Best SIM-only deal for International calls to Ireland

LaurenceFrancisKelly

Hi folks, I am enquiring on behalf of my father who is a profoundly disabled pensioner living alone in Northern Ireland.
He is currently on the Vodafone Red 1GB plan which costs £11.42 per month for unlimited calls.
On top of that, he pays an extra £10 per month for 500 international minutes to take his total bill to £21.42 per month. It used to be £7.50 for these 500 international minutes, but Vodafone have recently increased the price to £10.

I am trying to see if I can find him a better deal that meets the following criteria:

1. He only uses a phone purely to make calls, so data and texts are not important. He is profoundly disabled and dyslexic with learning difficulties, so unfortunately I don't think he would ever be able to use a smartphone in order to use a cheaper option such WhatsApp calling for example. He uses a very basic mobile phone that is actually more like a landline phone with a SIM card slot.
2. Over the last 12 months, he is averaging 347mins per month to UK landlines & mobiles. The most he has ever used in a single month was 642mins.
3. Over the last 12 months, he is averaging 123mins per month to International calls. The most he has ever used in a single month was 265mins. The only international calls that he makes is to landlines and mobiles in the Republic of Ireland, so this is the only international country that would be relevant.

Would anyone be able to recommend a better SIM-only deal that my father could obtain please? I live in the Republic of Ireland myself so I am not fully up to speed with the different UK/NI providers. I just think he is probably paying more than he needs to given that he literally only uses his phone to make calls so paying for data and texts is a bit of a waste. Plus he is paying for international minutes that covers a wide range of international countries, even though the only international country that he needs to be able to call is Republic of Ireland.

Kindest regards.

ballyblack

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6327854/calling-the-republic-from-northern-ireland#latest

LaurenceFrancisKelly

So it looks like the best deals are with Lebara (£9.90 per month) or Lycamobile (£9.90 per month) so I guess it's just deciding which has the best coverage in the area. 

ballyblack

LaurenceFrancisKelly said:

So it looks like the best deals are with Lebara (£9.90 per month) or Lycamobile (£9.90 per month) so I guess it's just deciding which has the best coverage in the area. 

Lebara uses the Vodafone network which is good in most parts of NI

Lycamobile uses o2

SirMSE

Would a Doro (Android) phone work using the simple interface and then Whatsapp or Signal?
Or iPhone with Facetime / iMessage?
Might be more cost effective long run?

LaurenceFrancisKelly

I went with Lebara in the end, reduced his monthly bill from £21.42 to £9 so I am very happy with that. Thanks for the help folks.

macman

Are there not many areas along the border where you could use an ROI SIM despite being in the North? How wide is the overlap zone?

stubbibob

I am travelling to Ireland for about 4-6 weeks and would like some advice as to the best SIM only recommendations that will give me a reasonable data usage allowance whilst there. Thanks

jbrassy

stubbibob said:

I am travelling to Ireland for about 4-6 weeks and would like some advice as to the best SIM only recommendations that will give me a reasonable data usage allowance whilst there. Thanks

You just need a sim which allows roaming in Europe. Smarty allow free roaming in Europe up to 12GB per month. A SIM with 16GB of data will set you back £8.

https://smarty.co.uk/all-plans

531063

stubbibob said:

I am travelling to Ireland for about 4-6 weeks and would like some advice as to the best SIM only recommendations that will give me a reasonable data usage allowance whilst there. Thanks

ID mobile give 30gb pm roaming, 50gb for £8 pm plus data rollover

d123

LaurenceFrancisKelly said:

I went with Lebara in the end, reduced his monthly bill from £21.42 to £9 so I am very happy with that. Thanks for the help folks.

You could have dropped that to £2.90 a month for a sim card from Spusu (which runs on the EE network) which includes unlimited UK minutes and 500 minutes to any EU number per month.

https://www.spusu.co.uk/spusu1special?