International Mobile Roaming Discussion Area

wstephenp

We regularly visit Portugal. In Jan this year I bought a Portugese SIM for € 25 which gave me a credit of €15. Calls received are free and fairly cheap to make Sat Sun & holidays but does run through the euros weekdays and evenings. One word or warning, if you come home and don't use the sim by making 3 chargable calls they "kill it" after 3 months. So put it in the phone and send 3 text messages every quarter if you want it to work when you go back!

CrazyIndianZA

nicola wrote:

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

thanks

Depends on which part of Africa. You will get GSM 900 coverage in most of South Africa.

The 2 of the 3 South AFrican mobile networks (Vodacom/MTN) are the dominant players in most of the AFrican countries that have mobile networks (Nigeria) etc so it stands to reason that they would operate similar networks in each country.

You can get a pay as you go sim in South Africa relatively cheaply at most major supermarkets.

A1ia5

Hi - looking around to get a riing sim card - just been on the phone to them and they sell for 50 CHF in switzerland - this includes 25 CHF for the SIM and 25 CHF for calls. Over in the UK same card sells for £30 approx, this is about £9 more than in Switzerland. Anybody know a cheaper UK retailer or a Swiss/Euro company that does them cheaper and will ship to UK ?

Cheers

kazd

I am going to the US soon (end Jul) and would like the facility of being able to call our villa if needs be and call back here to the UK. My phone is a 6230i I assume that I will be able to use this in the US, can anyone tell me what would be my cheapest option. Should I buy a PAYG sim when we land at the airport or buy it before hand and which would be the cheapest option. I have seen one for £50 which seems a bit pricey.

BexTech

student100 wrote:

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.

If you want to receive calls whilst abroad, but don't want the chance of calls going to voicemail, then switch conditional divert to voicemail off. I use Virgin mobile and easyMobile mostly though I do have a SIM for almost all networks, I ensure voicemail diverts are off when roaming, but then I 99% of the time never switch voicemail on, as I don't believe it is fair for callers to my mobile to be charged when they can't reach me, when a simple free message like "The mobile you are calling is switched off" or "The mobile you have called is currently unavailable".

I am able to switch voicemail on and off, you may find your network (certainly Orange) force a default divert to voicemail when busy, unavailable, switched off, not matter how many times to tell your phone to cancel diverts, the network will ignore it and keep the diverts, what you need to do is call your network and tell them you want the default diverts switched off as you want to choose whether to divert or not.

Mobile networks enable divert to voicemail not for your benefit but for theirs, as when the call is connected to voicemail they are earning revenue.

student100

BexTech thanks for pointing that out. Although I'd rather keep some form of voicemail in place since coverage may be variable and I may not have my phone on all the time, I'd rather people could leave a message than have to keep trying and trying to reach me to get a message through.

Incidentally I'd much rather people DID use my voicemail, since they can often leave a message which I can pick up free (when I'm in the UK), respond to, and call them back if necessary, and it doesn't cost them any more than if they were going to call me and speak to me personally. (And they don't have to keep trying to get through).

I guess it's a matter of personal taste...

feival

This is a well known issue and all operators are trying to get rid of it. T-Moible doesn't have this problem on prepay but does have it on post pay . hte others are in a similar or worse position. Technology now exists to stop this happening and frnakly in 3 years time it will have disappeared from most countries. Unfrotunately this depends on both your UK operator and the network abroa
d.

mouseclick

A1ia5 wrote:

Hi - looking around to get a riing sim card - just been on the phone to them and they sell for 50 CHF in switzerland - this includes 25 CHF for the SIM and 25 CHF for calls. Over in the UK same card sells for £30 approx, this is about £9 more than in Switzerland. Anybody know a cheaper UK retailer or a Swiss/Euro company that does them cheaper and will ship to UK ?

Cheers

I have noticed that all of these services, Riiing, sim4travel, Orate, are all resellers of cards by United Mobile, or are linked to them in some way. You can see where to buy cards at http://www.united-mobile.com/wheretobuy.asp.

However, a word of warning about Sim4travel. Unlike the others, their cards have a modified menu system, which does NOT allow you to buy an online instant pin code by paying in Euros and dial 088 and type it in to get the credit. Their menu system requires you to enter details of a pre-registered credit card - and they do their own conversion and bill you in sterling. The disadvantage of sim4travel is that their minimum credit top-up is €30 - and for this they want me to pay £24.51. This includes VAT on top of the €30.

Riiing have a min top up of €15 and United Mobile €20. Of course if you pay with a Nationwide Visa card, you wont pay any extra commission on top. You cannot use Riiing to top up sim4travel, I just tried and wasted €10 :mad:

To order direct from United Mobile, you pay €49.95 including €10 shipping and get €25 credit (cost is £33.77 - much the same cost as sim4travel but with €20 more credit). Delivery is slow, as it comes from overseas.

To order a Riiing card from United Mobile reseller Oneroam, it costs £35.74 including UK shipping charge of 75p. You get €15 credit for that price, slightly less value than from United Mobile direct.

To order a United Mobile card from Orate, they want £34.99 for one with €25 Euros credit. I cannot see the shipping cost as I am having problems with their shopping cart.

To get a United Mobile card from Omnisim, you pay €39.95 (£27.01) and get €25 of credit. On the fact of it this seems the best deal, but I cant get their cart to work to check delivery price.

Disclaimer: I have not checked call prices in detail, but most providers seem the same with the exception of sim4travel who quote prices in UKP and perform their own currency conversions.

Footnote: Call prices ARE different. Some providers charge for incoming calls even when the mobile is in the UK. I don't have time to look into it in great detail so maybe someone else could. It is all very confusing with VAT, currency conversion, some prices quoted in UKP and Euros etc, some with call setup costs, different text prices etc

Several hours later...

I think Riiing are the best.
1. They are generally slighly cheaper to use than the others
2. Credit expiry time is 9 months, extended if the phone is used.
3. No incoming call charges in most European Countries.

Cheapest I can find is http://www.freedom-mobiles.co.uk/cgi/frefer.cgi?refer=googleRiiing&page=riiing-international-roaming-sim-card.html and it is £29.99 including delivery and €15 of credit.

Martin, if you read this, unless I am mistaken this card is better on all counts than the sim4travel one that you suggested in the recent article. Does anyone agree / disagree?

budgetflyer

For anyone going to SPAIN this year the best deal I've found is "AMENA" prepaid sim. Costs £8 plus £3.50 p+p with 18 euro call credit.Recieving calls are free.National and mobile calls Within Spain are fixed @ 30cent per min. Calls to UK are 48cent peak. 42 offpeak.
You can buy them at
http://search.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQsassZdrcall

Please note. I have no connection with the seller.

broomgrove

I'm staying in South Africa for 6 weeks from August 1st.

Can anyone offer advice on the most cost effective way of using my mobile to call home while I'm there. I'd like to call home nearly every evening for about 5 minutes. I would not need to receive calls.

I have a Nokia 6630 provided by Virgin