Mobile Roaming: Cheapest Calls When You're Abroad

mrcamp

This has been posted here several times. The US operates on RPP (Receiving Party Pays). And do nto differentiate between mobiles and landlines. In essence, it costs the same to call a US mobile and landline. So, it's quite cheap for the calling party to call a US mobile since the receiver pays to receive the call.

BigSaver wrote: »

Why does US companies charge to receive text and calls?

emmajt81

Just wanted to update people - my Tuyo sim worked fine in the USA although I could not find top up vouchers anywhere in vegas or LA. Searched in Walgreens, 7-11 and petrol garages - nothing. Ended up finding some random site online and doing it that way.

Quick question - I want a payg USA phone number/sim that works in the UK (trying to get tickets for a USA tv show and they only call on a USA number - so want to get one so I can have it on over here just to receive their calls). Found out that USA T Mobile's payg sims don't roam over in the UK and neither do AT&T. Any others that do? Or do all USA payg plans on all networks not roam in the UK? Would I have to get a contract plan?

Thanks in advance

redux

US payg SIMs have hardly any roaming at all.

You might get a number from another provider and forward it back to your UK phone.

Free numbers are available from IPKall or Freedigits, and can be pointed to a VoIP account, perhaps a Betamax brand such as Justvoip or Voipcheap, then that account would be forwarded to your landline or mobile here.

If those aren't in the area you want, you could try a Google Voice account, and either forward that to the IPKall or Freedigits number or pay GV to forward direct. Only people in the US are supposed to apply for GV so far, but they don't seem to bar others.

Or Sipgate has now set up in USA and could be forwarded to reach your UK number. Again it's only supposed to be applied for by people in USA, but I've on read other forums people in UK talking about it. There's something about a monthly fee for 911 emergency number support, which I hope you can opt out of, but I don't know

Or a complete guess: unlikely, but it might even be possible to forward your Tuyo number, from logged into the account, though this could cost quite a bit more.

f1982

Any advice would be greatly appreciated here.
I am to work in australia for just over a month and need to make calls back to the uk, make calls within oz and access the internet there on my phone. I dont really know what my best options are. I am assuming a local sim would be worthwhile, but where should i look?

mrcamp

Sorry to hear you had some hard time topping up your tuyo card. They are a very small rarely known MVNO carrier with very good rates. However, one of the drawbacks is the lack of easy availability of topups. Tmobile and AT&T topups you can find pretty much anywhere. About 3 years ago, my brother was able to use his UK issued American Express card to topup his tuyo card.

As for getting a US number that will work in the UK, Redux hit it right on. US prepaids (Tmobile and AT&T ONLY) only roam in Mexico and Canada. You can get a cheap or free number from one of the VOIP's and just forward it to your UK mobile.

emmajt81 wrote: »

Just wanted to update people - my Tuyo sim worked fine in the USA although I could not find top up vouchers anywhere in vegas or LA. Searched in Walgreens, 7-11 and petrol garages - nothing. Ended up finding some random site online and doing it that way.

Quick question - I want a payg USA phone number/sim that works in the UK (trying to get tickets for a USA tv show and they only call on a USA number - so want to get one so I can have it on over here just to receive their calls). Found out that USA T Mobile's payg sims don't roam over in the UK and neither do AT&T. Any others that do? Or do all USA payg plans on all networks not roam in the UK? Would I have to get a contract plan?

Thanks in advance

Andy_Oz

EdiScot wrote: »

Does any mobile operator do this? It's still on Martin's website but it seems unlikely that they can charge you at overseas rate for a call that is diverted immediately to voicemail.

All operators do this. If you turn on a mobile while roaming and it registers on a foreign network, then you will be charged for receiving calls that divert (eg to voicemail). You'll also be charged (as well,,,) for sending them to voicemail. Until your SIM re-registers on its home network.

Unless, you have done an unconditional divert. Conditional diverts still attract roaming charges (i.e. anything except an unconditinal - no delay - diversion).

BryanS1958

Hi

We're going on a family cruise and I have a lust struck son who will be wanting to keep in touch with his girlfriend who lives in Malaysia. The cruise will be around the Caribbean, stopping off most days at islands. He has a Samsung mobile on 02.

Any ideas on the best way to keep costs down when contacting her by voice/sms? I think the cruise charges for internet access.

Thanks for any help!

mrcamp

Roaming in most of the islands will not be cheap. Unless you have one of those international sims that have Ok rates in the islands. Your best bet might be to just sms. Using the Ship's tower will even be more expensive. If your islands include Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands, may be you can get a hold of a Tmobile or AT&T sim card since they consider those islands as part of Nationwide coverage. So, it does not cost extra to use them/roam there.

BryanS1958 wrote: »

Hi

We're going on a family cruise and I have a lust struck son who will be wanting to keep in touch with his girlfriend who lives in Malaysia. The cruise will be around the Caribbean, stopping off most days at islands. He has a Samsung mobile on 02.

Any ideas on the best way to keep costs down when contacting her by voice/sms? I think the cruise charges for internet access.

Thanks for any help!

redux

BryanS1958 wrote: »

Hi

We're going on a family cruise and I have a lust struck son who will be wanting to keep in touch with his girlfriend who lives in Malaysia. The cruise will be around the Caribbean, stopping off most days at islands. He has a Samsung mobile on 02.

Any ideas on the best way to keep costs down when contacting her by voice/sms? I think the cruise charges for internet access.

Thanks for any help!

O2 contract inclusive text messages can be used while abroad, at for 4 for 1, but only to UK numbers, so this is no help to you. I'd suggest subscribing to Fishtext, which sends an sms equivalent via data, costing from a penny or so to Fishtext, plus about half a penny of network data. If using this, get the girlfriend to subscribe as well. When both phones are online with Fishtext, the message cost can be zero, but I wouldn't leave the account permanently logged in, as constant pings to check for new messages will use up more data.

For calls, I might suggest one of the global roaming SIMs. In the Caribbean, some have good rates for some islands, but are quite expensive for others, so it might help to check in advance and make some notes which island networks to avoid. I believe that some of the local SIMs have good roaming deals across their sister networks on other islands, particularly Digicell, but I haven't browsed through them recently. then you'd probably still also need either callthrough ot callback methods to reach Malaysia at a reasonable rate

For a global SIM there, I've been looking at Cloud9 for a while. It started with several resellers, but also sells direct retail. There are about 100 countries with free incoming roaming, including more of the Caribbean than I've noticed on other global SIMs. Cloud9 rates to Malaysia would from 20p a minute. That's pretty reasonable for short calls, but I suspect they might easily get chatting for quite a long time, so maybe text message solutions would be preferable

savings4me

Does anyone know how long it wll take to receive either a storytelecom or sim4travel card?

Thanks