PHONE CARD NEWS FOR AAFES CUSTOMERS

But if youi can't shop at the PX you can still send phone cards to your soldiers down range...I know the AT&T cards work...and presume that any major brand would work.

Army and Air Force Exchange Service officials are touting their new “550-unit Military Exchange Global Prepaid Phone Card,” which they say has the lowest rates available for troop calls from the Middle East region to the United States.

The card’s per-minute rates to the United States from Kuwait are 21 cents per minute; from Iraq and Afghanistan, 35 cents per minute; and from satellite telephones in Iraq, 85 cents per minute, according to AAFES spokesman Judd Anstey.

The AAFES cards, which will cost $39, “are shipping now” and “will be available in AAFES exchanges worldwide and on the AAFES Internet within the next few weeks,” Anstey said.

The Dallas-based AAFES organization currently stocks 50-, 100- and 200-unit Military Exchange Global Prepaid Cards. Prior to the 550 cards, the 200-unit card was the largest available denomination, Anstey said...

Telephone service currently looms large as a morale issue for soldiers in Iraq, many of who rarely have access to any kind of phone.

Aware of the psychological value of “reaching out and touching” loved ones by phone, commanders are trying several different ways to telephone access for their people — but it’s slow going, Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the 35,000 Iraq-deployed troops of the Wiesbaden-based 1st Armored Division, said during an early August interview.

“I feel like I’ve broken the code on computers [getting Internet access to troops], but not on phones,” Dempsey said.

“Telephones have been a hard [issue],” agreed Col. Ben Hodges, commander of the “Bastogne Bulldogs,” the 101st’s 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, in a late July interview in Mosul, Iraq.