Mobile phones abroad

Legal_Al

Has anyone tried buying a pay as you go sim abroad to put in their mobile while they are in that country. I assume receiving calls will be free and outgoing calls will be at local rates rather than roaming rates.

Does it work?:beer:

DUTR

Legal_Al wrote: »

Has anyone tried buying a pay as you go sim abroad to put in their mobile while they are in that country. I assume receiving calls will be free and outgoing calls will be at local rates rather than roaming rates.

Does it work?:beer:

Yes it does, and depending where you go and the handset you have it maybe worth taking note of the internet and sms settings, when I go tyo Jamaica I use my digicell payg sim as it was like 12p/min to call the UK, plus if someone called me they used just dial prefixes so there were no incoming charges and depending on where they called from it was cheaper than if they were calling me whilst I was in the UK, in Spain I used telefonica and in Cypus vodafone :cool:
oh, remember the handset must be sim unlocked too of course.

grumbler

Legal_Al wrote: »

Has anyone tried buying a pay as you go sim abroad to put in their mobile while they are in that country.

I think almost everyone who was abroad tried this.

I assume receiving calls will be free

Free for you - in most countries, but not all. Was it USA where at least not all incoming calls were free? Also, the calls surely will not be free for the people calling you from UK.

and outgoing calls will be at local rates rather than roaming rates.

Yes, to local numbers. I think this is pretty obvious.

Does it work?

Yes, if your phone isn't locked to a UK network.
ETA: ... and if it supports the frequencies used by the foreign provider: http://www.gsmarena.com/network-bands.php3

in_the_Cotswolds

When I was based in Cyprus I bought one of their PAYG sims. I think I paid Cyprus 2 Cents a text. Can't remember how much calls per minute were. Certainly cheaper than using a UK sim.

Get a cheap unlocked phone from Phone4U or Carphone Warehouse as well. Then if it gets stolen it won't cause as much problem if it was a high end smartphone. And no silly bills where you're constantly downloading apps or updates in the background.

NFH

Yes, your assumptions are correct. I have lots of SIM cards to cover each country that I visit. The cost savings can be huge, particularly for data.

I am an Orange UK customer and when I spent 4 days in Belarus with my iPhone last year, I got a local SIM card from MTS. I had a reasonable number of outgoing and incoming calls and text messages and also used a reasonable amount of data. Despite being prepaid, MTS gave me a fully itemised bill, which listed all the data I used as well as every outgoing and incoming call and text. The total bill over 4 days cost me £1.56. I imported the bill into Excel and calculated how much the same usage would have cost using an Orange UK SIM card. It would have been a whopping £1,237.38.

So yes, to answer your question, it does work and you should do the same. However, if you bought your phone from your UK network, be careful that it isn't SIM-locked.

Legal_Al

Great answers, thanks one and all.

mccltd

Hi,
My daughter is about to go to Australia for a month. Can anyone recommend what she can use out there or what sim to get?

NFH

mccltd wrote: »

My daughter is about to go to Australia for a month. Can anyone recommend what she can use out there or what sim to get?

http://amaysim.com.au