Family Member in USA

grumbler

Kingsd316 wrote: »

...it will be just like using the phone as if they were in the UK using the allowances of the bundle

Well, it's worth clarifying, that like when using in UK, calls to US numbers can cost a fortune.

mrcamp

The USA does not differentiate between mobile and land line numbers. So it costs the same to call both (because the receiver pays to receive the call). Also, it's quite cheap to call the USA from the UK .

My suggestion - have him get a cheap tmobile-US sim (or any other local sim for that matter), or even a sim/phone combination. Also, if he needs data, he can sign up for the cheap unlimited data plans.

N9eav wrote: »

I thought american 'cell' phones had regular numbers and some are linked to their home phone accounts (great idea).


Would a phone here be able to tell if the number over there was a mobile.


MY friends mobiles all look like landline numbers


I say forget the phone line and use the Viber App or Skype or wahtsapp or many other free internet calling tools

triplem_uk

I'd go with Viber. I find it nicer than Skype. You can do video calls, normal calls or just send messages. It's possible to install it on desktop as well as on your phone. Pretty easy to install and use. I found lots of install guides at howtoviber.com

System

Incoming calls / texts in the USA are free on 3 PAYG even without a bundle.

You could call him with your inclusive UK mobile minutes and he could even text you for 5p to ask you to call him on the UK mobile or local landline.

Viber is good for calls and text if he / you have access to Wi-Fi; WhatsApp is text only.

iMessage / Facetime are also options if both have apple products.

Frozen_up_north

Beware that 90 days of "feel at home" may exceed the time limits imposed by Three, although it's as clear as muddy water if they stop you after a month. This is from their support page:

Feel At Home is intended for our UK customers who are visiting one of the destinations for short trips, like holidays or business trips. If you only use your plan in a Feel At Home destination for a complete month, and this happens three times within a year, we may have to suspend international roaming on your account, which would mean you wouldn’t be able to use your phone or device abroad anymore. We’d let you know if this were likely to happen. If you spend a full month abroad but some of that time is spent in a destination that isn’t included in Feel At Home, the restriction won’t apply.

My suggestion would be to use Skype or Viber via local free WiFi. If you put some credit on your Skype account (£10 or so) you can also make a lot of calls back to UK land lines cheaply too. Obviously it depends on how easy it is to find free WiFi and it's bandwidth, but millions use Skype and it mostly works well.