Cellphone for England?

"William Black" wrote in message
...

"tracymar55" wrote in message
...
I will be in England for 2 1/2 weeks and will need a cellphone mostly
for local calls and a few short calls back to the U.S. My current
phone will not work in the UK so I need to buy or rent - and I'm
finding the options confusing. It's looking like I'm best off buying
and getting on some kind of plan, but a lot of them are expensive, and
I'm trying to keep my costs down. My guess is that I will probably
only be making about 2 hours of local calls and 1 hour of calls to the
U.S. - and will be receiving just as many. Any suggestions?

I need to get the phone a week or so before my trip in order to test
it out and give my phone number to contacts both in the US and
England.
Tracy in Massachusetts

The easy solution is to buy a 'pay as you go' SIM card for about £3 ($6) ,
which comes with £3 of credit on it. Just put it in your current GSM
phone, if it isn't SIM locked...

That's his problem. He presumably doesn't have a GSM phone (hence the "will
not work" rather than "is too expensive"!).

tim

wrote in message
...
On 23 Jul, 10:51, tracymar55 wrote:
I will be in England for 2 1/2 weeks and will need a cellphone mostly
for local calls and a few short calls back to the U.S. My current
phone will not work in the UK so I need to buy or rent - and I'm
finding the options confusing. It's looking like I'm best off buying
and getting on some kind of plan, but a lot of them are expensive, and
I'm trying to keep my costs down. My guess is that I will probably
only be making about 2 hours of local calls and 1 hour of calls to the
U.S. - and will be receiving just as many. Any suggestions?

I need to get the phone a week or so before my trip in order to test
it out and give my phone number to contacts both in the US and
England.
Tracy in Massachusetts

My tuppenceworth

On ebay.com you can get a second hand phone.
The triband phone I use V66 can be obtained
for USD30 including shipping.

You can walk into an Orange shop and buy one new for $20

Keith

No one asked you anything martin

"Martin" a écrit dans le message de
...
On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:46:12 -0400, S Viemeister

wrote:

David Horne, _the_ chancellor (*) wrote:
William Black wrote:

Quad band only if you want it for the Far East afterwards.

No, quad band is also useful in the US, as there are some GSM areas
there using 850 as well as 1900. You'll typically get better coverage in
the US with a phone that supports both- i.e. quad band.


When I eventually buy a new mobile, I want a quad-band. My current one
is a tri-band, with both US bands plus 1800. I generally use Orange in
the UK, so that works for me, but some parts of the Highlands only have
coverage with O2, and they use 900.
I can't yet justify the expense of a quad-band - I'm waiting until the
prices drop, (or the current phone does).


We use pre-pay Nokia 1100s that cost GBP16 each including the O2 SIM card.
--

Martin

Keith Willshaw wrote:
wrote
On ebay.com you can get a second hand phone.
The triband phone I use V66 can be obtained
for USD30 including shipping.

You can walk into an Orange shop and buy one new for $20



Yup.

Thanks for responding, everyone. As I said in my post though, I don't
have
a phone that will work in the UK (it's not GSM, it's a Virgin Mobile
USA Kyocera)
and I need to have the phone at least a week ahead of time in the US
and to use
it here before I leave for England, so many of your suggestions don't
address
the issue I posed. (I need to be making arrangements via phone for my
England trip and using the mobile phone number that I will have in
England,
and I will have absolutely no free time the first week of my trip when
I'm
working day and night, so I need to be confident and comfortable with
my cellphone/mobile phone. I will though be getting a triband phone.

What confuses me is that it looks like phone use costs are quite
expensive
if I buy a GSM phone and have roaming costs on a network like T-
Mobile.

So far the best alternatives look like getting a phone and plan
through
cellularabroad.com or a Siemens A70 triband phone or a WP188T
quadband phone ($80) http://www.raileurope.ekit.com/ekit/...chase/Handsets
with Global Premium service
http://www.raileurope.ekit.com/ekit/...rvice/ekglobal
I'm just having difficulty understanding what my total costs will be
(though I'm
emailing Raileurope now with questions).
Any comments on these plans?

Tracy

tracymar55 wrote:

So far the best alternatives look like getting a phone and plan
through
cellularabroad.com or a Siemens A70 triband phone or a WP188T
quadband phone ($80) http://www.raileurope.ekit.com/ekit/...chase/Handsets
with Global Premium service
http://www.raileurope.ekit.com/ekit/...rvice/ekglobal
I'm just having difficulty understanding what my total costs will be
(though I'm
emailing Raileurope now with questions).
Any comments on these plans?


Is there anyone in England who could pick up a local SIM and top-up
card, and airmail/FedEx/UPS them to you? That way you will not have
roaming costs, and all received calls and SMSs will be free.
The phones at the link you gave claim to be unlocked, so any SIM should
work.
I'd definitely suggest the Orange 'Camel' PayAsYouGo plan - calls back
to the US are only 6 pence per minute, and you can get 300 free texts.
The SIM itself is only GBP 1.00 - of course, you'll need to buy airtime,
as well. With PAYG, you only pay for the calls you make, there's no
extra charge just to have the service.

Sheila

Folks - I've made my decision and am purchasing a Motorola V180 quad
band phone
through http://www.ekit.com/ekit/MobileInfo/...t/motorolav180 with
a UK
sim card. The total cost will be $189 including shipping. Incoming
calls from both
the UK and US are free, and outgoing calls are only .30 a minute to
the U.S. and
..14/ minute locally. I will have it and my UK phone number (and a US
Sims card
to check it out) a few weeks before my trip..........I almost chose
Cellular Abroad
but Ekit was much cheaper for a quadband phone; Cellular Abroad
provided
only triband phones for slightly more. Renting through Cellular Abroad
would be
cheaper - but only by about $40 - and I would be liable if the phone
was damaged
or stolen. I only need it for one trip but I figure I could probably
sell it after my trip,
if I don't choose to keep it.
Tracy

tracymar55 wrote:
Folks - I've made my decision and am purchasing a Motorola V180 quad
band phone
through http://www.ekit.com/ekit/MobileInfo/...t/motorolav180 with
a UK
sim card. The total cost will be $189 including shipping. Incoming
calls from both
the UK and US are free, and outgoing calls are only .30 a minute to
the U.S. and
.14/ minute locally. I will have it and my UK phone number (and a US
Sims card
to check it out) a few weeks before my trip..........I almost chose
Cellular Abroad
but Ekit was much cheaper for a quadband phone; Cellular Abroad
provided
only triband phones for slightly more. Renting through Cellular Abroad
would be
cheaper - but only by about $40 - and I would be liable if the phone
was damaged
or stolen. I only need it for one trip but I figure I could probably
sell it after my trip,
if I don't choose to keep it.
Tracy
What is the advantage of buying here or buying there? I am going to
Italy next June and am planning to buy/rent a phone when I get there.
Pros and cons?
thnx

AL
Sorry, the reason you need to get the phone rather than bring your US phone
is that the systems are incompatible. You won't be able to test such a phone
in the USA, even if you can buy it there, because it won't work on the
American network.

Alan Harrison

Hi,

many phones work in both the US and UK (and europe as a whole)... my
cheap quad band LG does fine... it's on AT&T, I can unlock it if I want
to (they publish the code) or I can just get an ultracheap ($5us/month)
mini-international-roaming plan (which sounds like it might be enough
for the original poster).

but...

there are a couple of US companies who do use incompatible systems... if
he's got one of those buy a cheap phone and a pay as you go sim.


--

== Hackamore ==
http://www.hackamore.com/
http://hackamoretravel.blogspot.com/

In Hackamore
wrote:

AL
Sorry, the reason you need to get the phone rather than bring your US
phone is that the systems are incompatible. You won't be able to test
such a phone in the USA, even if you can buy it there, because it
won't work on the American network.

Alan Harrison

Hi,

many phones work in both the US and UK (and europe as a whole)... my
cheap quad band LG does fine... it's on AT&T, I can unlock it if I
want to (they publish the code) or I can just get an ultracheap
($5us/month) mini-international-roaming plan (which sounds like it
might be enough for the original poster).

The plan's $5/month? What's the cost for calls?

but...

there are a couple of US companies who do use incompatible systems...
if he's got one of those buy a cheap phone and a pay as you go sim.

Almost all US cellphone companies use CDMA, an incompatible system; only
AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM. I suppose there are re-sellers of these
services that use different names, but it's AT&T and T-Mobile under the
skin.

I took an unlocked Motorola V180 to Norway, walked into an electronic
shop and got a pre-paid SIM for 10NOK, which gave me enough time for my
needs. I gather the process is pretty much the same anywhere you go in
Europe these days.

--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN