Your long distance provider must not be a burden that you will have for all your life. You have to be free to stop using their service at any time. You must not pay them a monthly fee just for the right to make long distance calls.
One good example of a long distance provider you can choose is 3U Telecom (http://www.3utelecom.com) because they have NO MONTHLY FEE, NO MONTHLY MINIMUM, NO SETUP FEE.

Then pay attention to the billing

Usually long distance telephone companies bill you one entire minute wether you made a call of 3, 15 or 45 seconds. That's the way they earn money. The worst example is 1010220 because they tell you that you can phone up to 20 minutes for $1, but they don't tell you that if you get an answering machine and hang up (3 seconds call), you also have to pay the price of 20 minutes!!!
A good example of service with one second billing is the long distance telephone service provided by 3U Telecom (http://www.3utelecom.com). They bill you per second, which means that you only pay for what you use. This billing method is really fair for the customer.

And finally find a good price

The 2 previous conditions are really important, but the last one is too.
Currently (2002), 3U Telecom is really very cheap for Cheap Phone Calls to Germany calls : 6.9 cents per minute and also very cheap international rates amd state-to-state rates. You can check on their website the cheap rates for calls to Germany at http://www.3utelecom.com/index.php?include=international&part=1check&country=Germany
Check their website http://www.3utelecom.com

I hope all this advice will be useful!

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