phoning a 3 mobile in france from a 3 mobile

overdrawn

hi my OH is going to france for 10 days in august. we have a long distance relationship anyway so spend loads of time on the phone to each other. does anyone know is it expensive to phone him while he's in france? and do we use the sim cards we have already?

redux

It would cost you the same to ring the 3 number, but there will be roaming charges on the other 3 account.

It might be better to get a French SIM card and ring it using cheap calls providers here - see the MSE Callchecker for from landlines - or some 07744 number providers from Orange T-mobile or Virgin inclusive minutes ...

Info on French SIMs at http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/france.html
For outgoing calls from there, there are cheap call bundles on Orange or SFR, which could be used to a calling card access number

But having said all that, if almost all intended calls are between you, I think a simpler and cheaper idea for potentially long calls would be to get 2 Vodafone UK pay as you talk SIMs and register them for the Passport cheap roaming option, and also register the UK-based one for Stop-the-clock. The one in France should be manually selected to the SFR network, Vodafone's affiliate.

Then it is very cheap to talk off-peak. The UK one would be charged 15p for up to an hour [hang up and redial for longer], and the one in France would pay a 75p connect fee then no other charge for incoming calls; outgoing calls from the French one cost the 75p then normal tariff ie 5p off-peak to UK/France landlines and Vodafone UK. So to initiate calls from France, it would be best to just call the UK one for a couple of rings unanswered then let the UK one call back. If you need to talk in the daytime, then it's 30p per minute, but you could switch the payt tariff to Smartstep, which drops after the first 3 minutes to 5p