Abkhazia is a Caucasian territory located in the northwestern corner of Georgia, with the Black Sea in the south-west and the mountains in the Caucasus and Russia in the north-east. Claimed by Georgia, it proclaimed…
USSR (Soviet Union), 1988
The first telephone card used in the Soviet Union was a magnetic test card provided by GPT to Comstar in 1988, which was used to demonstrate the functioning of the card telephone through communications between…
Thailand, 1991
Following some tests started in 1989, the first public cards, provided by Landis & Gyr, were marketed in 1991. It was a series of 4 cards, of which the values of 50 baht (circulation 241,044)…
Taiwan, 1984
Taiwan has been using the Landis & Gyr optical technology cards for over 10 years, before switching to the chip system. The first cards issued were two definitives, 100 and 200 units, both red, without…
Turkmenistan, 1995
A public trial was conducted by Turkmentelekom, with the magnetic card phone system developed by Alcatel. For the occasion two cards were produced, a test of 50 units, and a public one of 10 units,…
Uzbekistan, 1995
A chip card was issued by Netas in 1993 for Uzbekistan, but it was never used in the country. So, a GPT magnetic card with 3UZBA code is the first public issue of this ex-USSR…
Syria, 1990
The first cards in Syria were magnetic and were supplied by Tamura: a series of 4 cards with face values of 200, 500, 1000 and 1500 units, which were used for some years. Later the…
Nepal, 1999
The Nepal Telecommunications Corporation issued only 5 chip cards from 1999 to 2003, before moving on to the remote memory system. The first card issued was 200 Rs (Nepalese rupee) and 10,000 were produced.
Kyrgyzstan, 1996
A series of 4 phone cards, supplied by Alcatel, was issued by Kyrgyz Telecom with face values of 10, 20, 40 and 100 units. The cards depicted local landscapes and were the only Alcatel cards…
Kazakhstan, 1994
In Kazakhstan the first telephone cards were magnetic, and were supplied by Alcatel in 1994. These were 4 cards with face values in US dollars: $ 5, $ 10, $ 20 and $ 50, issued…
