Prepaid Sims

[andy]

Originally Posted by thejinx0r

So far, what I have in mind is get a T-Mobile prepaid and use YCW while in London.

My question is, would I be charged roaming + YCW if I used my london T-Mo sim in Italy/France? And what if I bought a prepaid sim card from Italy/France that had a local number, would I be charged long distance for using YCW?

So, if I have additional charges for both of the previous two questions, then I need a backup plan.
So, what other options do I have?
I'm not going to be spending more than a day at each place, so...

I've thought about United-mobile, and the like, but so far I've found them to be pretty expensive.

T-mobile would charge roaming costs for a call to the UK. Calling those UK access numbers from a different SIM in its own country would be an international call.

If you're only a day or two each in some countries, then maybe the effort of getting a different SIM in each place would not be worthwhile compared to accepting some roaming cost, but I suppose it depends on how much use you expect.


Most roaming in Europe is now at a standard tariff set by regulators, but there are cheaper options. If you're in the UK first, then I'd suggest looking at Vodafone Passport, O2 My Europe Extra, and 3.

O2 might be an interesting compromise, using an option called Your Country for international calls. Adding £15 gives 100 free minutes of int'l calls, or £30 200 minutes, then the credit to spend as well.

http://www.o2.co.uk/mobilestariffs/t...go/yourcountry

Then you could use £10 of that to subscribe to My Europe Extra, with free incoming calls, 25p/min outgoing to Europe.

Vodafone's Passport scheme has a connect fee while roaming, 75p for the UK version, mostly €1 for the rest, then calls to the local or roamed country are at the same tariff as at home

3 UK has 25p outgoing, 10p incoming while roaming in Europe, cheaper than most others. Also, if you will make a lot of calls from the UK it has a £15 bundle with up to 3000 minutes of int'l calls.

To use in conjunction with these, you'd also want some kind of calling card method, as Canada- and US-bound calls while roaming will be more expensive than to Europe. I'd suggest maybe DialNow, with access in plenty of countries, and rates from 0.5 eurocents a minute.

You might also use a callback service to gain an advantage from the cheaper or free incoming roaming calls ...