Mobile Roaming: Cheapest Calls When You're Abroad

mrcamp

USA does not distinguish between mobiles and landlines. So, it does NOT cost callers extra to call you on a US mobile, however you do pay for incoming calls. Tmobile and AT&T should be fine as long as you have a phone that has the US bands. If you have triband, then you should go with tmobile since they primarily use the 1900 band. Plenty of tmobile sims on ebay for dirt cheap. Just find a caller to mail to UK. Or wait till you get to the US and walk into kmart, target, etc.

BigSaver_2

mrcamp wrote: »

USA does not distinguish between mobiles and landlines. So, it does NOT cost callers extra to call you on a US mobile, however you do pay for incoming calls. Tmobile and AT&T should be fine as long as you have a phone that has the US bands. If you have triband, then you should go with tmobile since they primarily use the 1900 band. Plenty of tmobile sims on ebay for dirt cheap. Just find a caller to mail to UK. Or wait till you get to the US and walk into kmart, target, etc.

Why do you pay for incoming calls? because your using UK sim?

redux

BigSaver wrote: »

Why do you pay for incoming calls? because your using UK sim?

No, using a US SIM, the networks charge both outgoing and incoming calls, at about 10 to 20 cents a minute depending on how much you topped up.

Until recently there were no cheap roaming possibilities there at all.

Now some of the global SIMs have introduced a dual-ID including US number and Isle of Man numbers, but whilst they have free incoming calls when called on the IoM number, which might be useful for some but not all UK customers forwarding to it, the outgoing calls to USA are still a bit higher than using a local SIM, and there is the upfront cost of buying the SIM at a premium to the credit included.

For repeat visitors, or people who will receive more calls than they make, they are worth considering, but it's also possible to call UK cheaply using a SIM from a local US network by using callthrough possibilities such as a calling card or a choice of VoIP providers

JPR

Has anyone roamed in the EU with a Familymobile SIM since 1st July? I have one of these and was going to take it to France until I noticed that their website says it is 40p per text. Can that be true?

They are not working weekends so I will check tomorrow but I hope it is a case of not updating their info (some costs are in Swedish Krona I note) - however, if anyone knows for sure please tell.

redux

JPR wrote: »

Has anyone roamed in the EU with a Familymobile SIM since 1st July? I have one of these and was going to take it to France until I noticed that their website says it is 40p per text. Can that be true?

They are not working weekends so I will check tomorrow but I hope it is a case of not updating their info (some costs are in Swedish Krona I note) - however, if anyone knows for sure please tell.

It could be either way. The recent regulatory changes didn't mandate that text message costs should drop a few weeks ago, only that an average must be achieved in the next year or so. So any firm which didn't drop its price immediately may eventually have to be cheaper than the rest

payless

got a friend going to turkey, seems my old 0044 ekit sim ( was passport- now seems to be called Home & Roam ) is free to recieve there.

Anyone able to confirm that 07924 ( IoM) are still taken from inclusive minutes on orange ?

JPR

Update on Ikea. Still 40p per text in EU. No good for this summer but presumably very low rates later in the year if they have to average it out......

JPR

Last word on the IKEA SIM - reply from their Customer Services

" These prices are indeed correct on the website, our directors and managers are in talks with our network comapny T-Mobile to get our prices down, but at the moment we have heard nothing about that so our advice would be to get another sim card to take with you. "

Maybe next summer they will have free texts if they want to be legal and hit the 11p average.....

redux

JPR wrote: »

"... but at the moment we have heard nothing about that so our advice would be to get another sim card to take with you. "

someone is too honest :rotfl:

look up mobile Java programs instead, such as Fishtext, mobisms, smsbug and Vyke, which send an equivalent via data. Fishtext is cheapest at the moment, couple of pence or less to UK, and the network should charge you about half a penny per message, just as long as there isn't some daft minimum unit charge like 10k (message uses about 1 to 1.5k)

Others do have cheaper data abroad, especially T-mobile at £1.50 per MB compared to Family Mobile, but it probably wouldn't be worth bothering about a different SIM unless you intend to send hundreds of messages

kdamani

My friend travels a lot to the uk but is mainly based in france. Sometimes he travels to spain and germany and needs to make a quick call to france. He has a lot of uk contacts but when he needs to call them in the uk his french sim doesn't work and those that do are very expensive. Ideally he needs one where people from the uk can contact him if they want without getting a hefty connection charge (this isn't necessary but would be ideal..
Which uk phone company has either a goood international rate or free roaming charges (vodafone would be useful but they're only doing it for the summer.

So just to summarize he makes hardly any phone calls in france with his mobile, but the charge of the phone call should be reasonable if he calls a french number,
Minutes are key because when he's in the uk he can call landlines/mobiles. People calling him from the uk and him calling people to the uk on a mobile would be a bonus but can always use skype or buy a cheap phone.

Hope this wasn't too complicated.. thanks in advance..