[KiwiSurfer]

Just to report back on my experiences.

I got an O2 UK Sim while still in New Zealand and was able to activate it even when roaming on Vodafone in New Zealand. I had no credit however, but that was easily solved by getting a top-up receipt from Tescos and the O2 shops. The O2 website won't accept my NZ credit card, so the only way for me to top-up was to do it the old-fanioshed way.

It worked fine during my travels in the UK. The International Caller bolt-on, as discussed earlier in this thread, saved me heaps of money. SMS are usually UKP 0.20 but with the bolt-on that is reduced to UKP 0.10. I sent a lot of SMS back to New Zealand so this was excellent for me.

If you make a lot of international texts, I recommend that you go with O2 just for the international caller bolt-on. However their coverage was not as good as either Orange or Vodafone, but I found it to be of an acceptable standard.

Roaming (Vodafone NZ)

I also used my Vodafone NZ sim -- I borrowed a friend's (KiwiSteve) phone and put the NZ sim in there while I put the O2 UK sim in my usual phone. Vodafone NZ has roaming agreements with all four 2G operators. The following is a list of UK networks I roamed on and the costs for SMS roaming for the reference of any Vodafone NZ customers planning to roam in the UK.

- O2 UK (n/a)
- Orange UK (NZD $0.53 per SMS)
- T-Mobile UK (n/a)
- Vodafone UK (NZD $0.42 per SMS)

Coverage Report

I travelled mostly in Southern England and in London itself. Some key areas where I tested coverage was on the London to Portsmouth (A3) highway and in and around London. I was able to test coverage on all four networks on the same phone since my Vodafone account has roaming access to all four networks.

Coverage in London was excellent on all four 2G networks, so I won't comment further.

Coverage on Orange and Vodafone was pretty good in most rural areas. I was very impressed since Orange managed to achieve good rural coverage even while using GSM 1800 spectrum. O2 was pretty good, although there were some gaps on O2 where Orange/Vodafone still had good service.

Coverage wise I found T-Mobile to be very lacking in most rural areas I travelled through. In many areas the other three networks had good service, whereas T-Mobile had no signal. T-Mobile is only useful if you stick to the cities only, but if you plan to spend a lot of time out of the cites, you would do well to avoid T-Mobile.

Regards,
James