Phoning from abroad to home

nickinackinunu

Hello, I hope somebody can help me find out what is the best way to call from abroad (mainly Belgium, but also other European countries and sometimes from the States) home if you use a mobile phone connected with Orange.

Many thanks for your help in advance.

Cheers

Nicki

pin

Get yourself a local calling card and use a land line or payphone in the country you are. DON'T use your Orange mobile as you will be hit with roaming charges.

redux

It will be cheapest to get the phone unlocked - see the pinned threads at the top for info - and use a foreign SIM card.

Even then, direct calling of UK numbers is not cheap. Instead you could look a bit deeper into calling cards and callback services.

Some countries' mobile networks have free calls to freephone numbers, but many calling cards charge higher rates via their freephone number, while others have their access numbers blocked (as they don't pass anything on to the network). It takes a bit of effort to find out the charges of some ...

Callback providers have a call trigger arrangement - you call a number and hang up, then it calls you back with a dialling tone - typical cost about 15p per minute to UK landline.

You can look up details of foreign networks on
http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/operators.html

For Belgium, I reckon a Simyo SIM card, which charges €0.05 to Belgian landlines, 19c to B mobiles, plus 7c connect fee per call
http://www.simyo.be/en/998

combine this with a calling card with ordinary landline access number, and you could call home for under 5p per minute
http://www.masterbell.com/phone-cards/UK/from/Belgium

... that's if the number can be accessed - I'm travelling through there in a couple of weeks, and intend to get someone to try it beforehand, and see if they can send me a SIM