Travel Technology - US cell phone number for use in UK

Hello. Anyone any ideas on this please?
I would like to get a SIM card with a US number, so people in the US can call me. The wrinkle is that I am moving back to the UK and am looking for an inexpensive solution. It needs to be cell phone not internet based. Any ideas appreciated.

The following international sims give you a US number. Maxroam, Yackie, Celtrek. I am sure there are others. You can also get a US VOIP number from the likes of les.net, voicestick, kall8, and just forward it to your UK number. Maxroam actually allows free forwarding to a landlines in some countries including UK.

Because of the high termination charges for UK mobiles, getting a US number for your UK mobile is going to be costly.

If you can live with voicemail and / or landline is good enough, then you have a lot more options.

Depending on how complicated you want to make things, and how many folk are likely to be calling you, you could look at Rebtel. Essentially, you need to register your UK phone number(s) and the number of anyone back home who wants to call you.

When that's done, they get a US number to call, and this is forwarded to you. You can either accept the call (in which case you'll pay the cost of forwarding £0.01 or £0.09 depending on whether you're on your landline or mobile) or you can hang up and call back on a special access number (in which case you pay nothing to Rebtel - this option is great if you have loads of minutes to use up).

Liek I said, it's a bit fiddlesome, but you get essentially free calls.

Plan A

Dumb thought, but 3 has a plan with free Skype on their mobiles. Could you buy a US Skypeout number and either directly tie it to the Skype account or do it indirectly by tying it to a second Skype account and forwarding it to the one tied to your phone?

Plan B

Future-nine charges 12.4 cents a minute to a UK mobile. You could buy a US number for roughly $4 a month from them.