Soldiers text home

chelseakel

Hi Martin and everyone else - i could really do with your help!

My Brother is currently in Iraq and uses his PAYG mobile (vodafone) to text home - but it is costing a fortune (around 50p a text).

Does anyone know if there is a way around this - other networks or call packages.

He has tried buying a local sim - but cant find one.
He has tried using his contract mobile - but Vodafone wont put a limit on it - so he cant control how much he spends - which could be a nightmare - knowing how much he likes to text!

Any ideas would be great...especially from service families who may have already solved this problem!

Cheers

faza20

At the moment he's paying 35p per message, plus 12p for the UK leg of the message. One option he has would be to buy a text bolt on, meaning the 12p would come out of that. This would me he's be paying 35p per message

Dickieburd

Thought that yo may be interested in a Global SIM which you can google, but I picked one out at random http://www.gosim.com/index.php?page=iraq it is in $ but remembering there is nearly $2 to the £1 the prices on paper would appear to be cheap. As I said it may be worth your time google to find sims and also Ebay could also be an option once you know what to look for.

By the way Asda Mobile which uses Vodafone network says it charges 42p per SMS from Iraq to UK. http://www.asda-mobile.com/?country=109&node_id=1.4.2

Good Luck.

stacey21_2

If he has a contact phone it will come out of his allowance at a ratio of 4:1 (o2) so for example, the sim only £20 which is one months notice would get 1000 free texts, so could send 250 free.

on a payg 250 texts at 35p would be £87.50.

Hope this helps


edit: just realised you didn't want a contract.. although you can't set a limit on it, you can check it online to keep a track ..

chriswuk_2

You can set a limit on your spending, just phone customer services !

knowledgeman

Is he willing to commit to a contract?

Orange offer 600 mins and unlimited texts (3000) for 35 a month on 18 month contact

Now assuming a ratio of 4:1 that is 750 texts he could send inclusive

If he just tops up the phone he has he will only get 70 for £35

redux

knowledgeman wrote: »

Now assuming a ratio of 4:1 that is 750 texts he could send inclusive

That 4 for 1 from inclusive is an O2 feature, and I'm not aware that Orange or indeed anyone else have copied it
___

These are the Iraq networks. It might be possible to find a cheap text option, but actually I'll suggest something else

http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_iq.shtml

Instead, read this thread about cheap text messages.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=528955&highlight=vyke

Get him a Virgin UK SIM, as it has the cheapest roaming data charges, and sign it up for a Vyke Lite account. The Vyke client is a Java program that downloads to the phone and sends via wap/gprs data

Vyke charges 2 c US per message, and Virgin's charge for the data cost is 0.5p/kB, so that's also about a penny a message

The thread also discusses VykePro, which has free messages between two account holders. This might be worth looking at, but from what people have said I think the data charges could mount up if it's allowed to carry on pinging the network to see if there are new messages. I wouldn't bother.