cheapest way to phone uk from Ireland on mobile?

latecomer

MIL is out in Ireland and is having trouble with her Orange mobile being unable to phone the uk. that is apparently getting sorted by Orange today but they dont do any bundles for using your mobile in Ireland so its going to cost her 40p/m for calls and 30 for texts. As they are away for about 4 weeks I thought it was worth looking into alternatives. She doesn't really want to have to rely on a phone card and public phones and has been known to talk for long periods

Anyone know if there are sim cards that can be bought in Ireland that give cheap rates to phone the uk for landlines and/or mobiles? Actually I guess her mobile will be locked to Orange so I guess it would need unlocking too. Is there any alternative?

All advice welcome

ivinsp

o2 payg have an Ireland bolt on for £1.99 a month and calls to the uk are standard rates and ic calls are free

http://www.o2international.co.uk/callingfromoverseas/Irelandbolton.aspx

redux

Given the remark about long chats, presumably to UK, I'd suggest sending her a 3 UK payg SIM card, and a secondhand 3g phone if necessary (from £10 or so on ebay e.g. Motorola c975 or Nokia 7600)

When that is registered on 3 Ireland, 3 Like Home means that incoming calls are free, and outgoing at the same rate as at home. Calls to UK are 12 pence a minute, but optional packages can be added, for example 300 minutes for £15 or 500 minutes for £18 etc

I'll look up some other possibilities later, but that would the one for high use to UK

latecomer

Thanks for that. trouble is that its maybe a bit late for setting it up as I would have to get her to get the phone unlocked over there and then figure out how to get her a O2 PAYG sim. certainly worth thinking about though.

Anyone know of any sim they could get in Ireland?

redux

n.b. if going for that 3 idea, check 3 Ireland's coverage map if it's an out of the way area, for mobile broadband

they have a 2g roaming agreement with Vodafone Ireland, and 3 Like Home will not apply when roaming on this

latecomer

redux wrote: »

Given the remark about long chats, presumably to UK, I'd suggest sending her a 3 UK payg SIM card, and a secondhand 3g phone if necessary (from £10 or so on ebay e.g. Motorola c975 or Nokia 7600)

When that is registered on 3 Ireland (check their coverage map), 3 Like Home means that incoming calls are free, and outgoing at the same rate as at home. Calls to UK are 12 pence a minute, but optional packages can be added, for example 300 minutes for £15 or 500 minutes for £18 etc

I'll look up some other possibilities later, but that would the one for high use to UK

thanks for the reply. that could be very interesting, I'll need to do some research tonight to find out more.

redux

The Irish networks and their tariffs are on here
http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/ireland.html

click on the network logo on there to go to the networks' own websites


some of them seem to be 35 cents a minute to UK, so only a marginal saving on the Orange rate, unless you start messing around with daft ideas like using O2 Ireland and Rebtel callthrough via China. I haven't tried Rebtel myself, so I don't know how easy it is to figure out

redux

I've just learned that 3 Like Home is to be phased out on 30th June, so note that if they decide to stay a bit longer