Pingo, the prepaid calling card service of iBasis, announced new lower rates on calls to Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. Calls to these destinations comprise more than 5% of all international calls from the U.S.

The reductions are the result of RateWatcher, a feature of Pingo that actively searches for opportunities to reduce costs and pass the savings along to Pingo phone card subscribers. RateWatcher is just one of the features that makes Pingo "the last calling card you'll ever need(TM)". With RateWatcher, Pingo calling card customers benefit from the worldwide buying power of iBasis, one of the ten largest carriers of international telephone calls in the world.



By monitoring changing long distance costs around the world, RateWatcher finds opportunities to lower Pingo's costs, provide low international calling rates, and save Pingo subscribers from the chore of having to compare a multitude of prepaid calling card offerings. Previous RateWatcher reductions have included lower rates to many of the most popular calling destinations in Latin America and Asia, as well on calls to almost one billion mobile phones in 100 countries.

"We're very happy to be able to leverage our scale and efficiency to offer lower rates to our Pingo customers who call these Central American countries," said Ofer Gneezy, president and CEO of iBasis. "Pingo's combination of very competitive rates, great convenience features, and opportunities to earn bonus calling time make it a terrific deal. This RateWatcher reduction, our fifth in the past year, is aiming to increase the number of Pingo subscribers by attracting callers to countries in Central America, including Guatemala and El Salvador, two of the top 20 calling destinations from the U.S."