We live in a world that our grandparents probably couldn’t have even imagined. We can communicate all over the world at the speed of light. We can send emails, complete with graphics and sound, to any corner of the earth. With all of this technology, why are international phone calls still such a pain in the neck?

If you have tried to make an international phone call to one of the more remote corners of Europe, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You would think that international telephone calls to Poland, for example, would be a snap. Much of Poland, especially the places where I was calling, is an extremely wired and high-tech place. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, they have more or less caught up with the rest of the world. Although their international Internet access may be world class, international phone calls there are not.

The other day, I bought an international phone card to call one of my friends in Poland. He is there for the summer and I haven’t talked to him in a couple of months. There were a million different ways to make international phone calls. All of the cards had long lists of rates for different countries, so it was difficult to figure out which was the best one. After a few minutes of puzzling over them, I found the best international telephone card. I went home, ready to talk on the phone for a couple of hours.

When I tried to place my international phone call, nothing would work. I have heard that a lot of the cards for making international phone calls are actually made by the local mafias of foreign countries. Although I was skeptical of this rumor before, since I tried making international phone calls I am much more apt to believe it. It was absolutely impossible. The first time I tried, it told me that the number was wrong. The second time I tried, it told me that I had no money left on the card even though I had just purchased it. By the time one of my international phone calls connected, three hours had passed. When I finally did get my friend on the line, it was so grainy that I could barely hear him. Next time, I am going to try international phone calls with voice over IP. Anything that doesn’t run over the Internet is too unreliable to be worth the effort!

Having grown a little tired of my older cell phone, I decided to go in for a new one. Naturally, I opted to sign up for a cell phone plan in order to get a great phone at a relatively lower price. At that point in time, it seemed to me that I was going in for a great cell phone plan. But the first few months on the cell phone plan opened my eyes to a whole new world of cell phone plans.

Contrary to popular belief, unless you read and understand the fine print in most cell phone plan contracts, you could find yourself at the wrong end of a long term contract that you can very well do without. But most people are so enamored by the fact that they will be getting a premium phone for a fraction of the cost that they don’t really delve deep into the layers of the cell phone plan. This is exactly what happened with me.

When I signed up for the cell phone plan, I was promised a lot of free goodies. Caller ID was pre-activated on my cell phone, auto roaming was also pre-activated, my cell phone plan also seemed to have the best outgoing call discounts. I’m sure that even if you were to listen to the spiel of the sales personnel, you would have gone in for the phone. So the monthly charge for the cell phone plan, which extended to monthly payments over a three year period, didn’t seem like much. Boy, was I wrong!

The cell phone plan nearly did me in. Not only id the monthly payments become a painful way to owning a premium phone, I found out very soon that the free goodies were for a limited period only. According to my cell phone plan, the called ID was only free for a three month period. Soon after this period lapsed, I found myself paying a hefty fee to keep the called ID activated. The same was the case with the auto roaming facility. That too was free only for a three month period. And once the free period had lapsed, I found myself paying through the nose for that as well.

Initially, I was miffed. I felt that the salesman who sold me the cell phone plan had cheated me. But upon checking the fine print of the cell phone plan contract, I figured that all these details were mentioned there. Like most consumers, I had made the cardinal mistake of not reading and understanding the fine print. Which is why, with an expensive cell phone plan, I was literally paying the price. Not everyone is so unwise though. Upon checking around, I found that most of my friends and colleagues always made it a point to check the fine print. Another colleague took a phone with the bare bones package, even waiving the need for called ID, roaming and other facilities that were provided free for the initial months of usage as he too had discovered the hidden terms on his cell phone plan while on an earlier contract!