Saving on Cell Phone Long Distance Charges

Phone cards are really cumbersome, even painful, to use. Using a third party long distance provider is almost as bad, as both these options require keying in egregiously long pass codes.
For smart phone users, there is finally some hope: cell phone apps. These are small applications that are designed to download and run on your phone. While not new, they have become all the rage since Apple introduced them for the iPhone, via their online store. Available through app stores, all the major phone platforms have them - Blackberry, Palm, Nokia, Google's Android. Even Microsoft will be joining the bandwagon later this year.

The best-known application that can help you reduce or even eliminate long-distance charges on your cell phone is Skype, a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) application. Skype started out as a desktop application that routed voice calls on the Internet. It is available for most smart phones, either from Skype itself or from a third party vendor. Call quality has improved tremendously since it first started, because of better connections and better computing power over the entire network.