Best us cell phone co that will work in london
 

I will start travelling frequently to london. My current provider, Verizon only offers one gsam phone,and it is too big, so I need to switch carriers. What service have people used there with success?

Vodafone and Orange are the 2 biggest networks in the UK.

I have been with Vodafone for around 10 years now, and my phone works all around Europe too.

There are other smaller networks too, which are certain to work in London. There are good deals offered on them, but where I live in the country these smaller networks aren't so reliable, and you can't always get a signal.

You will get good advice in London by visiting any branch of Phones4u, Vodafone or Carphone Warehouse, all of which have shops all over the place these days. They will discuss your needs, and you can choose from a wide range of phones for each network, both on contract or pay-as-you-go.

www.phones4u.co.uk
www.vodafone.co.uk
www.carphonewarehouse.co.uk (or .com)

I have Cingular service in the US and got a quad band GSM phone. When I get to London I take out the Cingular SIM and buy a Virgin Mobile SIM card. Much less expensive than trying to keep your US service over there. Then just switch SIM cards when you get back to the US. You can just keep adding minutes to the Virgin Mobile SIM card, you don't need to buy a new one each time you go unless it's more than 6 months between uses.

There are a variety of solutions to this depending on your own likes or dislikes. If you are happy with your verizon service, I wouldn't switch carriers for the sake of frequently travelling to London.

Instead, when you arrive in London, as suggested go buy a UK prepaid plan along with a GSM phone. If London is your only destination, it might save you a few pence to get a locked phone (see other threads about locked or unlocked gsm phones). Or you might buy an unlocked gsm tri band phone on the web; be sure it is not a Cingular gsm tri band as you will be missing one of the frequencies necessary for complete travel in Europe....so make sure if it is a tri band it has 900/1800/1900 not 850/1800/1900.

Next select a UK carrier. The simplest as noted is Virgin mobile so go into any phone sotre or a Virgin megastore and buy a Virgin mobile sim pack. Listed price is £10 with £5 worth of credit but there are sales on all the time.

Virgin mobile is perfectly good in London; there are areas of the UK where its coverage might not be as good as others but it has the cheapest call rates.

Calls within the UK cost 15p/minute timed to the second (5p minimum) for the first 5 minutes of use each day which drops to 5p/minute timed to the second with 5p minimum after that. Calls to North America cost 20p/minute timed to the second 5p minimum all day and they count towards the 5 minute rule noted above. Receiving calls is free while in the UK and voice mail is free while in the UK. No hassles, no registration needed.

Card remains valid if you make at least one call every 180 days but you can get around that by sending a text message for 35p from the US or Canada as Virgin Mobile allows roaming in the US and you can roam in other parts of Europe albeit with rather high call rates.

You can also open up an account with kall8 which will give you a US 800 number and the ability to forward calls to the Virgin mobile number. Cost is $2 to set up the number, $2/month for the number + calls which run around 30¢/minute. And then you can forward calls from your Verizon phone to the Kall8 800 number which then forwards to your Virgin mobile phone so you will in a sense retain your US Verizon wireless number and your callers might be shocked to find out they are talking to you in the UK.

You will have your very own UK mobile number (country code 44) and as noted if you use the sim once every 180 days you can retain the number indefinitely.

To me the best solution.

xyz:

I know I should be asking this on the US board. But I can't face the alphabet soup I'm likely to get as an answer.

What's the answer to the reverse problem? Is there any way I can walk into a shop in the US and get a phone cheap enough to use for emergencies on the max one or two trips a year I make to the US? I don't want to faff about with buckets of minutes, or with giving my address to a salesperson, and all the inevitable confusion about alphanumeric zip codes that follows.

I just want a mobile phone for $50 that does in America what my normal one does everwhere else.

It's not a problem...there are a few carriers that will give you pay as you go plans for about $50...go into Wal Mart or Target and you'll see them. Which one is best I don't really know as obviously I would not have any need for them.

Do remember that in the US, carriers operate on 850 and 1900 (t mobile USA operates on 1900 exclusively) while your unlocked gsm phone if it is not a tri band will not have these frequencies.

xyz:

I understand I need to buy a separate phone. So WalMart et al will sell me a useable phone at just about the same price I can buy one at Tesco?

Shows you how rarely I go into WalMart these days.

I use T-Mobile with my blackberry and have had no coverage problems over the past 4 months of travel to London, numerous spots in Spain, France, Germany (only had 3 bars in Cologne which was pretty funny in the shadow of their giant tower!),and Belgium. They seem to have reciprocity or whatever with carriers all over and only place I couldn't get a signal was on ferry from Valencia to Palma once we were out to sea.

I've seen all sorts of displays at Wal Marts in the US and Target stores with various brands of prepaids...almost all come with a phone, not all are GSM as GSM is not the biggest system used in the US....it doesn't seem to be like Europe where you can go into any mobile phone store and buy a prepaid sim without a phone.

YEEE GODS!!! I have cingular. I called em up, paid a $6 extra charge for the month, and went to London, Switzerland and Italy. I used my regular cell phone everywhere. I paid 99 cents a minute for phone calls. BUT I only paid 20 cents for outgoing text and 10 cents for incoming text mess. Needless to say I did more texts and it was fine. It was easy. Everything worked. I was happy!

BestBuy in the U.S offers a Virgin branded pay and go phone (using the Sprint network) which seems suitable for a few weeks in the U.S.

Check out www.tracfone.com and click on their International Plan.

The Tracfone international plan is for calling <b>from</b> the US <b>to</b> overseas. Ellene wants a service that will work <b>from</b> London.

The earlier posters provided good information.

for LEANNA

Regarding Cingular, what about incomming calls from the USA? How much did you pay for them? And, did ALL calls to your regular Cingular Wireless phone number in the US come through while your were in the UK? (I would hate to think you paid 99p for every wrong number or unwanted incomming call)....

Any comments? Thanks.