not decreases.
4. Failure to comply with the terms of the contract attracts a penalty, often with the price of the remaining months on the contract.
5. Contracts often require a minimum monthly fee, which might be more minutes or features than you might use.

Whatever this analysis reflects, people will always have their reasons for preferring one product to the other. It is note-worthy that the “purpose” is the driving force behind the choice we make. Just as a farmer would prefer a truck to a saloon car, for the easy conveyance of his farm products, a banker on the other hand would prefer the saloon car to the truck because it projects his corporate image. So whatever choice we make, whether to go by the prepaid or postpaid plan, should be such that tallies with the purpose we intend to use it for. The one that will provide maximum satisfaction with minimum tolerable disadvantages. The choice is up to you.

Picture from: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1241106

These are prepaid cards which are available with different cost structure to suit the needs of the individual. Available for specific value, the purchaser will pay the ascertained amount to the service provider. The purchaser is allowed to make calls for the amount he has paid. Normally, in this cost structure, there are no hidden costs and it does not require payment of deposit. This is a great savings. Further, the rate per call, calculated on per minute basis, is considerably less compared to any other cost structure.

Normally, prepaid connections will not have any connection charges. There are no monthly billings. The caller has the option to refill the value by purchasing calling time from the service provider.

The service providers will have help line which works 24/7. Each Card will have a PIN number which the caller will dial it in order to get logged on to the toll free zone. The caller can use the help line free of cost to get connected to the required number. Once he dials his PIN, the help line will ask for the country and the number so that he is connected to the required number. If the caller desires, he can even register certain frequently called numbers with the service providers and he will get quick access to call these numbers.

• Call home! It’s better than being there.
• Do you know where your wife/husband is sleeping tonight?
• Build community self esteem. Call someone in Cincinatti tonight.
• Save money per call. Call her home when you know she’s at work. She’ll call back on her dime.
• Call grandma and remind her about your birthday next week.
• It’s a special day. (He won’t admit he can’t remember.)
• Call now to show you care. (Remember cheaper rates are coming in two weeks.)
• Call the AARP. There’s a new wrinkle on aging.
• Reach out and clutch somebody

source: Phone Card on Squidoo

The “Love Detector” service from mobile operator KTF makes use of technology that analyzes voice patterns to see if a lover is speaking honestly and with affection. “We created this service because we thought people would want to know what others were feeling about them,” said Ahn Hee-jung, a KTF official.

During a conversation, users can point the phone to themselves and see the “love meter” bar on the screen of their handset. The conversation is analyzed, the mechanism sorting out the amount of affection, surprise, concentration and honesty of the other speaker.

The service costs subscribers a flat fee of 1,500 won ($1.59) a month for unlimited use or can be accessed at 300 won for each call, KTF said. “The caller is paying the money, so the information is provided only to him or her,” said Ahn.

source: Reuters.

Collecting phone cards, calling cards or, as they are often called, telecards is America’s fastest growing hobby after collecting Pokemon cards. Although phonecards as a consumer commodity are only about 25 years old they come in a mutiplicity of forms and like stamp collecting they are printable. The very fact that a phone card can have anything printed on it makes it collectable. Add to this the fact that cards are mostly printed in limited runs. This results in scarcities of each card as there are a finite number of that particular run.
Here are some of the features that a phone card collector would look for:

• Cards are made of different materials
  • Plastic
    • Layer thickness
    • Layer Construction
    • Layer material
  • Paper
• Card condition
  • New
  • Mint
  • Old
• Cards are used or unused
• Cards types
  • Prepaid
  • Rechargeable/Reusable
• Cards have magnetic stripes
  • The position of the mag strip
  • The width of the mag strip
  • The material of the mag strip
• Cards have embedded chips
• Cards have different data storage systems
  Card Systems include:
  • Alcatel
  • Anritsu
  • Autelca
  • Chip cards
  • GPT
  • GSM
  • Inductive cards
  • Landis & Gyr
  • Magnetic cards
  • Remote Memory cards
  • SIDA
  • Tamura
  • Urmet
• Cards have different expiry systems
  • Tear off corners
  • Mag strips
  • Blown Inductive coils
• Cards from a specific product
  • CocaCola
  • Disney
• Card Geometry
  • Oblong
  • Square
  • Cutouts
  • Notches
• Cards from a specific event
  • Olympic Games
  • Soccer World Cup
• Cards from a specific country
  • USA
  • Brazil
  • Carribean
  • Italy
  • Singapore
  • Japan
• Rare cards
• Early edition cards
• Comemorative editions

Phone card collecting is an exact science and with it comes all the equipment. Collecting equipment includes thingd like albums, phone card catalogues, special lighting, ante static mats and calling card cleaning equipment. Exactly like Pokemon cards,coin and stamp collecting there are collectors all around the globe who trade, swap and sell telecards.You can buy individual rare phonecards or you can bulk buy a job lot of cards from a particular country.

1. FreeSWITCH – FreeSWITCH is an open source telephony platform designed to facilitate the creation of voice and chat driven products scaling from a soft-phone up to a soft-switch. It can be used as a simple switching engine, a media gateway or a media server to host IVR applications using simple scripts or XML to control the callflow. It supports communication technologies such as SIP, H.323, IAX2 and GoogleTalk making it easy to interface with other open source PBX systems such as sipX, OpenPBX, Bayonne, YATE or Asterisk.

2. Yate (Yet Another Telephony Engine) – While currently focused on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and PSTN, its power lies in its ability to be easily extended. Voice, video, data and instant messaging can all be unified under Yate’s flexible routing engine, maximizing communications efficiency and minimizing infrastructure costs for businesses, capable of handling 600 H323 calls. While currently focused on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and PSTN, its power lies in its ability to be easily extended.

3. Ekiga – Ekiga (formely known as GnomeMeeting) is an open source VoIP and video conferencing application for GNOME. Ekiga uses both the H.323 and SIP protocols. It supports many audio and video codecs, and is interoperable with other SIP compliant software and also with Microsoft NetMeeting.

4. XMeeting – XMeeting is the first H.323 compatible video conferencing client for Mac OS X. In addition, XMeeting also supports the popular SIP protocol used by many VoIP applications. The client is highly compatible and has many additional features, so that it can be used for most private and business video conferencing tasks.

5. OpenH323 Project – The OpenH323 project provides full featured, interoperable, Open Source implementation of the ITU H.323 teleconferencing protocol that can be used by personal developers and commercial users without charge.

6. OpenH323 Gatekeeper – The GNU Gatekeeper (GnuGk) is a full featured H.323 gatekeeper, available freely under GPL license. It forms the basis for a free IP telephony system (VOIP).

7. BSDRadius – BSDRadius is open source RADIUS server targeted for use in Voice over IP (VoIP) applications. While there are quite large number of Radius servers (including free) available in the world, little number of them (if any) are developed with VoIP specific needs in mind. Typical VoIP RADIUS server should be able to take high amount of AAA requests in short time periods, handle large databases, and respond timely to prevent time-outs and request retransmission cases. Most commonly used VoIP protocols (SIP and H.323) use small number of Authentication methods (e.g. CHAP and Digest), and this can allow reduce processing overhead and code size of server.