[DET62]

I am trying to investigate various options for international calling, and I am debating an international cell phone or a calling card. I know cards would be cheaper but I am paranoid they wouldn't work in Kazakhstan. Can anyone recommend a brand of card they used in Kaz and thought was good?

Thanks,
Dee

[Delmom]

Dee,

We rented an international cell phone and I do NOT recommend them. The best thing was for our family to have Kazakhstan put as their long-distance country (each phone company calls it something different), but basically it only cost them 12cents a minute to call us. This time we will have our laptop and plan on emailing as much as possible.

From what I have heard it is cheaper to buy the phone cards in Petro. Also, by getting it there you'll be sure that it will work (hopefully).

[skoi]

What about buying cards here for people to call you there? Any experience with that? We're expecting our LOI for Aktobe sometime early Feb. and will be leaving our three kids with friends. I know they'll want to call.

Thanks.

[babypayne111]

We used the Nursat card. You buy them in Kaz. We had no issues with them.

[Mich71]

We used the voice over IP service from Skype.com.
We purchased a microphone for our lap top and could call anyone, anywhere with a skype account for free. It was only $0.02/minute to call a land line in the US. Of course you will still have your local phone charge. It was a slow connection and sometimes would have a very long delay...partly because we were using dial up. We just told everyone at home that if they received a call and no one was there to wait a minute because it could be us.

[jaime1976]

Check out the Arbat Card

[scassady]

Anyone rent a cell phone in Kazakhstan from Silk Road Painting ( I believe Andre) recently? I have seen some posts in the past that this worked great to rent the phone there and purchase minutes to dial home. Also then family here in the US can reach you on the phone. We are considering this. Hope to travel by March.
Steph

[hml1976]

The cell phones don't work that great for internaitonal calls, the reception isn't great. We did love using our cell phone to talk to our travel partners and interpreter but used a Nursat card to talk to everyone at home. We rented the cell through silk road as well, Sasha runs the company but has moved to the US so I'm not sure who's running it now.

[JenniferKaz]

We puchased an ATT calling card while over there.

A neighbor gave us a Sprint card before leaving, and their customer service people said it would work, but it did not. When I called back when we got home they said "well it works in some 'stan".

The ATT card was not cheap about 24 cents a minute, but we didn't call much, we used mostly email.

[sienna5]

We used a prepaid card that several others were using. The web site is:

United States Phone Cards - Calling United States from Kazakhstan with prepaid phone cards

It is not really cheap but it worked from even the remote area where we were. If you select something else you might note the web site because you can sign up over the internet and get your account. So if something else does not work, this probably will. They have 800 numbers in Kaz.

[DET62]

Thanks for all the great advice. After I posted this, a friend who was just in Petro last summer said she used an AT&T card from Sam's and it worked fine.

What is an Arbat card? Never heard of that one.