Q: Is o2´s tariff the cheapest deal for calling Europe?

DUS

Hi,

I will shortly start working for a company based in Austria. I will work from my London home and was asked to buy a mobile and find a suitable tariff for calling our customers in Europe (and worldwide).

I am aware that if you use services like DialAbroad (and many others) this is probably the cheapest way to make international callls but I need to find a tariff with one of the opcos here in the country that offers cheap-ish calls to Europe (from the UK).

Ok, so far I´ve seen on the o2 website that with IST the call from the UK to the majority of countries in Western Europe cost 14p/min:

http://www.o2international.co.uk/ShowCharges.aspx?LocationFrom=229&LocationTo=16&Tariff=2&UsageLevel=2

What is a bit confusing is that on another o2 page they tell you that this call would cost 17p/min. http://www.o2international.co.uk/callingabroadfromtheuk/postpayITS.aspx

Does somebody know what the correct price is? 14 or 17p?

For the other networks I found 20p @ TMO and Orange while VF charges 25p/min. I wonder if these prices are really the cheapest possible ones if I use 1 of these 4 opcos. Does somebody know?

Last but not least, since I will travel a lot within Europe I find o2´s MyEurope Extra quite interesting. For a tenner extra all calls received whilest travelling would be free and making calls within and to various European countries are capped at 25p/min. Again, my question to you experts is if there are better deals available on the market. I haven´t yet found a better one but that certainly doesn´t mean that they don´t exist. And with me being new in the UK, I doubt that I have a good overview of the local market anyway.

So, thank you for your help in finding a suitable tariff. At the moment, it seems that o2 offers the best tariff for my personal needs.

Cheers,

DUS

PetKow

The correct rate with the ITS on o2 is 17p. The good thing with that is that it is the same to mobiles and landlines.

There are loads of options for doing it much cheaper such as using a callthrough provider via a UK geographic number. However, if you want to just dial direct from the handset, you could also consider a discount provider specialising in International calls such as Lebara (4p/min to Austria landlines, 15p/min to mobiles).

With regard to MyEuropeExtra, personally I swear by this service as it has solved a lot of my roaming problems. Be aware that it is limited to 1000 mins per month of incoming and outgoing calls. AFIK it also only costs a fiver (not a tenner) per month if you take it out for the full 12 months on a business contract.

However, you maybe much better off going with 3UK and then use "3 Like Home" which has no additional monthly fee. With this plan you can use your full UK allowances to call back to the UK as well as have the free incoming whilst roaming. This applies when roaming on other 3 networks of which there is one in Austria.
see: http://www.three.co.uk/personal/coverage_/going_abroad_/like_home_details.omp