Roaming In The Uk

[KiwiSurfer]

You may have read my other topic regarding the costs of roaming or using a local sim in Spain. In case you have not I'm a Vodafone NZ customer. I'm also Deaf so all I will use is SMS, with a lot of International SMS. I'll be in the UK between 25th June to 12th July.

This time round, Vodafone UK is the cheapest roaming partner -- which makes a lot more sense to me! However it is clearly much cheaper to get a local sim card, which is unusually not the case over the channel in Spain!

I've calculated the costs of International SMS as follows:-
- Fresh, Mobile World, M&S UK (local) - NZD $0.42 (UKP 0.15)
- easyMobile, O2, Orange, Tesco, T-Mobile, Virgin UK (local) - NZD $0.57 (UKP 0.20)
- Vodafone UK (local) - NZD $0.68 (UKP 0.24)
- Vodafone UK (roaming) - NZD $0.70
- H3G UK (local) - NZD $0.72 (UKP 0.25)
- O2, Orange, T-Mobile (roaming) - NZD $0.85

Seems that Mobile World offers a free SIM Card with 10.00 worth of airtime, and they still offer the 0.15/message tariff. M&S (see note 1) charges 5.00 for a SIM Card, but it is not clear if this includes 5.00 worth of credit or not. However they only charge 0.15/message as well. Fresh does not seem to disclose what their tariff is for international SMS, although the database here shows it at 0.15/msg.

It seems the best way to go would be the Mobile World sim. Is it worth ordering it online, or can I just buy it from any branch of the Carphone Warehouse?

Or are there any suggestions that I should look at?

I find it interesting, that for me as a Vodafone NZ customer it only costs me 20 cents to send a message to any country in the world -- yet for someone in the UK to send a message back to NZ it can cost the equilivant of between 42 to 72 NZ cents!

Regards,
James

Note 1: The URL in the PrepaidGSM database is incorrect, it should be http://www.marksandspencer.com/IWCatProduc...duct_Id=1866551