What Is The History Behind International Calling Cards?

The force responsible for the unprecedented speed with which technology is growing is communications

. Between the internet, smart phones, and the ways in which these are connected, the world has become a smaller and smaller place. Not surprisingly then, these changes have had a serious impact on the way international calling cards are used.

It used to be that if you were from North America and went to Europe, calling home was extremely difficult. If you had access to a landline, rates were exorbitant, and even for brief conversations. It's no wonder that a more common form of communication was mailing letters. Calling Cards were invented in Europe by a company called SIDA in 1975. Necessity is the mother of invention, and actually the cards were born because there was a shortage of coins. The following year, a magnetic stripe was added to be used in special phones made for this purpose. In the short time of a year, the cards were being accepted across Europe in countries like the U.K., France, Austria, and Sweden.

In 1978 calling cards were using "inductive" technology. Essentially, the cards had a series of coils embedded in the cards that blew up when the cards' limit was reached. In the following years, cards were altered to become even easier to use and cheaper to produce. Japan was amongst the leaders of innovation and they sold mass amounts of cards to subway riders. France experimented with "chip" based technology. Overall, calling cards were catching on around the world, but not even the experts could anticipate the extent to which they'd boom!

By the 1990s, America was producing pre-paid calling cards that didn't have any embedded technology but rather a pin number that was manually punched in to ensure security. Expectations around this time suggested the industry as a whole was worth under 30 million dollars. Actually, this number ballooned exponentially to a staggering figure!

By the middle of the 90s, calling card sales hit $650 million. By 2000, this number reached $3 billion. Today, internet merchants sell a variety of plans in almost two hundred countries around the world. The industry has shot up again to the tune of $10 billion. This is fueled by internet phone cards which have greatly reduced the cost of calling. But you needn't go online to find good deals-there are cards available in nearly every corner store, newspaper stand, and commonly around similar places in countries around the world. The truth is there is more room for growth, not that it's surprising given the nature of this industry.

The world is a different place from the one where letters were written by hand and stuffed into envelopes and sent home by boat. People want immediate communication, and increased technology has made this happen at rates that would have been considered incomprehensibly low. With the ubiquity of cell phones you needn't even find a payphone to use your card, as plans have adjusted to allow for international calling without roaming charges. Overall, speaking to loved ones around the world has never been easier!

by: Adriana Noton

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