Staying in touch when abroad

cozzasmith

Can someone please help me?

My partner is going to India in September on holiday (trekking the Himalayas). While he is out there he will stay in touch with me back home in the uk which he has done before. The problem is that while he is away, I will also be taking a foreign holiday, probably to one of the Canary Islands.

My question is...what is the most convenient and cost effective way of us keeping in touch with each other while we are on our separate holidays?

We both have Blackberry phones and are both on O2 contracts in the uk.

Information on any modes of contact would be appreciated...calls, texts or email.

Thank you in anticipation.

gjchester

If possible forget the mobile and use a calling card if you can get fixed numbers at one location (ie you not your partner) More likley that won;t be possible so consider taking a PAYG mobile each with a PAYG sim in them, and top them up before hand. If you can get by with texts you'll managed on a few tens of pounds each. If you need to chat then you'll be looking a lot more, £1.20 a minute to go from the Himalayas to the UK and then be routed to you which will probably be another pound or so a minute.

Taking a smart phone can be expensive, if the blackberry updates or fetches data, up to £8 a Meg, read on here and you'll see data charges can rack up to thousands over the holiday, PAYG won't let you do that, and you have the advantage that if they are nicked you'll only lose that credit and phone, with no risk that someone cna use your phone all day and run up a huge bill that way.

stilltheone

I don't think BB use that much data. I have 500MB and have used the princely amount of 0.3MB so far after two weeks. At £3 per MB in Europe and £6 in the rest of the world, I think you can safely use BB Messenger without selling the farm. You can send a lot of messages with 1MB of data.
Emails too, just don't send attachments if not necessary. Disconnect any account that may send you any possible Junk mail and updates.
So I would stick with what you have as long as you can trust yourself not to use it for anything else whilst abroad.

For calls, perhaps look at a local option.

essexman77

I would normley say buy local paygo sim cards but india its hard to even get a paygo sim you need indian passport to buy.

You could check out GiffGaffs tarrifs which is paygo like others say I would not take contract phones over as you might have seen the 2000 and 800 bills they come back with.

Im not sure how blackberry would work in India as I know they use there own servers for messaging.

stilltheone

essexman77 wrote: »

I would normley say buy local paygo sim cards but india its hard to even get a paygo sim you need indian passport to buy.

You could check out GiffGaffs tarrifs which is paygo like others say I would not take contract phones over as you might have seen the 2000 and 800 bills they come back with.

Im not sure how blackberry would work in India as I know they use there own servers for messaging.

Which others? O2 put a cap on overseas data roaming of 50MB or £40 unless you remove the cap.

gjchester

stilltheone wrote: »

Which others? O2 put a cap on overseas data roaming of 50MB or £40 unless you remove the cap.

Only in the EU...

stilltheone

gjchester wrote: »

Only in the EU...

Please do your research before giving advice: