Calling internationally, for many, is not an everyday activity. Therefore this requires many people having to call overseas for the very first time in their life. The reasons can be plentiful, whether a son has moved to another country for a university placement or whether a friend decides to take a job opportunity at the other side of the world. Whatever the reason, you'd be surprised the amount of people around the world keeping in daily communication.

So when that time in your life comes, where calling friends and or family who live in another country becomes a daily activity. Its vital that when this day comes you are wise and know the correct ways to call and still save money. As you may already know calling internationally is not cheap, especially when calling from you current network provider. Its important to understand the other methods of keeping up daily communication that does not cost an arm and a leg.

This article will cover the basics of making an international calls, along with the potential methods of communication that can help reduce the costs and also remove the cost completely.

Lets begin by covering international land-line calls. Before making the call its important to find out the international direct dial code, of the destination country. For example here in the UK, our international direct dial code is is +00. This will be different for each country you are wanting to call, but generally throughout Europe this remains as +00. When calling the United States, this becomes +011 for example.

The next step is to identify the country code. The United Kingdom uses +44, as its international number. It can be simple in the future to identify international numbers because they always have the '+' character in-front of the them.

The third step requires knowing the city code, also know as the area code. Once you know all of the above three and also the local number you are wishing to call you are all set. Now we know how to make an international call. Lets look at some worked example to help illustrate this further.

Example 1

In the first scenario, we are viewing a call being made from within the United States to a land-line in Edinburgh, UK. Lets say the local number is 123 7215. The international direct dial code when calling from the United States is 011. The country code for the UK is 44. The city code for Edinburgh is (0)131, but only the first zero is used when calling from within the UK. So, lets try putting this together below:

You would dial: 011 44 131 123 7215

Example 2

In this next scenario, we are viewing a call being made with the UK land line to Australia. The following contains the international direct dialing code (00) and the country code (61). Plus the local number you are wishing to call. The local number here is (0)433 135 666. The location is Sydney, therefore the city code is 433 when calling from another country. And the (o) is ignore because we are not making a local call.

Therefore, you would dial: 00 61 433 135 666

So that's it. You now know not only how international calls are made, but also how to carry this out. It must be noted that calling from you current land line provider is only recommended for calling internationally on short frequencies. Here are other alternatives that can be used to help provide free and cheap calls to South Africa, France, Australia and hundred of other countries around the world:

• International Calling Cards

• Pre-paid Calling Cards

• Voice over Internet Protocol: Such as Skype and Viber.

• Social Networking: Such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+

• Access Numbers

• Email