Mobile Roaming: Cheapest Calls When You're Abroad

Fred_Bear_2

Can anyone recommend a local sim to use in Barbados?

Fred

DUS

Hello,

I am currently looking for the tariff that suits my usage pattern best. Since I am travelling to Europe regularly, finding "the best tariff" seems to be more difficult than I originally expected.

At the moment, I am with o2 on a 45 quid/month contract and use the "My Europe extra" bolt-on to reduce my roaming costs. I am working for a company in Austria and spend 1 week per month in Vienna. Over there, I make and receive quite a lot of calls, so not paying extra (yes, apart from the bolt-on) for incoming calls is a real cost saver.

The ideal tariff for me would:

- Offer cheap calls from the UK to mobile & landlines in Austria
- Offer incoming calls for free when I am in Austria (and ideally other countries on the continent).

My "dream come true" tariff would also include a good price for using internet & emails whilst in Europe, but when I thought I had found my dream tariff with 3 (because of the "3 Like Home" offer), I was quickly brought down to earth again when I read on here that this "3 Like Home" service is no longer available. :'-(

Checking the operators´ websites I couldn´t really find anything that comes close to my "ideal tariff" but I said to myself, "Hey, there are so many pros here on the forum, maybe I should ask them!?", so here I am, asking you guys if you are aware of a tariff that comes close to my ideal one.

Any help, thoughts, comments will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
DUS

redux

Fred_Bear wrote: »

Can anyone recommend a local sim to use in Barbados?

Fred

I can't recommend, but the networks there are Cable&Wireless, though they seem to be rebranding as Lime, and Digicel

http://www.time4lime.com/country_sub.jsp?topmenu=Personal&subMenu=Mobile&subSubMenu=Plans_%26_Rates

http://www.digicelbarbados.com/en/plans/digiflex/flex_tariffs

Lime seems to use 1900 MHz, and Digicel the same bands as here, 900 and 1800 MHz, so you might take a tri-band phone

redux

DUS wrote: »

Hello,

I am currently looking for the tariff that suits my usage pattern best. Since I am travelling to Europe regularly, finding "the best tariff" seems to be more difficult than I originally expected.

At the moment, I am with o2 on a 45 quid/month contract and use the "My Europe extra" bolt-on to reduce my roaming costs. I am working for a company in Austria and spend 1 week per month in Vienna. Over there, I make and receive quite a lot of calls, so not paying extra (yes, apart from the bolt-on) for incoming calls is a real cost saver.

The ideal tariff for me would:

- Offer cheap calls from the UK to mobile & landlines in Austria
- Offer incoming calls for free when I am in Austria (and ideally other countries on the continent).

My "dream come true" tariff would also include a good price for using internet & emails whilst in Europe, but when I thought I had found my dream tariff with 3 (because of the "3 Like Home" offer), I was quickly brought down to earth again when I read on here that this "3 Like Home" service is no longer available. :'-(

Checking the operators´ websites I couldn´t really find anything that comes close to my "ideal tariff" but I said to myself, "Hey, there are so many pros here on the forum, maybe I should ask them!?", so here I am, asking you guys if you are aware of a tariff that comes close to my ideal one.

Any help, thoughts, comments will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
DUS

O2's My Europe Extra is quite good, though Vodafone have a promotion about free roaming until the end of August - worth keeping an eye on to see if they extend it.

I don't think you'd find anything that suits all your requirements; roaming data costs just aren't going to drop to near the large packages available as mobile broadband deals on some home networks

I'd say use British and Austrian SIMs for calls, and if you need cheap internet in Austria look into mobile broadband deals there too

Edit: yesss! might be worth looking at for calls and data in Austria (1 GB for €5 monthly option on the other tab there)

babeeface

Has anyone had any experience of lebara international sim. I am going to Egypt in a few days time and my daughter in law is due to have a baby any minute. I want to be able to call her and for her to be able to call me. My network charges £1.50 per min. Lebara charges 10p. Seems to good to be true! Please help.:T

redux

babeeface wrote: »

Has anyone had any experience of lebara international sim. I am going to Egypt in a few days time and my daughter in law is due to have a baby any minute. I want to be able to call her and for her to be able to call me. My network charges £1.50 per min. Lebara charges 10p. Seems to good to be true! Please help.:T

Lebara doesn't have cheap roaming; it's intended for cheap international calls from the UK.

So the thing to do would be to get a local Egyptian SIM when you get there, having left her with a Lebara SIM to call you cheaply. But perhaps that's what you meant anyway.

The Egyptian networks are Mobinil, Vodafone (unfortunately Vodafone UK's Passport promotion cannot be used in Egypt) and Etisalat. They all have local rates of a few pence a minute, but cost to UK is about 40 pence a minute.

So you could put plenty of credit on the Lebara SIM, and arrange that she call you back after a missed call. Or from her landline, she could call you using cheap providers listed in the MSE Callchecker. You could also look into callback services to use for cheaper calls from your Egyptian SIM

malid

Grateful for any and all advice on this.

We are going to the USA in August - California/Arizona. My son will want to keep in regular contact with his girfriend - text and calls I think. On a separate post, Skype has been recommended - we will have a laptop. I haven't got to grips with how to use this but will try - simple instructions would be appreciated!

However, he does want to use his (or a) mobile too. Using his phone as normal will be the 'easy' option as far as he is concerned but I want to make sure we don't end up with a £££ bill!

My questions therefore are:

• Should he get a SIM in advance to use in his mobile - if so which one/where do we get it from?
• Is it better to buy a SIM and or phone out there - e.g. this recommended in a post. Could he use his own phone with this SIM? http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=10714716

Previoulsy (for 4 holidays to the USA), I used to purchase a Stars and Stripes card (well Pin number) from 1st4phonecards. This was fantastic for making calls from hotel rooms and phone booths at about 4c per minute and no daily fee etc. Unfortunately, the company is no longer in business.

Sorry if there are answeres to these queries but I can't see the wood for the trees at the moment.

Many thanks in advance!!!

mrcamp

Using his phone willl be the most expensive option of course. He can get a tmobile or AT&T sim on ebay or sim+phone at walmart, target, etc. Texting back to the UK is the cheapest on tmobile at just $0.10/text. AT&T will likely have better voice rates back to the US. If you can get a hold of Tuyo mobile (an MVNO running on tmobile), they have excellent rates to the UK at $0.25 to call a UK mobile.

auroragamer1

Hello Everyone. I wanted to ask a rather specific question about this subject in general. I'm a US citizen living in the UK and I still need to get a mobile phone. I've been thinking about getting either an iPhone or a Blackberry that has wifi to it, so that I can use skype on the phone when I am visiting home in the US or am traveling abroad elsewhere in the world (also for calling abroad while I'm in the UK). My question is, would this be the cheaper solution, because I don't particularlly like Pay as You go because I always end up buying more minutes than I need and plus you need to buy more minutes eventually just to reactivate your phone. Any help you all can give me would be appreciated. Thanks.

Jaine

My boyfriend is texting me from Cuba using T-mobile PAYG at 40p per text using an unlocked phone. Has anyone any ideas for how to make texting cheaper, thanks.