international calls / text on a mobile

wallofbeans

my girlfriend has a lot of family outside the UK and ends up speaking to them on her mobile quite often.. we were hoping to find a UK tariff that gives a better deal on international calls and texts as the call costs are currently very high and texts don't come under her monthly allowance...

right now she's just trying to use her mobile for this stuff as little as possible...

does anyone know of a UK mobile phone tariff that gives better deals for international calls and texts?

thanks

tissot

wallofbeans wrote: »

my girlfriend has a lot of family outside the UK and ends up speaking to them on her mobile quite often.. we were hoping to find a UK tariff that gives a better deal on international calls and texts as the call costs are currently very high and texts don't come under her monthly allowance...

right now she's just trying to use her mobile for this stuff as little as possible...

does anyone know of a UK mobile phone tariff that gives better deals for international calls and texts?

thanks

i also call abroad a lot and i use voip-based programme https://www.internetcalls.com to make calls and send text from pc. free calls to landline in most european countries and rather cheap for the rest of the world ( http://www.internetcalls.com/en/calling-rates.html ). calling mobiles are not that cheap but i have not found any service that alows to make a cheap direct call to mobile abroad. The best thing of internetcalls.com - you can call for free from your mobile using the inclusive minutes to call the special number and then call whatever number you need - you ll be charged same price as calling from computer. the problem is that not all networks allow to use this special number for free. You can do it on 3, but on orange you have to pay for it:(

there are another voip programes that allow to make cheap calls from your computer and they may have even better prices, however i dont know if you can use mobile with them. so you just have to use google to find out more details.

i think 3 has rather cheap tariff 12p/min or sms to india, pakistan and poland - but it still may be cheaper to use the program above.

On 3 you can also use skype to call another skype users for free. it gives you about 4000 free skype min/month both on contract and PAYG - you just need to have a compatible mobile.

so my advice is to get 3 contract or payg, especially now they have good offers and using quidco and 'recommend a friend' can save you a lot of money (e.g. up to £90 on 18 month contract)

utilitybroker

One option is to open an account with https://www.18185.co.uk and use their mobile service 020 access number out of your inclusive minutes.You can also send Intl text messages from your pc at 1p a go.

What countries do you call the most?

wallofbeans

utilitybroker wrote: »

One option is to open an account with https://www.18185.co.uk and use their mobile service 020 access number out of your inclusive minutes.You can also send Intl text messages from your pc at 1p a go.

What countries do you call the most?

France and the US

baxide

Well, I suggest you do the following trick to her:

- Open a Manifone account and register her mobile phone number as authorised user
- Add some credit
- Take the numbers she calls most frequently and register them as Direct Numbers (you can have up to 8 numbers)
- Replace the numbers of her friends in her mobile's addressbook with the direct numbers you just set up.

She won't even notice the difference! Only on her bill of course

OK, there is one thing she can't do: send texts to direct numbers.

But hey, then don't replace the numbers, just create a second entry in the addressbook and tell her that her friends have just received new London phone numbers

ravenviz

I have started to use texttank.co.uk (which redirects to cardboardfish.com) to text my girlfriend in Germany. It's actually geared towards companies for bulk SMS mailings and bespoke reply services but I have used it OK so far for personal use. You preload the service with minimum £15+VAT, it's 5p a text (inc. VAT) rather than 20.5+VAT=23.6p from Vodafone. You send from the internet, inlcuding a web-enabled phone but it does not have mobile content pages, just the full internet version. You have to tell the recipient to reply to you directly or you will have to look in the site inbox for replies. If they also use a web service the other end then you're quids in. It should cut down my monthly text bill from £80 to less than £20. There are other sites I have seen on this forum for 4p/text to Germany so I may try that after my credit runs out at texttank. Just another option. Hope it helps!

Portlandbill

ravenviz wrote: »

I have started to use texttank.co.uk (which redirects to cardboardfish.com) to text my girlfriend in Germany. It's actually geared towards companies for bulk SMS mailings and bespoke reply services but I have used it OK so far for personal use. You preload the service with minimum £15+VAT, it's 5p a text (inc. VAT) rather than 20.5+VAT=23.6p from Vodafone. You send from the internet, inlcuding a web-enabled phone but it does not have mobile content pages, just the full internet version. You have to tell the recipient to reply to you directly or you will have to look in the site inbox for replies. If they also use a web service the other end then you're quids in. It should cut down my monthly text bill from £80 to less than £20. There are other sites I have seen on this forum for 4p/text to Germany so I may try that after my credit runs out at texttank. Just another option. Hope it helps!

TextTank SPAMMER digs up old thread to promote their service !!!

ravenviz

Actually I'm a genuine (newbie) texttank user, I'm giving it a go but I see that 18185 is slightly cheaper so will also try that after my credit has run out! I actually didn't find out about texttank from MSE so I thought I'd post for everyone's (reminded?) benefit.

Cheers.