Price increases all around for UK prepaid

[MATHA531]

Originally Posted by petkow

I don´t think the Math is correct, but will admit I don´t know much about the Vodafone deal. Doesn´t it give you the 60 free mins as a bonus for a 10 quid topup, AND you still have the 10 pounds as credit? Of course that credit could be used to make more calls to the USA and Canada via the 5p/min deal. At the end of the day the combined price per minute is quite good indeed.

I suppose another efficient way of doing so would be to call a a Betamax local access number (at normal UK landline rates). Betamax/Finarea/Dellmont effectively gives you the USA and Canada for free. If you are planning on making long calls to the USA this way, it would be worth adding Vodafone Stop the clock which gives you 1 hours calling to UK landlines but just charges you for 3mins.

I got you but say if my intent as a tourist is to spend 7 days in the UK (or even 14 days). For the most part, I need the phone to receive calls and to call home...now if I don't go over 60 minutes and make few local calls, I would actually probably never get to the point where I go into the 10 quid so I suppose it really has more to do with your calling patterns...I mean I might call a couple of friends a couple of times and a couple of restaurants and whatever but the vast majority of my calls are made home to the USA.

[PhotoJim]

Originally Posted by MATHA531

I got you but say if my intent as a tourist is to spend 7 days in the UK (or even 14 days). For the most part, I need the phone to receive calls and to call home...now if I don't go over 60 minutes and make few local calls, I would actually probably never get to the point where I go into the 10 quid so I suppose it really has more to do with your calling patterns...I mean I might call a couple of friends a couple of times and a couple of restaurants and whatever but the vast majority of my calls are made home to the USA.

That's exactly why I still have my Orange Call Abroad SIM (similar to Camel; no longer available). It's cheap enough.

Orange was the only UK provider that would let me register my Canadian credit card, too, so it's easy to keep it alive.

It doesn't hurt that I have an awesome, awesome phone number (0796 xyxyxxx)!

[Motel75]

Yep, YCW is a big factor in favor of T-Mobile. Voda dropping the roaming fees last year was a big factor in favor of them. (etc. etc.)

So: Orange and Virgin are 1 year between billable events to stay alive. Are the others really only 180 days, or is it a bit longer in reality?

[Stu]

I love Three because of it's Skype gateway. If you own an Asterisks box, pop the $40 for the Skype to SIP gateway from Digium. My office IVR is a free call and I can divert an office extension to it for free calls. Their coverage is obviously not as good as the competitors, by since I rarely venture beyond XC3 where X is N,S,E,W, it works great. I also still have an Orange OVP Virgin SIM which is pretty good.

[Motel75]

That ten quid is still useful for the SMS you will need to send every six months from the US to keep the SIM alive. (Or if someone calls you and you answer and talk for 10 minutes. Etc.)

If you've got an awesome number, when you're in the UK you can always ask Orange for the PAC code and transfer it to another network with better prices. My number isn't awesome at all, but I've had it for nine years and all my UK friends and family know it, and so I'll be taking it with me to someone other than Virgin next time I'm there - unless, of course, Virgin also introduces cheap international calling in the next two months, which is the main reason I'm unhappy with them.