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Quote:
Originally Posted by hangpilot
SOOOO, question........ I have a T-Mobile phone in the US. If I want to get a pre-paid SIM in the UK, also from T-Mobile, do I need to unlock my phone, or will it work because they're both T-Mobile?
Currently I just use T-Mobile roaming while in the UK for a couple weeks at a time. I'm not a heavy user. But do have trouble curbing the text habit.......
It sounds like you have a quadband phone if you are texting in the UK. It is so much cheaper using a local sim than a US sim.
I have vodaphone with the passport feature will let me roam on thier networks for a small amount of money. I did not need a passport to get the sim. I went to www.freedommobile.com and they shipped the sim to my home. I regestered it when I got to the UK no problem. They handle all sim cards. You can also wait till you get there and go to the local phone shop.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by powerlifter
It sounds like you have a quadband phone if you are texting in the UK. It is so much cheaper using a local sim than a US sim.
I have vodaphone with the passport feature will let me roam on thier networks for a small amount of money. I did not need a passport to get the sim. I went to www.freedommobile.com and they shipped the sim to my home. I regestered it when I got to the UK no problem. They handle all sim cards. You can also wait till you get there and go to the local phone shop.
Most triband phones sold by TMobile US, at least until very recently, worked in the UK.
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Two topics here
Mods,
Could this thread be split in two?
There seem to be two distinct topics here:
1) Getting a SIM card for a GSM phone in a country outside the USA
2) Who has the best coverage inside the USA regardless of the technology; not just GSM but CDMA, iDEN (and TDMA or AMPS where still found).
Any thoughts?
P.S. For those of you with Verizon, Sprint or Nextel phones, I wish you Bon Voyage on your next trip outside of North America! Because except for Japan, South Korea, Israel and the Carribean your phone(s) will not work pwriod.
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I found a fairly decent service in the UK—Mobile World. You can get their SIMs at the Carphone Warehouse and other places, but if you go to the Carphone Warehouse they activate it within 5 minutes which is nice, since you can just go back if it's broken. (I remember a Vodafone SIM I had in Australia a few months ago that took me 4 phone calls over 2 days to get it activated.) The SIM is free, minimum £10 value to start (you can recharge in £5 increments thereafter.)
Calls within the UK are 15p/min to all landline/mobile numbers, which seems on-par or cheaper than the major carriers.
Calls to the US are 5p/min; far cheaper than any other direct-dial service I've found. There is a really annoying caveat about making international calls though: you have a dial a 2 in front, and 00 instead of + (so rather than dialing +1 800 123 4567, you'd have to dial 2 00 1 800 123 4567.) Makes dialing from a phone where you can't edit the number before dialing really annoying. I have all my phone numbers saved with +<country code> in front so I can dial any of them with most SIMs in any country.
Beware that the Carphone Warehouse pricelist is WRONG about the rates, which seems outright deceptive since the mobileworld.co.uk site redirects to carphonewarehouse.com, suggesting they own Mobile World. They state 4p/min, though 5p/min is still a good deal. Also, calls to toll-free numbers in the US are 6.7p/min. Other countries are quite cheap as well. I'm also confused how much GPRS costs: the Carphone Warehouse book quotes it at 0.3p/KB, parts of the Mobile World website (mostly those in fine print and probably older) quote it at 0.3p/KB as well, but other parts of the same site quote it at 0.7p/KB. I guess I'll find out when I have a landline to call their customer support from since on matter of principle I refuse to pay to do so from my cell (as noted below.)
Beware that you cannot roam outside of the UK with this phone, so it's no good for the rest of Europe. They also have fun hidden charges like 15p to call customer service from your cell (and there's no way to check your balance without calling this number either, though they do SMS you when you get down to around £4 apparently.) Charges like this do seem standard for many non-US carriers though. Overall it seems to be an extremely good value compared to all the other prepaid SIMs I've found here. They use T-Mobile UK for their network. I've tried a few calls to the US already and call quality was just fine; after reading about having to dial 2 in front I was worried they'd be using some horrid quality VOIP network to get outside the UK, but it seems fine.
Also, you can send international (and UK +44) SMSes just fine without the 2 in front. Just + and the number as usual. Kinda funny that that works when regular calls don't.
Anyone else have experience with this service? I've had the SIM for all of 2 hours so I can't comment too much past what I've read on their site and my limited experience thus far. All the other prepaid SIMs that I could buy locally in person cost £5 - £15 just for the SIM so this is a good value whether or not I recharge it when it runs out.
P.S. For those of you with Verizon, Sprint or Nextel phones, I wish you Bon Voyage on your next trip outside of North America! Because except for Japan, South Korea, Israel and the Carribean your phone(s) will not work pwriod.
there are, of course, phones within verizon and nextel which will work outside the US, in Europe. The kicker being, they are DUAL PHONES actually, so one can powerdown, stick in a GSM sim, and then use them normally. Additionally, verizon at least will give you a SIM card for use with one of these devices while roaming outside the USA, in Europe and pretty much anywhere where there is GSM. It is much better though, to buy a local SIM and just stick that in.
It is MUCH MUCH better to simply buy a quad or tri band phone for the region one is going to be in, and use that. But, the point being that there are verizon and nextel phones just for this purpose, and with NEXTEL as well you can even just stick in your NEXTEL SIM and use it with your phone number, for easy reachability and dialing. I BELIEVE that the nextel sim will as well allow one to just put it into a regular quad band phone. So, I wouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater just yet.
P.S. For those of you with Verizon, Sprint or Nextel phones, I wish you Bon Voyage on your next trip outside of North America! Because except for Japan, South Korea, Israel and the Carribean your phone(s) will not work pwriod.
For the record, not true (at least in Verizon's case). Verizon clearly doesn't have close to the roaming that GSM does (reason I have a quadband GSM as well), but there's more than just Japan, South Korea, Israel, and the Caribbean. There's Thailand, India, Macau, China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela.
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Please bear with me while I reiterate. I have a t-mobile razor phone, when I am in the UK in November I can go into a "phone shop" and buy a sim card that will fit my phone? It will be a UK phone number and it will be mainly free but I will pay for "loading" it with minutes. It looks like the plan will be 15p/min (25 cents/min). The phone will have to be unlocked (not sure what that means) and I can do that by going to the local T-mobile phone store?
Anymore I should know?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jimc_usa
Please bear with me while I reiterate. I have a t-mobile razor phone, when I am in the UK in November I can go into a "phone shop" and buy a sim card that will fit my phone? It will be a UK phone number and it will be mainly free but I will pay for "loading" it with minutes. It looks like the plan will be 15p/min (25 cents/min). The phone will have to be unlocked (not sure what that means) and I can do that by going to the local T-mobile phone store?
Anymore I should know?
How long have you been w/ T-Mobile? Contact them at 611 from your cell phone (or 1-800-937-8997) and request the SIM unlock code. If you have been w/ them for over a year, they should grant that request. The answer to your first question is yes, you can go into a phone shop in the UK and buy a pre-paid SIM card. You may need your passport there, I don't know. You don't need to go to a T-Mobile store to unlock your phone. I don't even think they can do it there.
Call customer service, they should be able to unlock in 24-48 hrs max. Make sure you also get international roaming service just in case you do want to use your TMO when overseas.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jimc_usa
Thanks - a great site!
The last time I priced stuff on that site it was MUCH more than using other sources and methods. I would say buyer beware, VERY much so. DO some searches on them.
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The last time I priced stuff on that site it was MUCH more than using other sources and methods. I would say buyer beware, VERY much so. DO some searches on them.
Agree 100%. The customer service I received from Telestial was mediocre. I ran out of money on my SIM card and tried to reload with both phone and internet orders. It took 4 days to process. That was 4 days without critical phone service. Unacceptable, particularly when you can buy reloads for local SIM cards everywhere in Europe.
Back in July, Flyin4MAG mentioned the mobal.com SIM cards, but nobody since has had anything to say about them. I ordered a couple today in preparation for an upcoming multi-nation trip, and they look like a good deal...under very limited circumstances.
As I understand it, the mobal SIM gives you a permanent UK phone number.
We already have two unlocked quad-band phones. The cost for the 2 SIMs was $20 (2-day Express mail, half that for regular mail), and if you never use them there is no subsequent cost. If you do use them the cost is (depending upon where you are) about $1.50 per minute for incoming calls, and about $2 a minute for outgoing calls. So, these cards are for emergency use only, not for chatting with friends and family back home.
My intent is to use Skype and email for chatting, but give certain relatives the mobal number with a request to not use it unless there is very big news.
We could have used this while on vacation last year in Prague. We had an apartment, and a driver was supposed to pick us up at 4 AM for an early AM flight. The driver never showed, and we had no phone. With a mobal SIM card we would have been able to call a taxi company, gladly paying the outrageous per-minute fee.
Two topics here
I have all my phone numbers saved with +<country code> in front so I can dial any of them with most SIMs in any country.
Unacceptable, particularly when you can buy reloads for local SIM cards everywhere in Europe.
