There is also a similar phenomenon in the Netherlands - if you sign up for an international calling plan, your calls to the US are much cheaper than within the country.
I think this is a way to compete with MVNOs such as Lebara and Lycamobile - which at least initially aimed at various immigrant communities, and also offered international calls cheaper than in-country calls.
Of course, if it's worth the trouble - you make the international call to a calling card or Localphone platform in the other country, then call back to the country you are in (e.g., you are in the UK - you use your O2 SIM to call a Localphone access number in France for 2p, and then Localphone will charge you 1 cent US to a UK landline and 2.3 cents US to UK mobiles. I believe the Localphone access numbers can be programmed to recognize your caller ID so you would not need to enter in a credit card number.)
Originally Posted by
JEFFJAGUAR
I found this interesting. I arrived in London and used an O2 UK sim card with its foreign plan which allows calls from the UK to the USA for 2p/minute which is really hard to beat along with the usual free reception of calls. Also when I left the UK for my cruise, I was subject to eu roaming rates which are at historic lows and will disappear altogether next year apparently. However outside the UK, calls to the USA and other places outside the eu are astronomically high.
But I also have the t mobile simple choice plan...20¢/minute to make and receive calls and my heaviest data usage was in hotels which almost always had wifi so it really didn't matter whether I used t mobile USA or O2 while in London hotels and many of the restaurants I frequent also have wifi. All well and good. But what I found most ludicrous about the whole thing. When I called within the UK while in the UK on the O2 sim card it was 40p/minute...calls to the same number in the UK on the T Mobile sim were 20¢/minute.
It looks like it's going to be t mobile all the way for my 3 or 4 trips to Europe each year.