Mobile Roaming: Cheapest Calls When You're Abroad

littleredheadedgirl'75 wrote: »

im off to cairo in january to see the pyramids any tips on calling home on a mobile???

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/cheap-roaming-calls

DoraExplorer wrote: »

Hello money savers.....

I would really appreciate your help on this subject....

I am a stewardess and fly mainly around Europe. I'm away up to four nights a week so really need to use my mobile to stay in touch....I am up for renewal of my contract and looking for the best deal.

At the moment i'm on Vodaphone and find this to be really pricey. between £90-£120 per month...... I too had the problem when they changed me from passport without advising.... However ironically my bill seemed to be cheaper?!

Now that the new cheaper-roaming Eurotariff has arrived, there won't be as much difference between networks, though some have other options. So the baseline is about 18p/min incoming calls, 38p outgoing, though it's possible to get cheaper.

Although Vodafone Passport would be good for longer calls, the 75p per call connect fees add up rather faster for short calls of a couple of minutes, and perhaps that's why you've noticed a difference if they switched you to the Eurotariff

3 has lower rates than others, 10p/min incoming, 25p outgoing, and in countries with a 3 network (and with your phone logged in to it), incoming calls are free while outgoing calls use your contract's included minutes. Also they allow free Skype calls when on a 3 network. The drawback is that they only have networks in Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, a small part of Austria, Hong Kong and Australia

But because you mention texts, O2's 4 for 1 inclusive arrangement, mentioned in the last post, looks good for you. They have another interesting option with free incoming and cheaper (25p/min) outgoing calls, called My Europe Extra and costing £10 a month, which might be worthwhile.

To get a bit more complicated, if you look into so-called callback services, which set up an incoming call to connect you to an outgoing one, then you could use the free incoming to make outgoing calls from quite a bit cheaper than O2's rate. The call might be triggered by sending an sms, or calling a number and hanging up, or sending a small amount of data, then wait for the incoming call.

There are also what are called global roaming SIM cards, with free incoming calls in many but not all countries. These are mentioned in Martin's roaming article and also in this thread. They have phone numbers from Estonia, Iceland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Liechtenstein, and other places. Since the main European networks introduced cheaper roaming though, perhaps they are not quite as attractive as before, as there is still the cost to your friends to call you on a different number than normal.

Some phones, such as the Nokia E-series and their N95, do indeed have a facility for wi-fi access, and you could use any of a range of voice over internet (VoIP) providers. This usage wouldn't be a package bought from the mobile network, but independent of it, so would only cost at the call rates of the separate VoIP firm. You can read more about VoIP on the Home Phones board; the cheapest have virtually free calls to landlines of about 40 countries and calls to mobiles starting from under 10p a minute.

Whichever network you choose, there are possibilities to send cheap sms equivalents using a Java program in the phone that sends via data use for from only a couple of cents each, plus about the same charge by the network for the data. Some are smsbug, mobisms, voipbuster and vyke.

But maybe I'm gradually complicating things with too many details. I think that an O2 contract with a good helping of texts, and perhaps the My Europe Extra, is likely to be a good choice.

A couple of extra points though: you said mainly short-haul but also mentioned the USA; if you go there quite a bit then there is no cheap roaming at all, and the only way to make cheap calls is to get a local SIM card, and then use perhaps a calling card to reach UK, or some SIMs have cheap int'l calls. And in Europe if you're willing to have local SIMs without losing track of them all, then there are some with very cheap int'l calls, like from about 5 or 10 cents a minute to UK landlines.

Edinburghlass wrote: »

If you are thinking about a laptop you should have a look at the Asus EEE and its coming out in pink in February

hee hee, I realised I'd intended to suggest that, then forgotten by the time I'd waffled so long

come back to edit it in, and too late

about the size of a hardback book, a third the weight of other laptops, looks great for travelling - I'm tempting myself too .......... but perhaps not pink

I'm going to Jamaica in 8 weeks and I'm trying to find a cheap tariff for calling from mobile in Jamaica to UK and cheap for peopple to call me. Getting married & want to keep everyone informed of the news.
I've tried reading all the articles but I'm baffled by science
My phone in triband & unlocked so that shouldn't be a problem
Please Help