mobile calls through France,Belgium,Luxemborg and Switzerland

In increasing order of complication

1. long term I'd say Vodafone Passport a good choice (not in Lux but it's not so big), though I have slight reservations about 75p for very short calls (many can be only half a minute) or

2. get a Riiing SIM which has free incoming roaming calls in many countries, outgoing calls €0.39 per minute + €0.25 connect; again not cheap for short calls

3. or get local SIMs in each country for free incoming and use callback service for outgoing calls - bit complicated swapping at each border

4. use Riiing with another callback company; this is more complicated as it involves 2 callbacks and sounds confusing, and is about phonebook entries on the phone but you can set up speed dials - calls are about 7 pence per minute landlines, 12p other Riiing phones


To use a UK number with any of these, 2 choices - O2 have call diversion to European mobiles for 17p per minute with their ITS option, so you'd have an O2 contract with inclusive minutes, or

- find a way to forward your calls from a UK landline number eg London 0200 to the various numbers for cheap. Martin mentioned uk2abroad, but I've found a couple of others since with calls around half the price, and I'm hoping there will be more soon, with rates to EU mobiles about 12p to 15p per minute.


Overall it will depend on your likely level of use, and to some extent how simple or complicated you want it to be, but I should think Vodafone's Passport will be good for a while. The others will soon be trying to catch up though. If you can find good contract deals with some cashback that make the effective per minute charges low, then go for it.

If your eyes haven't quite glazed over at the rest of what I've said, and think some of it is interesting, let me know. I've used Riiing and separate callback for 7p per minute quite a bit; it has just occasionally been a bit flaky with the two together, so I wouldn't go with that as the only possibility. Callback with other foreign mobiles will cost about 15p per minute to landlines.