My son will be student teaching in Ireland and would like advice on the ways he can call home. Can he purcahse a cell phone there with pay-as-you-go service (without a contract)? Any other economical ideas? Thanks!

skype

Nothing to add, Scott, but I have the same question for my daughters.

In Bourne Ultimatum, hero buys a couple of prepaid phones from a kiosk at the train station so he can plant one on other guy and then call him. Bourne seems to have unlimited funds, though, along with his other good qualities.

You can buy a Pay as you go for as little as 40 Euro, that includes 40 Euro of call credit. Since all INCOMING calls are free, it would be an economical way for YOU to call HIM, but NOT the other way around.

A 10 Euro International Phone card would be the cheapest method for him to call you.

Bob

I actually have been pondering the same problem. I'm going to be studying in Ireland this summer and was hoping for something easy so my mom could hear my lovely voice once or twice.

Italian Chauffer, who many minutes does 40 Euro get calling back to the states? Are these phones fairly easy to come by in Ireland or is there a way to buy them before making the trip?

Thanks for the advice!

There is no one simple answer to the question of how much it costs to make a call to the US or anywhere. There are three service providers, different subscription plans, and so on, and tariff structures are not easy to find and compare.

Reckon on about €1 per minute with Vodafone. Dig through their site and you will find answers: http://vodafone.ie/ [Do not take this as an endorsement of Vodafone; I have no opinion about who is best].

If MobileWorld works in Ireland that would work for you. I'm in Scotland now and it's something like £.07 per minute to call the states, pay as you go. If he has a landline, it will be even cheaper to get a calling card from any corner store and call that way. I just prefer being able to call from wherever I am.

The annoying thing about MobileWorld is that it doesn't work in Europe - whenever we travel we have to use my husband's phone as mine never ever has reception.

I have a 4-band T-Mobile GSM 'worldphone' that will work in Ireland - I just have to buy a SIM and replace my T-Mobile SIM with one for one of Ireland's Carriers(not brain surgery).

You can buy one of those phones on Ebay

My Ireland visits are usually just a week or so, so I buy an Eircom Phone Card for 7-Euro and use it for direct dial back to the U.S. Calls are very inexpensive.

We used skype when my daughter spent the summer in London. Free calls from computer to computer, although the quality is not perfect and there is sometimes an annoying time lag. But she also had a cell phone with a local sim card for local calls.

02 company have pay as you go mobiles and i remember they were doing an offer for cheap us/canada calls. you pay the supplement and then its like 5-10 cents a minute or something.
tell him to try 02 when he arrives.
i used to use them and they have pretty good offers for stuff.

Or skype.

As noted...Irish mobile companies have varied rates for calls to the USA. Unfortunately, they are nowhere near as cheap as in the UK where you can get a free sim card and make calls to the USA for as little as 3p/minute.

One of the things you might consider is to get a calling card that offers an Irish local number (bizon is one) and charges something like 5¢/minute (US) to call from Ireland to the USA..you will pay for the domestic Irish call...or you can use one of the international sim cards such as United Mobile but again while cheaper than using vodafone IE or O2 IE to call the USA, they're not dirt cheap...just relatively cheap.

But if you're son will be student teaching in Ireland and spending any amount of time there, he will almost certainly need a mobile phone...modern life today involves almost everybody walking around with a mobile phone to reach friends or to have with them in a car just in case!

There is a vodafone IE shop right in Dublin airport in the arrivals area and he can stop there, if he has an unlocked gsm phone with the European frequencies, to pick up a sim package for very little...but as noted he wouldn't necessarily want to use it per se to call the USA.

Its way too expensive from a mobile and yes you can get a ready to go but I think it would be more like 100 euro but i could be wrong. You can though use a calling card to a local number and then call international much cheaper. I used to do this calling the U.S. via mobile. Also to call from Ireland to the U.S. its 001 area code and number.

Really - lawchick said it perfectly - get Skype. Obviously he will have a computer, obviously YOU have a computer. For him to call you and you to call him the cheapest way is skype. All you need is a microphone on your computer and if it doesn't have one, then you buy a headset with mic (very cheap). You both download skype and you call each other computer to computer.

My daughter has been in France for the school year. We talk 3-4 times a week. We have also both purchased $10 worth of skype credit so that we can phone cell/landlines to say "can you talk? get to your computer and skype me back". This way we are not tied to being in front of the computer in order to talk. I still have $1 left on my initial purchase from September! She even uses skype to talk to fellow classmates in France as cellphone minutes are expensive.

She does have a French cellphone and it was easy to get - she purchased one in the airport upon arrival. She re-loads it when needed, but again, uses skype as often as possible. The cellphone use is for when you are out and about and need to phone, not when you are at home ready to have a nice long conversation with your folks. Even internet cafes have skype preloaded (as did the computers at her school). It is VERY easy and definitely the cheapest.