Mission:Impossible, pt. 4

[On a personal note, I'm back. Apologies for the longest break I've ever taken from the Blues, over a month now. In that time I packed up my things in Michigan and headed for Vancouver, British Columbia where I'll be for the near term. As a public service, I'm going to now finish these over-ambitious posts that I'd planned on international calls in quick fashion.]

The first option for making international calls has to be calling cards. Signs trumpeting their existence, along with rates listed down to tenths of a cent precision, are one thing I've found common to all grocery stores catering to foreign nationals. Asian, Indo-Pak, Middle Eastern -- it doesn't matter. If you find a store selling food from that region, you've also found a place where you can buy a card allowing you to call that region for 3.8 cents a minute.

I was almost set on buying one of these cards. I pictured going to Canada, buying a calling card there, and punching in 30 numbers just to call my parents in Texas for 2 cents a minute. But what would my parents have to pay? Where would the call appear to be coming from? And how much use would I get out of a Canadian phone plan otherwise?

I thought there must be better options out there. I went back on the Internet.

After more searching I found that the "card" part of "calling card" was dispensable. On some websites you can buy virtual cards which comprise code numbers you enter to route your call through who-knows-where for cheap. Here's one from a company called UWT, short for United World Telecom. It's a terrible name -- "United World" manages to sound both menacing and generic, like it's the cover for a crime syndicate in a Die Hard movie. I wasn't about to give these people anything.

But through this website I did learn about a second option for making international calls: the callback service. If "virtual calling cards" are shady, callback services seem twice as much so. You know the scene in movies where the mistress calls, gets the wife instead, and hangs up? That's what comes to mind. The idea is that you call a number, access some service that calls you back, and then call the real number you want to reach. Did you get that? You know what that makes you? The other woman! You have to love it when the one-question FAQ is "Is callback service legal?" and the answer is a link to an FCC ruling. That's not exactly "yes," is it?

[To be continued...]