Call UK from USA on Cellphone
 

I will be visiting South Freeport Maine and Newport Rhode Island in September this year (2007). I have a UK Orange pay as you go cell phone. As we are staying in a house with no land line, I will have to use the cell phone to make calls home every day to my elderly dad. Has anybody used the ecallplus system ($10 a month and calls at around 12c a minute) or the oneroam Jolt card? (£14.99 and calls at 35c a minute, incoming and outgoing) or can anybody recommend something else?

You should be able to sign up for a US PAYG easily enough (do remember your phone to roam in the USA needs to have 1900 frequency at the least and depending on just where you are might also need 850)

Then you can open up an account with many ld companies (look up bizon)...you will pay for a local call on the PAYG and pay next to nothing to call the UK (there are other cards too and I am sure there are cards in the UK..the bizon site has a whoe slew of them listed)...and I think you can set call forwarding to the US number on your UK mobile...but do remember that on US phones you pay to receive as well as to make...

I'm trying to recall if Orange-UK has some special deal for cheap roaming in the US. There are some US MVNO prepaid SIMs that include long distance to most W. European landlines.

To elaborate on what Matha said, dial up services like www.onesuite.com or www.pingo.com charge about 3¢/min. to call a UK landline. You would just use up your minutes on the prepaid. IF you could find a cell w. free nites and weekends, that would be ideal. However, I think those "free" options are only available for post paid. Will you have a computer?

...mike