One of the best-knows discounters , 2(1/2)year old international Discount Telecommunications (IDT) ,uses third-country calling to provides calls between countries whose own telephone companies are not on speaking terms ,such as Syria and Israel ,and Iraq and Kuwait. Today's small discounters may be short-lived.
   But if the small discounters do go out of business, it will be because they have launched a trend. This year, America's established international carriers have started touting for business from over seas customers themselves. In April American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) launched a third-country calling service of its own. Dubbed World Connect, the service lets customers use a personal identification number to call from45 different countries of the world via switches in America. Customers pay call charges in dollars ,along with their normal domestic bills. In June AT&T's biggest rival, MCI, launched a similar service , called World Reach. Both products supplement the firms' long-establishes "call-home" services , which make it easier for travelling Americans to call home.
   Though AT&T and MCI both hotly deny selling international calls to foreigners explicitly, some foreign carriers certainly fear this. Neither ATST nor MCI has been allowed to offer its new services in Japan, Australia, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Argentina or Mexico. The small discounters have run into similar problems.