International Mobile Roaming Discussion Area

Former_MSE_Andrea

Click reply to discuss the International Mobile Roaming article.

stanmoresaver

Amazing- didn't even know this stuff was out there- last year my PA ran up a £437 mobile bill in two weeks in Cyprus. Glad it wasn't company expensed!

Can anyone out there clarify how voicemail retrieval would work with a local sim card?

andy88_2

Different operators have their own short number access codes, like 123 or 1750 here, or 1599 Extra (Omnitel) Lithuania, 5500 Vodafone Germany etc. It is possible on most networks to set the VM menu into English (though not always obvious how to).

nicola_3

I'm travelling to africa for a few months. am I able to buy a sim card in africa?

thanks

pin

nicola wrote:

I'm travelling to africa for a few months. am I able to buy a sim card in africa?

thanks

Very jealous of you. However Africa's a big continent with many countries. It might be an idea to be a bit more specific on which countries you are going to.

One idea will be to go to http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/index.shtml, select the countries you are going to. From there you will see which networks are present in the country. Then you can visit the company website to see if they offer cheap payg sims (probably when you arrive to the country).

Also remember GSM coverage in African countries will probably be limited to major urban areas, however check out the coverage maps.

JC1_3

In the last year I have visited Australia on two seperate occasions, and each time I have purchased sim cards in Australia for making calls within Australia and for sending Text messages back home to England. These cards were from mobile phone outlets Optus and Virgin Mobile. The Optus card cost $19.50 with $20.00 free calls and the Virgin card cost $12.00 with $10.00 free calls. The idea is to get the purchaser hooked on to their network with a hope of you continuing to use these companies from then on. Yhese promotions are always available in some form or another, Yours JC1

andy88_2

I forgot to put the information about the Vodafone Passport. To activate call free 5555 after 18 July

http://www.vodafone.com/article/0,3029,CATEGORY_ID%253D503%2526LANGUAGE_ID%253D0%2526CONTENT_ID%253D258592,00.html

As I already said, prices are already dropping in response in some countries.

I wouldn't use it myself as 6.3p/min is rather cheaper still.

student100

If you're calling the UK from abroad (especially long calls) the cheapest way is often not to use a mobile at all but to use a calling card from a payphone - don't forget to look at Martin's article here.

This is especially cheap in the USA, provided you get the right calling card - last year when I was in the states I used http://www.click4prepaid.com/ * with very little trouble, and I was able to call home for 4 cents (just over 2p) per minute, plus 50 cents (28p) per call when using a payphone. Payphones are everywhere in the US too...

Of course if you're somewhere that accepts incoming international calls, then it will be cheaper to call home quickly then get someone to call you back using one of the Cheapest International Calls providers.


Virgin Mobile* have some of the cheapest roaming rates - for Europe, 60p/min to make calls, 30p/min to receive, 25p to send a text (with the pay by direct debit option). If you won't be calling enough to justify the cost of a foreign SIM pack then this could be worth investigating. If you find a friend on Virgin Mobile you can get a SIM pack for almost nothing (£10, but you get £5 calltime on the SIM, and the friend can get £10 calltime for recommending you... but you have to order the SIM pack over the phone from the lovely* Virgin people, see Glue for more details).


*Disclaimer: I am not connected with any of the compaines mentioned above, just a satisfied customer...

student100

Oh, another important note:

If you use your regular phone and UK SIM abroad, whenever someone tries to call you, you pay for the incoming call. However, if you don't answer, you also pay the roaming call rate as the call is sent back to the UK to get to your voicemail service.

The legs of the call are billed as follows (prices based on Virgin Mobile):

CALLER --(caller pays)--> UK NETWORK --(30p)--> FRANCE [no answer] --(60p)--> UK VOICEMAIL

You pay the amount in brackets, i.e 60p+30p = 90p per min.
You then also have to pay 60p to call back to the UK to listen to the voicemail.

The only way to avoid this is to set your phone to divert all calls to voicemail before you leave the UK, that way the call will just be:

CALLER --(caller pays)--> UK VOICEMAIL

And you won't have to pay for it. But obviously your phone won't actually ring, so you will have to check your voicemail often or get people to text you if it's urgent (receiving texts abroad is free). And set your voicemail message to explain to people that you're abroad.

geekazoid

**I think I may have made a duplicate post of this by wrongly starting a new thread!! If Martin or Andrea would like to delete one or the other then please accept my apologies**

Firstly many thanks to Martin for inviting me to post this (hope I've got the right forum) and, secondly, I hope it helps some of you save a bundle.

If, like me, you need email and web access when on holiday you'll probably think that by changing your SIM to a "localized" version you'll save money not only on incoming and outgoing calls but also on browsing and emails. Sadly this is not the case as I learned (almost) to my cost.

I holiday regularly in the south of Ireland and have a separate SIM and PAYG handset for use when I'm there - this in itself saves me about £70.00 in international call charges per week long stay. Last year on returning from holidays I had a whopping £160.00 bill for data and browsing. I challenged this because I knew all of my browsing had been done on the PAYG SIM. At first Vodafone were dismissive of my claims but persistence paid off and they admitted I had unearthed a "glitch" in their system. I was refunded the entire £160.00 and additionally as a result of my complaint to oftel they eventually had to concede / admit to overcharging over 2 million Euro (see HERE).

The following is Vodafone specific but I'm sure it might well relate to other providers - you'll need to check.

A little known fact about Vodafone is that they actually lock your IMEI to their network. This means that even when not using your own contract SIM in your handset any data / browsing costs (at international rates) are being debited to your account. So, how do you prevent this?

Easy. In addition to acquiring a "Localized" SIM you should acquire a GPRS or WAP enabled "second" phone. These don't have to be Vodafone registered or Irish sourced. Just as long as they are SIM free or Vodafone compliant this will work. They can be sourced very cheaply from anywhere such as ebay, cashconverters, friends, sons, daughters, ex lovers etc etc. This "secondary" phone should be used in conjunction with your localized SIM and your primary phone should be used as a data source only (if you're too lazy to copy all your contacts to your new SIM or if there are too many to fit).

If you have a lot of people who you expect may want to get in touch with you during your stay then you can save even more money by using Dynmark etext message manager which you can download for free and which comes with 50 free messages in the trial version. Once you have this running on your PC or laptop (and assuming you have already acquired your Irish PAYG SIM) you can text 50 of your nearest and dearest contacts the details of the number you'll be contactable on during your holiday thus preventing extortionate international call charges for incoming calls to your usual contact number!

grumpyoldgit_2

nicola wrote:

I'm travelling to africa for a few months. am I able to buy a sim card in africa?

thanks

Hi

I travel regularly to Sudan via Kenya and Uganda - I have local SIMS which are easy to get and cheap too. You will need to have your phone unlocked though - had mine done on the local markey for £5 - works fine now.

In Uganda I use MANGO (Uganda Telecom) costs me about 30p a minute to phone home to UK and top up cards are available on virtually any street corner. SIM cost £5 with £4 credit

In Kenya I use SafariCom - costs about 32p a minute for home. SIM cost £4 with £3 credit.

You don't say where you are going in Africa but my experience is that most countries offer PAYG SIMS for just a few pounds - so give it a go!! If in any doubt ask the locals - Africans love chatting and will soon point you towards the best value around.
Good Luck
:beer:
JC