Prepaid international calling cards short history

Prepaid calling cards came to life in Europe in the mid-Seventies. Calling cards took another 11 years to reach the US. Since then the calling card and phone card industry has grown exponentially worldwide. Today, the prepaid international calling card is sold in over 185 countries around the world.

1975: Phone cards were invented in the fall of 1975. The company involved, SIDA, was not in the telecommunications industry, but was a manufacturer and supplier of vending machines.

1976 : The first prepaid calling cards were produced and put on the market in Italy to combat payphone vandalism. In fact there was a shortage of coins in Italy at the time and payphone theft was common. Prepaid Calling Cards were introduced with a magnetic strip on the back for use in special phones to combat the coin shortage. The first Phone Cards were too thin and jammed frequently.

1977 : Prepaid calling cards using magnetic strip authorization spread to the rest of Europe. In particular to Austria, Sweden, France, and The United Kingdom. They became reasonably popular.

1978 : Inductive technology was invented in 1978 by Nelson G.Bardini in Brazil. The system uses a series of coils embedded in the card including on which blows when the card is used up. The calling card was first shown at a national inventors' exhibition in 1982.

1982 : Japan's Nippon Telephone and Telegraph introduced the first Japanese pre-paid phone card. Japanese commuters had to use a large coin to operate payphones on their subways. The Japanese prepaid calling card was considerably more convenient and was sold to tens of thousands of daily subway riders in Osaka and Tokyo.

1984 : France experiments with chip-based "smart cards".

1987 : World Telecom Group is the first company to launch a significant calling card product in the United States. GPT, a consortium formed by Siemens and GEC (General Electric Company), developed and issued prepaid calling cards with their own magstripe technology. This is now among the most widely used magstripe calling card.

1988 : The first catalog of telecards for international calling cards collectors was published by Dr. Steve Hiscocks, in England.

1989 : AT&T enters the prepaid calling card market. The first international origination calling cards appear in Hawaii.

1990 : NYNEX (New York's RBOC or Regional Bell Operating Company) offers the first non-magnetic based calling card in the U.S. These were prepaid calling cards that used a PIN (Personal Identification Number) as a means of identification. Nynex's prepaid calling card permitted the cardholder to dial an 800 number and enter his PIN to make long distance phone calls. This method permitted the caller to make phone calls from any telephone anywhere in the U.S. or to call any International phone without the need for coins or incurring hotel surcharges, encountering call-blocked numbers, or any of the other additional items routinely used to bloat public phone bills. Gold Line, Canada's leading long distance provider, enters the Canadian prepaid calling cards market and spends 10 years growing to own approximately 50% of the market in 2001.

1992 : All of the major regional and long distance phone companies including Sprint, and many of the smaller carriers were offering prepaid calling cards. Industry-wide revenues reached $12 million with projections calling for double that over the next several years. This projection proved to be radically short of things to come. Prepaid calling cards and international phone cards were had a big leap into the future.

1993 : Prepaid calling cards and long distance phone cards sales exceed $25 Million, more than double that of the previous year.

1994 : Displaying exponential growth, long distance prepaid calling card sales exceed $250 Million.

1995 : Sales hit $650 million. US West provides the first chip-based prepaid cards. Sprint releases "FONCARD" and Bell Atlantic temporarily discontinues its calling card efforts.

1996 : Calling card and long distance phone card sales reach an unprecedented $1 Billion.

1997 : Prepaid cards sales reach over $2 Billion.

2000 : Sales of over $3 Billion are achieved with no end to the expansion in sight. Projected sales for prepaid calling card industry reaches 10 Billion dollars per year by the year 2010. The combined reach of the new markets has expanded the distribution of prepaid phone cards from a few hundred thousand in 1992 to hundreds of millions in 2003. Prepaid International Calling cards are now sold through virtually every conceivable channel, from convenience stores and corner cafes, vending machines to online websites. The prepaid international phone card now co-exists with and in many cases have replaced collect calling and coin pay phones as the preferred method of placing both domestic and international calls. Read more calling card details ...