We're headed to England & Wales in May for three weeks. I have an unlocked
TMO SDA which has the old t-zones plan on it so I can do most everything
including snag email on the pull. However, in looking at the WorldClass
roaming rates, it's $.99/minute in the UK. Yikes!!
So how much are prepaid SIMs? Which is best? Any with data access? Any
with POP3 forwarding or IMAP? Can you forward your TMO calls to the
prepaid number? Any suggestions? I can see ourselves needing maybe 100
minutes of calling and maybe 100 minutes of data so I can pick up email.
On 2007-04-01, Purple Moose <purple-moose@gmail.com> wrote:
> We're headed to England & Wales in May for three weeks. I have an unlocked
> TMO SDA which has the old t-zones plan on it so I can do most everything
> including snag email on the pull. However, in looking at the WorldClass
> roaming rates, it's $.99/minute in the UK. Yikes!!
>
> So how much are prepaid SIMs? Which is best? Any with data access? Any
> with POP3 forwarding or IMAP? Can you forward your TMO calls to the
> prepaid number? Any suggestions? I can see ourselves needing maybe 100
> minutes of calling and maybe 100 minutes of data so I can pick up email.
The best prepaid UK SIM for voice calls in the UK seems to be Virgin
Mobile, at 15p/min for the first 5 minutes every day and 5p/min
thereafter. A more interesting one for you, however, might be
T-Mobile UK. While voice calls to UK lines are 12p/min, data access
on the prepaid SIM is capped at GBP 1 per day for unlimited use. This
includes HSDPA service if you have a device which can use it on European
frequencies, and the service should be fairly free of limitations since
it is even useful from a PC tethered to the phone (though this
is not allowed in the Terms & Conditions). T-Mobile also sometimes
has interesting promotional addons for cheap overseas long distance.
I think T-Mobile SIMs cost GPB10 if you buy them in a T-Mobile shop, but
they have specials sometimes so you might get one cheaper on Ebay. I've
seen Virgin Mobile SIMs in Carphone Warehouse shops, which are all over.
Note that Virgin SIMs also use T-Mobile's network, and T-Mobile is
considered to have the crappiest coverage in rural areas in Britain
(Three is even worse, but they roam on one of the other GSM networks when
no native service is available), so you might want to compare their
coverage map to where you are going. I've heard the prepaid SIMs branded
by Tesco are also reasonably priced and use a network with better
coverage, though I'm not sure which (O2 maybe?). Data access with
Virgin or Tesco is more expensive than T-Mobile, however, if you use
it more than a bit.
As for forwarding your US number, note that there is no really cheap
way to call a UK mobile phone. You particularly don't want to
forward a US T-Mobile phone overseas since US T-Mobile's long distance
rates are quite awful. If you need to keep the US number alive,
however, you might consider forwarding it to the US number of a VoIP
service, and then forwarding the VoIP service to the UK phone. Doing
this with Skype will cost you $12 for the US SkypeIn number and
25 cents/minute for forwarded calls, which will pay for itself over
just roaming with the US SIM if you get more than 20 minutes of calls.
You might find other VoIP services cheaper since Skype's rates to
European mobile phones aren't exceptional.
Dennis Ferguson <dcferguson@pacbell.net> wrote in
news:slrnf10fv1.82.dcferguson@akit-ferguson.com:
> The best prepaid UK SIM for voice calls in the UK seems to be Virgin
> Mobile, at 15p/min for the first 5 minutes every day and 5p/min
> thereafter. A more interesting one for you, however, might be
> T-Mobile UK. While voice calls to UK lines are 12p/min, data access
> on the prepaid SIM is capped at GBP 1 per day for unlimited use. This
> includes HSDPA service if you have a device which can use it on
> European frequencies, and the service should be fairly free of
> limitations since it is even useful from a PC tethered to the phone
> (though this is not allowed in the Terms & Conditions). T-Mobile also
> sometimes has interesting promotional addons for cheap overseas long
> distance.
Thanks for all the great info!! It looks like Vodafone offers some
decent deals. Are they a separate network from TMO? I know TMO bought
Vodafone here in the US.
Anyway, if this link works, it shows a Vodafone card via eBay that seems to
include all the right stuff....
On 2007-04-02, Purple Moose <purple-moose@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for all the great info!! It looks like Vodafone offers some
> decent deals. Are they a separate network from TMO? I know TMO bought
> Vodafone here in the US.
Vodafone is separate, and by reputation has very good coverage in the UK.
Vodafone owns not-quite-half of Verizon Wireless.
> Anyway, if this link works, it shows a Vodafone card via eBay that seems to
> include all the right stuff....
That looks fine to me. The thing I have no knowledge of is whether
you get data access on prepaid and, if so, what it costs. The data
bit is the (only) thing where T-Mobile UK might have an advantage.
In article <Xns9905CDE82A911purplemoosegmailcom@66.250.146.12 8>, Purple Moose wrote:
> Thanks for all the great info!! It looks like Vodafone offers some
> decent deals. Are they a separate network from TMO? I know TMO bought
> Vodafone here in the US.
Yes, they're separate, and no, T-Mo did not buy Vodafone here.
As far as I know, Vodafone is still the 45% partner in Verizon
Wireless, Verizon being the 55% partner. Vodafone bought AirTouch in
the late 90's and merged it with Verizon's former GTE Wireless and
Bell Atlantic properties. T-Mobile had already bought VoiceStream,
which at the time was the #1 US GSM network, and rebranded the
service.
--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows
Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED
It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room.
Prepaid SIM or roam in UK??
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