My wife and I, along with friends, are returning soon to Bali on the 21st August for 2 weeks. It's our 4th trip and we can't wait to get there.
Our 3 children are staying home with my parents, and we all love to stay in touch by phone while we are away. Our last couple of trips have cost us a fortune in phone calls, so this time I decided to investigate the best and cheapest options to call between Aus & Bali.
I only checked out the Telstra options as my home phone and our mobiles are with them.
I thought I might as well share what I found out and hope it helps others.
I'll try to keep all the detail brief, and you can jump on Telstra's Internet site to check all the finer details. http://telstra.com.au/callingcardshop/index.htm
Telstra International Direct Calls to Bali whereby the kids ring our motel from Aus, and ask for our room number. We could pay my parents for all the calls made on their next bill.
Costs: $0.90/min or $7.00 capped for the first 10 min.
Telstra PhoneAway Card can be used in Bali to call Aus although it depends on the phone system at your motel. We tried this a couple of trips back and couldn't get them to work from public phones, and had all sorts of trouble from our motel room.
Costs: $1.15/min ($0.45 connection fee)
Telstra TeleCard can be applied for by ringing Telstra prior to your trip, it's free to set up, and it bills all your calls in Bali back to your home phone. It can take a couple of weeks for Telstra to set it up and send the card & details. It's fairly simple to use and you basically get an outside line from your motel room, dial in your access & pin numbers and the number in Aus you want to call. We tried this last time and it worked OK. Big phone bill when we got home, but convenient.
Costs: $0.97/min ($0.75 connection fee).
Telstra Say G'Day Card is only for use in Aus to call local, long distance or international. We can train the kids how to use it from my parent's home phone. They dial a 1300 number, enter the card number, 0011, the country code for Indonesia (62), the area code for Bali (361), then the motel number in Bali and ask for our room. We can SMS them from Bali when to ring us.
Costs: $0.17/min ($0.25 connection fee)
SMS's cost around $0.18 in Bali to Aus depending on the network carrier your mobile defaults to or you set it to. SMS's from Aus to Bali cost $0.25.
Telstra mobile calls from Bali to Aus costs about $6.00/min depending on which Indonesian carrier your mobile defaults to, or you set it to. Very Expensive, same as calls between mobiles in Bali.
Calls to your mobile in Bali from Aus to are charged at the international rates per min to you !!! The caller in Aus pays normal costs. Expensive.
Another option is to purchase a SIM card in Bali. I'll check this out a bit more when we get there, but I think we can get by without worrying about this.
We'll be buying the kids a Say G'Day Card from the Post Office, the cheapest option by miles. I've also applied for the TeleCard for convenience as we can ring Aus and charges are on our next phone bill.
We'll keep in touch with our travelling friends, and friends back home cheaply via SMS.
Hope this helps !!!