Texting UK from Spain

Dumbledore55

My 14 year old son is going to Spain with his dad at the end of August. He is on O2 mobile and wants to text his friends from there - the villa is in a remote location so there may not be an internet cafe around. Is there a cheaper way to text from there?

jem16

Unless the rules have changed international texts with O2 come out of the inclusive allowance. One international text counts as 4 ordinary texts.

Might be worth checking if this is still the case if he has inclusive texts - it certainly was with me last year.

Dumbledore55

We've just come back from a holiday to Spain ourselves and it cost 24p per text home. The all inclusive texts were put on hold until we landed back in the UK.

Oldernotwiser

If he's in a really remote area he may not get a signal anyway!

redux

jem16 wrote: »

Unless the rules have changed international texts with O2 come out of the inclusive allowance. One international text counts as 4 ordinary texts.

Might be worth checking if this is still the case if he has inclusive texts - it certainly was with me last year.

This is true on contract, but I'm not so sure about for text bundles on pay & go

It could be worth looking into a choice of mobile Java programs that send an equivalent using data, from a penny or each plus about the same cost from your network. There are some threads on here, including this, which starts as a discussion of an article by Martin:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=528955


As well as that, for cheaper phone calls, the Chosen Country - Spain option costs £5 a month and gives free incoming calls, outgoing 25p/min, and using a callback service for outgoing calls would be cheaper still

will-in-estoril

Dumbledore55 wrote: »

My 14 year old son is going to Spain with his dad at the end of August. He is on O2 mobile and wants to text his friends from there - the villa is in a remote location so there may not be an internet cafe around. Is there a cheaper way to text from there?

It may work out cheaper to unlock the handset and purchase a Spanish SIM.

The Spanish equivalent of Carphone Warehouse sells SIMS

http://www.phonehouse.es/

as does Carrefour Supermarket, which has its own virtual network (a bit like Virgin uses T-Mobile masts in the UK)

http://www.carrefour.es/telecom/movil/prepago.html

Do your homework to find out which one is the cheapest to text the UK and which one gives a signal!